Helsreach Grav attack tank, done.

Yup, your reading it right, it's done.....and in record time too! Only two weeks.....amazing huh? I took a crappy Star Wars toy and converted into this thing;

The mighty jalopy of.......can't think of a cool name, it's just a floating wagon really.

 Can you not see the beautiful paint work?

Here you can see what happens when you don't pay attention to what's behind you in the wide, empty desert of Helsreach.
You  can quite literally become lunch for a machine, sucked into an intake & splattered all over the bonnet!

You can sort of make out the Battery cell numbers in the top right of this photo, rather poorly hand painted by yours truly.
Oh, and there's some big arse engines here in this pic too, just can't seem to find them. Look hard and you might get lucky.

Blood splat curtiosy of Tamiya clear red
mixed with a drop of black paint.

Running down vagabonds is a legitimate
hobby in Helsreach.

My OSL attempt & more gore for the engine.

Las-cannon manufactured by Marshall. The
 choice of champion's and/or degenerates.

Here's something that Australian's of a
 certain age will probably only appreciate. 

Felix was, at one stage, the proud owner of this vehicle, until one fateful day. While taking a leak out in the wide, empty expanse of
Helsreach, he had left the the reactor iding. A disgruntled Vagabond, taking refuge nearby clambered onboard
 & commandeered it. Hence, why there's now a Jackson Pollock on the front of his ride.

A reactor coolant leak doesn't cause any
issue's. It help's keeps the rodents away!

The smiley face has reached just about
every corner of the known universe. 

Control panel & joystick to fly this crate.

More OSL & a rear cannon, kpow kpow!!!

So, it's finished, set to go cruisin around the outer limits of Helsreach, or any other tabletop made up land for that matter :)

Now, for the nitty gritty;

Control panel;
I got that idea from Stro'Knor Macekiller. His laptop screen looked pretty snazzy to me & because he usually takes close up pictures of his stuff it was quite easy to replicate. I'm pretty happy with the result. I decided to put a target on the joystick/pin....just coz.

Battery label;
I just couldn't help myself using that, even though I'm quite sure that it makes absolutely no sense at all to most of you. It's a TV commercial that's been ingrained in my psyche! I had to endure listening to this stupid thing for most of my teenage/adult life. You know the type of commercial I'm talking about don't you? The one were the company could only afford to made "one" and because it rated well in the first run, they decided never to update it, even after twenty odd years!!! In all fairness, it was funny...for the first couple of years :) Oh, and it was a google images & colour printer to the rescue job.

Smiley face;
Why not?

Coolant leak;
This was something I had to do to cover up an error I had made earlier. Originally, the "battery" was going to become a big induction trumpet. I was trying to run a flexible pipe from the rear of it, down into the hole where the headphone ended up being, but in doing so I had to cut out a larger hole for the tube. When I realised that it didn't look very good I scrapped it for the "Heatsink intake up front" idea. And so, I had to fill in the hole with something, a headphone looked good to me. I think it ended up looking good, having a large, radioactive "fuel cap" right behind the drivers compartment seemed quite logical in an RT setting.

Felix ride;
His name just popped into my head. And in my mind, you can't have an RT vehicle without some sort of graffiti.

Colour scheme;
Initially I wanted to paint it white, which i did. Then after I looked at it a while I began to think that maybe I should go for a different colour....didn't want it looking too much like my walker, that's got white legs. So, I gave it a black ink wash & then set about painting in the green crappy paint look. And actually, after I got close to finishing it I realised that the walkers' howdah is this colour green too! I must have some fixation with this colour, damn! Anyway, it looks ok.

Weathering;
I "was" going to weather it with oil paints, but from past experience, they take at least a couple of days to be dry enough to varnish. If I had the time I would have definately gone this route, as I was very happy when I used them last time. But I was under the pump, so I just used paint & pigments over a gloss varnish. once I was satisfied (out of time) I hit it with a matte varnish & added the Tamiya clear colours, three of'em in total, in three locations.

Overall, I'd have to say that I'm a pretty disappointed with the weathering, I over did it quite a lot. But there's no going back once you've applied it. Next project I'm gunna stick with oils, as I can clean them off easily during the application process & keep on trying until I get the result I want. But the jobs done now, and I'll leave it as is. I've learnt some more valuable kitbashing skills & recognise that I need to show a bit more restraint with my weathering techniques if I want them to look more realistic.

Now the only dilema I have left to overcome is how to pack the damn thing so it wont break in transit while on the plane :(



My apologies for the formatting, blogger was doing my head in with these different scaled images.This is the best i could do on my meds :P



Now, go forth & kitbash!!!

"Roger roger"....... stupid droids!!!

The Phantom Menace, what a retarded movie. Luckily for you & I this post has very little to do with the movie that won't be mentioned by name again. It has to do with a toy that I picked up late last year, for a couple of dollars. It was a kids camera, made to look like a set of binoculars used by the droid's in the movie. I thought it had the potential to be turned into some sort of vehicle & being the sort of "frugal" person that I am I grabbed it.

The pictures you can take with it are quite craptacular actually. Unfortunately I didn't keep the box to show you how bad it was, but if your interested to see this cameras' "performance" for yourself, then I suggest you have as look at Jakes' flickr account. He went to the trouble of doing a sort of review of it.

I originally bought it for it's kitbashing potential, but after opening the packaging & looking at the example photo's of what the camera could do, I was almost tempted to keep it & use it for its intended purpose. But alas, the film with the character's on it had fused together, rending the camera inoperative :(



Ok, enough about the camera, onto the fun bit, kitbashing!!!!

First I completely stripped every last bit of camera out of the case & chucked all the parts into my bits box. Then the case was placed in my draw for a year (to mature) & then I pulled it out last week to play with it :)

So, here's a lot of photo's to excite and/or puzzle you, enjoy;

Strip down to it's underpants.

The "periscope image thingy" rotated into the up position, where it will stay.

With all the bells & whistles added on,

All pimped out.

More pimp.

One side off of a set of head phones & an aerial from a modem.

A pair of dials off of an old radio, internals from a soap dispenser,
 a wooden ball, Xmas tree light wires & a toy gun.

Winglets from an old toy plane (my son will never know),
beads & label stickers.

Never throw out PC heat sinks.

Cockpit components: a pin for a joystick, a keyboard sticker
for a control panel & plastic grating for the floor.

Clock dial replacement numbers & copper wire for a ladder.

Credit cards (the wife won't miss them, much), CD cases & the aforementioned heat sink.

I wanted her to sit as low as possible, without touching the floor. I might lift it up a bit as it does "look" like it's dragging it's arse.

The ugliest part of any model, underneath. I used an IKEA wall mounting
bracket for the base. It's balanced perfectly & is nigh impossible to see
when it's on the table.

This thing is the battery for the cannon, cabling is wire &
brackets are made from bent copper wire.

I've tried to list all the things I've used to build this vehicle with, but it's mainly just household detritus, beads, stickers & stuff from my bits box.

I hope to have it done before I head home at the end of the month. I'd like to get a few games in with it.

Cheers.