Vietnam River Rescue (formerly known as PBR diorama)

Finally completed and just in time for MCon 2012.
Enjoy the pics!

PBR: taking a dip

A small update...
The large number of figures to paint is a daunting task (I can't imagine sitting through the whole thing in one go). The strategy is to paint the base colors in assembly line fashion. But then focus on a couple of figures at a time for shading, highlighting and details.
Here's the first two taking a dip:

As you can see, I've only poured the resin halfway through. Tests show the resin doesn't attack the paint, but I was afraid that it might generate too much heat and melt the plastic. Better safe than sorry.

PBR painted

After a marathon weekend session of weathering, here are some results. Painting was finished the weekend before. As usual I airbrushed Tamiya acrylics as the overall basecoat with some pre-shading. The red bottom was also Tamiya acrylic.

 

This weekend is all about weathering.

Pibber Primed

Time is running out, only 2 months till the Mcon 2012 in november.

So I've spent the past couple of weekends priming as much as I can to prepare for painting. One of my favorite things in modelling is piling the vehicle with the crew's gear, and the PBR definitely provides a lot of opportunity to do this, but man, that's a lot of separate bits to paint.

 Also because of the way difficult to reach corners, I've split up sub-assemblies for painting. The last big part that hasn't been primed is the canvas tarp over the coxswain/bridge. I've still got to detail and attach the overhead spotlight and flagpole to that piece before I can prime that.
Also still missing are several C-Ration boxes that I've yet to print. More to come...

PBR progress

Here's some progress on the PBR diorama.

 Spent the weekend detailing the forward gun tub and bridge area. The pictures show some of the details I added and what I used.

I also added some detail to the .50 cal machine guns in the form of solenoid blocks, triggers, and beefed up the cocking handle with some wire insulation. I also drilled out the flash suppressors. Unfortunately I don't have photos of those yet. I'm painting the guns separately that's why I used some Tamiya tape to mask the mounting surfaces. The rigging is making me a bit disappointed. I'd pull the string taut before gluing the joints. After which I thought I'd strengthen it by applying diluted white glue, but for some reason, this caused a sag, something I was making a point to avoid.

back in the water - PBR diorama

 It's the 1st of July, less than 7 months to MCon 2012, time to get back to work on the pibber (PBR) diorama. Here's where she's at - most of the figs have been primed and ready for paint. But on closer inspection, some bits are kinda rough.

1/35 Pibber Diorama w.i.p.

Starting the new year with something old. I dusting off some pics of a diorama I started back in 2002 (if memory serves me right).

Portrait of Porco Rosso 3

I'm trying a different technique, for the hilites, I'm using oil paints!

Portrait of Porco Rosso 2

Boy am I glad I stopped procrastinating on this figure, it's a joy to paint! I laid down some shading, again using a mixture of Vallejo and Andrea Color vinyl acrylic paints. Sorry I can't list the exact color mixture as I mix them as I go.

Portrait of Porco Rosso

Been wanting to do this piece ever since I got this FineMolds kit of the Savoia S.21 Seaplane from Hayao Miyazaki's animated feature film Porco Rosso. I must say that this is one of if not my most loved animated film of all time.

Cashless Stash

Happily received this in the mail about a month ago, it's a 1/35 scale model the Centurion Mk 5 battle tank. It's a generous gift from the folks at armorama for my SAS jeep article which won the feature writing contest. You might remember my first ever post is when I mentioned this article.
It also come with a set of metal tracks and resin gun mantlet as seen in the photo.