Andrew -- that is one beautiful ASLAV! A credit to this GB, I reckon, and a subject I must add to my own collection in due course. I photographed the Aussie version many years ago but never in the detail I would have prefered. I'm sorry to hear about the turret mis-hap, but you pulled off a neat save with repairs that are invisible to the observer. Very well done!
I'll get one of your photos up on the leader page with a completion date of March 5th.
Okay, finally, here are some WIP shots of the Stryker!
I masked the wheel locators with rolls of paper, held in place simply by their own tendancy to unroll:
The overall scheme is NATO Green, Tamiya XF-67, and it took a lot of paint to cover this animal. There are so many twists and turns, so much three dimensional detail, that you have to hit every part of it from every angle, and I ended up mixing three or four batches of paint to get a solid coat onto everything, including the wheels and the weapon station, painted seperately. Here it is fully basecoated:
That's Trumpeter's S-tank in the background, see how grey the colour mix looks by comparison (yet it looked so green when I first mixed it...!) Anyway, the next job was to fade'n'shade. I mixed 20% white with the base colour to do the centers of panels, then 20% black to hit all shadow areas and outline panels, divisions and hatches. Here she is with the contrasting highlights:
It looks quite subtle in the photo, it's rather more stark in the flesh. Next up, wash and drybrushing, then decals and pigments, and add some anentennas. I'm thinking of spraying a mixed tire-black also, the shiny vinyl is just too factory-fresh and I can't be sure pigments will stick well enough to tone it down.
If I could get a few hours to invest in it, this project would finish up pretty quick!
Cheers, all comments welcome,
Mike/TB379