my elephant WIP **finished**

Chris, you may have outdone yourself this time. Love the Elefant. Your camo came out great and you did a bamg of job on those horrible tracks. I applaud you. Oh yeah, duh, the zim was well done too!

  That aves zim is incredible,still haven't used it on any model yet but it's fun to play with, i'm going to use it on my tiger1 how did you weather the zim it looks great. i have the tamiya tools they work great, what size did u use       did  u use the ausfwerks tecnique or did u put the putty on and then scribe it

    oh,and 1 more question what brand of paint did u use

Very very very very nice Chris. Your added personal touch makes this one powerful looking pachyderm. Your photography is excellent too. Well done.

Larry

Very well done. I"m still in awe of that zimm.

sweet looking elephant roo, i'm working on the same kit, any trouble spots i should look out for?

Egads! That thing is a beast! Great job!

"Took awhile" - that means, what, 2 weeks for you?

P.S. My apoxiesculpt should be in the mailbox today...can't wait to try some zim! 

ok guys, here she is. completed and finished. all i have to do is add some dullcote, and voila. done. took awhile, but i finally knocked it out. any comments or suggestion i'm free to take. espically if i overlooked anything.

thanks for looking guys

rooster

thanks doog. my improvements i have to give credit to my successors. gino with the M2A2 was a great help, you with my upcoming hetzer, tread for the tiger (than i'm still working on ), eric for the kingtiger and sherman, and so many more. (sorry if i forgot someone). i owe a great deal of my improvements to my fellow modelers . now for the zimm: its Apoxie Sculpt from Aves. you can buy it at www.auswerks.com. make sure to pick up the Tamiya tool there also so you can apply it. matt, the owner of the site, has a great tutorial on how to do it. it really is simple and not as scary as it may seem. the great thing about Apoxie Sculpt, is that its water solutable, so its easy to clean or take off if you don't like it or mess up, and it takes all night to cure so you have PLENTY of work and evaluation time. trust me doog, you can't go wrong with it, it'll change your life. and , just by chance you don't like it, (mail it to me, i'll use it, lol) keep in mind it is an apoxie, so you can still use it for making stowage or filling in gaps. the list is endless. i'll have some more pics later on in the process. thanks guys

Roo you're killin' me! If you keep improving at this rate none of us on this site will be able to keep up with you!

Seriously though, that's some of the best zimmerit I've ever seen! Where'd ya get it from again?!

Love the hatch interior chipping, and the understated camo!

5 stars!!!! 

still looking great roo cant wait to see more

Very nice so far. Wish I could make a more elaborate comment, but the actual build looks great, and I can see that you're just at the stage of painting where the beast starts to come alive, so I'll wait and see what you come up with

you'll be surprised jester. just pick up a couple jars of Aves, the tamiya tool, and you'll be praising the stuff. you can't go wrong, it water solutable. i just started three months ago from a 9 years pause. you'll do great, your last build was beautiful, just take yout time and experiment.

Roo,  I think the Elephant looks great zim and all!!! I hope my first effort with zim and multi-colored camo turns out as well!

fear not what you can see grasshopper.good one eh.dont worry just take your time and remember your the boss.

yeah, tell me about it. that's my weakness. hopefully i get it this time. if not, i'll have to deal strictly with fruils. hopefully i learned a few valuable lessons with the kingtiger

coming along quite nicely i'd say,now for those darn magic tracks.

ok guys, here she is with a little bit more progress. i have applied the future and decals, yay!! no silvering. i was worried about that with the grainy paint job i had on this one. microsol snugged right to it, and luckily i didn't have to apply any decals to the zimm.  i glued the upper and lower halves together, and painted the insed of the radio operators hatch. the jacl and tow cable are finished, and i'm working on the jack block and tracks right now.

as soon as i get all the accessories finished, i'll start on the main washes weathering. so its coming along quite nicely. little bit time consuming, but i'm getting a little bit more attention to detail then when i first started a few months ago. i don't mind dragging out the kit to make sure all the pieces blend into each other. thanks for looking guys, i'll keep you posted on any new progress i make.

rooster

you could cheat a little and knock down the hard edge of the zim. and or fill with putty slightly to make a somewhat smoother surface without taking too much away from the look of the zimmerit.any excess can be carefully removed with the x-acto knife.

roosterpelo wrote:

the kit supplied . its the premium edition. lots a PE for you to play around with. you'll like it

Egads. I have some of the premium edition kits but they don't come with THAT much PE. Nice.

For what it is worth, every article I have read on zim and decals has the author resorting to hand painting in the end. . . . .

thanks for all the comments guys. i will try and apply the first coat of future on it tonight. its a little grainy, i don't have a pressure regulator, and my paint is thinned pretty good, so i think i need to save up for that next. i will also be applying the decals on soon, if they match my references, if not, i hope i don't have to go the hand painted route again.  how well does decals form to zimmerit with microsol? will it stick good? i'll keep you guys informed as soon as i make some more progress. thanks again for the kind words everyone.

 

rooster

This awesoem built is a winner in my book! Can't wait to see the finished monster!

Fantastic looking Elephant. I hope your proud. Cant waut to see it with its tracks on.

...Guy

roo she is coming out great

Hey Roo, that's looking pretty swwwwweeeeet!

...wait a minute now....weren't you supposed to be a "noob" just a few weeks ago?!?!

You've "graduated" way past that with your recent work! Looking SOOOPER!

I'm a guy who has stuck to the olive drab side of painting, but for what it is worth.  I like it so far.  If you are going for a hard edge, it seemed like there was just a couple of blobs near the back that had some soft fuzzyness on the edges.  Otherwise, a really sharp job.  How did you do the blobs?  Mask??

And for what it is worth, I'd leave the fender off.  It makes it look more "lived in."  Besides, as massive as that beast is, the few places minor damage is going to show are the fenders. 

the kit supplied . its the premium edition. lots a PE for you to play around with. you'll like it

Dang Rooster you're a modeling machine - it amazes me how fast you crank out the builds. This one looks great - your zim technique certainly improved from the King Tiger. I'm hopping on the Aves bandwagon, gotta get some of that stuff. Who's PE kit did you use?

i made small mask cut of from thin sheet styrene., tried to hold them as close to the model as i could. i wanted a hard edge camo pattern. some places are a little blurred because it was hard trying to get it flat on raised surfaces. it looks a lot darker than it actually is. its more green than it appears in the pics.

I love the scheme Chris, did you mask it? Turned out far better than mine.