Trex Mech gear

Here's a quick peek at the latest progress for the Trex Mech project. I've attached the 2 bedrolls I created in a previous post. You can see the resin cast belt buckles and the nicely painted straps. I used Leukoplast elastic adhesive tape which is a rubberised fabric tape meant for first aid purposes. The fabric pattern is an excellent representation of webbing material in 1/6 scale. Of course I had to paint and weather it first.
You can see that I've also added some extra gear around the bedrolls. These are loose WW2 German 1/6 scale accessories - a gasmask canister, bread bag and mess tin. I've attached them temporarily to see how it would look, I still have to paint these guys.

Bedrolls for Trex Mech

One of the first things I have ever learned to do in terms modelling my own accessories is how to make my own bedrolls from scratch. I learned this from the book "How to Build Dioramas"by Sheperd Paine. If you are ever going to buy only 1 book on modeling in your lifetime then this is the book I would recommend bar none!

So for my Trex Mech project, I wanted to load it up with a bunch of accessories to give it a lived in look. And bedrolls is our first stop. It's a very simple thing really. I take a piece of wet towel, the kind you get from restaurants, and cut this to twice the width of my bedrolls and long enough to give it some bulk when rolled up. I fold in the sides to make it look thicker and then roll it up. I use a bit of white glue at the end. I then tied it up with some thick dental floss cause I couldnt find any string at home. The larger of the 2 bedrolls had some synthetic foam filler rolled inside to bulk it up.
When the dry, they were painted with acrylic paints. In hind site, I could have sealed it with some white glue or primer before painting to get a smoother paint surface. In the picture you can see some resin buckles I've cast for the straps that will secure the bedrolls to the mech. I really like how they turned out and will one more bigger and longer tarp to hang onto the side of the mech.

Trex Mech w. i. p.

Here's a project I started in July 2008. As part of a maquette building workshop. I chopped up a 10 inch blank Trexi and hot glued bits of wire, lego, straw tubing, a chopped up water pistol and some parts from cheap plastic toys. I am currently calling it a Trex Mech for lack of a better term. The 'pilot' is an old 12inch action figure that needs some clothing S:|

Although it looks finished, I am still planning to add some bedrolls and duffel bags. Also plan to layer more weathering onto the paint job. But obviously my fickle interests prevents me from finishing it once and for all. Here's my excuse, I needed to make some buckles for the bedrolls that I want to add on. So I've made a mould based on a Dragon 12 inch figure's buckle. I've only got one of these and I need at least 4 hence the need to cast duplicates. I've also included some mech details on the mould as you can see below:
And finally, I just got this mag from a friend of mine. I normally don't read Art's Projects mag but this one's devoted to character and toy design. Hmmmm...very interesting. I'll be reading this on the bus and possibly the loo for the next week or so. If it's compelling enough I'll post a review on it, stay tuned.