WOW!

Well, I think with all these Sherman's' and Churchill's and Cromwell's floating around, Jibber's Tiger needs so back up. To finish this off, I added the figures and some foliage to the panther. I used a number of pics of German armour. They seem to range from a few branches to almost covered in foliage. I went for a slightly heavier look. Once all that was added, I sprayed a little AK Dust effects onto it all.

This is the first completed armour dio I have done in years. Two things I really wanted to improve on was the flesh of the figures, especially the faces, and the SS camo uniforms. For the flesh I got a set of paints from Scale 75 with a guide and the end result is a lot better than what I used to do, but still need a bit more practice, especially the eye's. As for the camo, I used the Osprey modelling book on SS camouflage. Again, its an improvement, but still room for more, especially the shading which I seem to have lost a bit of.

But aside from that, I am really pleased it. The commander you may notice does not have his insignia. I ordered a set of Archer dry transfers from a UK shop back in march, but they still haven't arrived. So I am going to order direct from Archer and add them once they arrive.

So anyway, enough waffle, here's the finished pics.

All comments welcome as always.

Now, from the lush green fields of France I am off to the barren sun baked desert of N Africa.

Eagle, good to see some pics, looking forward to seeing the rest of the camoe on there.

Welcome aboard Cody, look forward to seeing that way. And don't worry, there will be plenty of good advice for you.

Shiv, look forward to seeing your as well.

Ok, all, we are now approaching the last month. I know there's a few people who haven't been in for a while. I am going to send out some reminders this weekend, I know how easy it can to forget what GB's your in. But if anyone who hasn't posted for a while or who hasn't started there build yet could just give a shout as to whether they are still in or not, that would be great. It would be nice to get over half of the committed builds finished, I know we have a few close to completion, so hopefully we can fill out the completed list.

Mini tanks and boats - keen eyes and both look great. No idea how that bridge was made. But if the Brits have to watch out for giant cigarette lighters, the Kriegsmarine better do also - never know if the Brits made a "funny" to flame microscopic Schnellboats.

Eric

Thanks for the Info Stik.  Unfortunately guys, this is one of my first attempts at making an Aircraft.  I have been auto-only for about 12 years until I tried some tanks about a 6 months ago.  So I'm not expecting much but I will give it a go for sure!  After see some of the aircraft built in these forums I know I'm in the right place to learn!

shivinigh

Another Folkwolfe.....nice. I'm doing the dragon 48 scale. Be interesting to see how these kits compare with each other. I've never done an accurate miniatures kit before.

Another Folkwolfe.....nice. I'm doing the dragon 48 scale. Be interesting to see how these kits compare with each other. I've never done an accurate miniatures kit before.

I'll be watching that one Cody, I just picked that up a couple of weeks ago

Hey Bish I better get in on this one before it closes!  I have an Accurate Miniatures 1/48 Fw190 (Josef Priller D-day scheme) I'd like to do.  Thanks!

Gamera, I used your "cheap and dirty trick" and I like the look of these guys much better now.  They don't look nearly as surprised.  I also touched up the black and white paint a bit with a sewing pin I liberated from my wife.  

Hey everyone.  Got sometime to make a little more progress on the Puma.  I'm really enjoying the armor now.  I think I might have to really look into getting more armor kits!  The kit is going together very well with little or no fit issues.  Should be ready to do the painting/camo this weekend and start the weathering and detailing!  

Eagle90

Thanks Gamera, that's one of the first things I was going to do when I got to my workbench tonight.  Hopefully that will remove the surprise from their faces.  I might try to use a pinhead to even out the pupils of the eyes.  Fingers crossed...

Thanks guys! That b/w picture is ok Bish.

Stikpusher, Germans started to use those against allied during operation Torch 1942.

Now I have to finish my builds to 1:144 gb. Still I already started one 1:72 scratcbuild. That might take while till finish...

Trabi, SP, B17: Those are fantastic guys!

Bob: Jack has some good advice there. For a quick cheap and dirty trick though you might just use your flesh coloured paint to paint the tops and bottoms of the eyes to narrow them down a little.

Thanks for the link Jack, when I get home from work tonight I'll see what I can do to salvage those guys.

jgeratic

 

regards,

Jack

Yep, that's one of mine. Thanks for that link jack, that's really handy. I have saved that and will be using that on my N African build which I am starting next.

Trabi - awesome job on that little bridge layer

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Stik -  looking great, with that size one swipe and the dry brushing should be  done - lol!

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B17Pilot - nice C-47 happening there.  Only advice I can give for the stripes is to rely on the panel lines or other details to keep the masking tape parallel.

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silentbob33 - one key thing about figures are the faces, particularly the eyes.  You really have to nail that area, otherwise it ruins the whole presentation.  It is really difficult at this scale to do the eyes by just dabs of white followed with a smaller darker dab for the pupils, unless you are doing someone like Marty Feldman.

I'd suggest this video for some tips on painting eyes.  The example is a bit bigger scale, but the principle of using a flesh tone to paint around the eyes afterwards to clean up the size and shape is vital:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIzxQP2XxlY

If that is too much at this time, what you can do is just use a flesh colour overall, and then give it a red/brown wash, and let that dictate what details are seen. 

regards,

Jack

Trabi: very impressive work in such a small scale.

Looking good Stik, can't wait to add it to the front page.

Bob, I know the feeling, I really struggle with painting flesh, especially faces. Mine always end up looking crossed eyed.

B-17, good to see this one back. Life can be a real bummer at times. Still plenty of time to get this done.

It's been awhile since I've posted anything, and I figured it was about time.  I've been trying to get the crew for the LCVP to look right, and I think I've gotten the clothing down, but I just can't seem to get the faces to look right.  Guess I'll just have to settle for the best I can do right now.  I still have to finish assembling the gunners, apply a wash for the shadows, and then give them a dull coat.  But here they are for what they're worth.

Yeah, I am quite familiar with the tail to tooth ratio of mech/armored units. And all the fun stuff about manning. And of course, yes, there is always that old outdated piece of equipment that should not be somewhere, but somehow is. 

Yes, minor battle damage is rarely modeled for some reason, at least in armor.  Who knows as to why that is... and yes indeed, those shrapnel and machine gun round impacts, will ding up the paint and armor. Just enough to be noticable.

I finally made some near final progress on my Schnellboot today. Washes and tints applied and cleaned up... 

Tomorrows plan is flat coat, drybrushing, and call this one done...

I'm sure there are a blizzard of similar photos out there. AFVs required a good sized "tail" to allow them to work at all. So men were there that could rebuild damaged or worn vehicles. And I'd think there'd have been a real reluctance to waste the tax payer's money. (grin) But I bet there have been few wars where leaders up the chain haven't overestimated the strength of field units whether because of bad accounting or wishful thinking: a good reason to keep what you had working. If nothing else there was usually something you could do with a spare whatever.  (One field I have studied is Vietnam. Field strength of US divisions or battalions were almost always given at near 100%. When you added in illness, people circulating through the system, shirking and a kind of imposed discharge of bad soldiers by their NCOs or comrades -can't tell you how often I was told you were better off with a 7 man squad that you could trust than a 10 man squad that included men that were unreliable for reasons that ran the gamut of mental illness to severe clumsiness - the "boots in the grass" never matched those on paper.)

The useful life for some types of weapons was longer than others, but the earliest Sherman or T-34 would have been a very dangerous foe for some German infantry strongpoint lacking anti-tank guns or armor support at any time during the war. (I do have a photo of a Brit Grant fighting in NW Europe in 1945 - lord knows how that got there.) And there were always secondary theaters. Heaven knows what the Germans were using to police the Balkans or Norway. I wouldn't be amazed (well, maybe a little) if the Brits had Sopwith Snipes in the CBI - if not, certainly early model Hurricanes. And there were the allies. During the Cold War the Rooskies were famous for never throwing anything away - bet that started in WWII. And if there was a Panzer III not needed for tank school, there was always the Hungarians. And if there was a flyable P40E I'm sure a Chinese pilot could have been found to fly it. (I admit to being fond of heavy weather. I'm trying to cook up a couple of CBI projects - it was at the bottom of everyone's strategic wish list and there was quite a collection of anything could shoot there and I don't think standards of tidiness were very high.

But I certainly have no quibbles with the major point that it's easy to seriously over-use techniques like chipping and rusting. Dirt, dust, mud and some kind of crew caused wear are another matter. Oddly, you don't often see minor battle damaged emulated. I couldn't guess numbers, but I'd guess the number of AFVs that took mortar, artillery or small arms fire would have been pretty high. Kind of hard to image a .50 caliber slug or a piece of shrapnel not scratching the paint.

Eric

Well you can go possbility vs probabilty, I know you can find examples of both. Lets just say that the odds were against long life spans on WWII tanks. Take a look at this photo of the 752nd Tank Battalion in Italy at the end of the war. Alomst all new 76mm M4s. But look closely at the front row, front and center, and there is an early model M4 present- dircet vision slots, three piece transmission cover, collarless M34 gun mantlet, everything from an initial 1942 production variant. Perhaps the crew felt lucky in such along serving & surviving tank? In spite of newer and better armed & armored versions obviously being available.

Lovely mini Churchill - you have better eyes than mine. (I've got the 1/35 AFV version and am a little scared of it.)

Everyone's right about the life span of WWII AFVs (or aircraft for that matter.) On the other hand, the huge numbers produced were in modern terms huge. German numbers lacked a digit when compared to US or Rooskie models, but figure about 6,000 Panthers and 1800 Tiger I/IIs. More Stugs and Panzer IVs. Now out of that lot some would have lucked out, and might have stuck around for some time. You can bet they didn't throw tanks away. By 1944 everyone knew how important vehicle removal was and everyone had tank parks pretty close to the battlefield. (Germans tended to use Tigers especially in a defensive and took great care not to put them where they might lose ground and thus the tanks. Didn't work ultimately and a very high % of both Tigers and Panthers were captured after being abandoned.) Zaloga makes the point that US vehicles had more robust paint jobs than did the German counterparts (especially anything put over Dunkelgelb) although prone to fading. Anyway, I'd guess there were some pretty tired and beat up tanks running around the battlefield in everyone's army - and even if the % was low, we're probably talking several hundred vehicles. So I'd say that you have historical license to weather a vehicle as it was on "delivery day" (what ship modelers would call a "commission day" model) - although even then you'd want some weathering to show shadows. And as noted, once a vehicle moved it got dusty. But you'd also have history on your side if you wanted to do a "heavy weather" special. I've seen several photos of US Shermans in 1945 that looked very weary.

Same is true with aircraft. There's a nice documentary I have on a P-47 squadron in 1945 and they were flying some very old models that showed their age interspersed with spanking new birds. I think you could make a solid argument that ship models are under weathered - color films of USN vessels in 1944-45 when they were operating out of their temporary harbors, clearly shows a lot of seriously "distressed" ships. But many were "ship shape."  WWII was a war of incredible numbers and I'd guess that almost everything happened at least once. So perhaps the Spanish school guys don't aim for the "typical" - but I'd say they do model the "possible."  Methinks that artistic license could find some historical support across the board.

Eric

Eric

Trabi, now that is very very nice indeed. That is a real little gem. Thank you so much for building it here. Your GB badge is well earnt. If its ok with you, I will use the first of your B&W pics for the front page.

That looks great! How would the funnies deal with those infernal giant lighters that the Germans had on the beaches? ;-)

OK. Let´s call this ready.

Revell (Matchbox) Churchill A.V.R.E 1:76.

Thanks to Johnnie Saares from pictures

I guess there's a balance between realism and artistry. I am sure we all use a bit of artistic licence here and there, painting a fire extinguisher red when it should be the same as the vehicle for example. It just depends where on the scale between the 2 you want to be.

Sometimes, when you try and go more towards realism and you see builds that are more artistic, you just feel like your build is wrong. I think its the same mind set we have when we want to do a scheme that's been applied with a mop. The pics tell you its not neat and tidy, but your head tells you its wrong. It can be difficult to get over the mind set.

I totally agree with the estimates on the average lifespan as presented here.  I also think some modelers are aware of this fact, but go ahead and overdo the weathering just because they like how it looks - to each their own as they say.

I'm sure there are tables out there, likely in some of Jentz's publications, where you could cross examine monthly production, losses, and serviceable vehicles, and arrive at some kind of average for a given vehicle type.  I found something close here, but what really is staggering is the total losses by Soviet forces for the whole of the war -  96,600!  Now that is a lot of scrap metal.

http://chris-intel-corner.blogspot.ca/2013/01/tank-strength-and-losses-eastern-front.html

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I can't add anything about a protective coating on German spare track links, but I did come across mention of a release agent  used to facilitate their removal  from molds - could that possibly be the black coating?

regards,

Jack