"Surprise Attack" the figures

 As promised, I'm posting in progress pics of the "Surprise Attack" 1/72 WW1 trench diorama. This post deals with the work done on the figures. Most of the figures started off as Preiser WW2 German soldiers. I was afraid I would run out as these were hard to come by, so I made resin copies of one of the sets. They appear as brown color in the photos. The grey ones are the actual Preiser figures in plastic.

More "Surprise Attack" Pics

 Here are a few more pics of "Surprise Attack". It's the old matchbox 1/76 FT-17 kit that I have been building for several years. The Flyhawk kit had come out just around the time I was finishing the diorama, and I did, however briefly, considered swapping to the new kit. Sanity prevailed and the matchbox kit made it to the final diorama. Figures were modified from Prieser WW2 german figures.

"Surprise Attack!" 1/72 WW1 trench diorama

Here's a preview photo of the completed FT-17 diorama I titled "Surprise Attack!". I finished this about a year ago but I've only found the time to post photos here now. I will post more photos here soon, but in the meantime you can see photos on our Facebook page here: https://www.facebook.com/Orange3dMiniatures/photos_stream?tab=photos_stream

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.

cold in hoth part 2

Here's a breakdown of what went into the Luke figure.

cold in hoth part 1

A few weeks ago, I embarked on my biggest diorama project to date. Here's a first preview at some of the progress I've made. It involves the old hasbro AT-AT toy about to smash the Finemolds 1/48 snowspeeder to smithereens! Trying out some new (to me) techniques for painting the snowspeeder.