Terminator 2: HK vehicle

 This happens to be my first ever commission. I met the guy at the local IPMS meeting. After looking over the kit and what had to be done, I gave a price which was accepted. He gave me a lot of leeway to follow the boxart and what others had done.  Here are the pics I passed on to the owner. 

 

Getting the fuselage together

Building the legs

Adding to the fuselage

Making sure the tail lights stay in place

Strip styrene added to replace panels sanded away

Black gloss add for the metallics

Rustoleum gloss for the base. Worked great!

Z-95 Finale

 This final session had me completing the weathering al la Night Shift style, putting the pilot in the seat and securing the canopy. Once again the pilot sat too tall, so I sat him on a coarse sanding sponge and got rid of most of his butt. 

The canopy went on pretty easy with the ledge around the area to aim for.  I found some nondescript decals for the wings and as usual where something has to go wrong - one came off the paper stuck to the model and would not be moved. Rather than scraping it all off I just left it as is.  

The final duty was  to give it all a matte coat. One thing I saw on Jon Bius' channel was to add 'a kiss of tan" to the clear coat. I touched the brush to the Dark Sand dropper bottle and then swirled it in the matte coat in the a/b cup. It barely turned the clear coat a color, but as you can see in the pics it all softly evened out the different colors I used.  With that I was done. Thanks for looking. 

 

The pilot checking you out

Z-95 part 2

 This shortened session I went over the parts to see if I was missing anything. The bubble hole in the nose bottom was puttied again, and after some ultra fine sanding, came out terrific.  So it was time to paint. 

When I looked at the decals, it was showing me that once again I was going to have a white ship with the maroon stripes. Uh, no, not this time. Reading the entry in Wookie-pedia I learned that a lot of unaffiliated groups were still using this outdated craft. So I hit Google images and scrolled thru many pages of Z-95s.The one that caught my eye was a green one from the Star Wars Legion game.  Figuring it was also right around St. Patrick's day, what a better choice for a color. I went into my paint rack and brought out a mid tone green from The Army Painter name Goblin Green. Ahh, an added bonus. While I don't name my ships, this one can be part of the Goblin Squadron! ;) 

Another thing I had to think about was what was I going to do about that wide open cockpit? The only answer was a pilot. So I dug into my Pilot and Ground Crew set, and painted one up. While he doesn't look exactly Star Wars, sitting in a Z-95 he can be. 

Tan suit and green helmet. Nice and easy

I thought I would finish it today, but that didn't happen. Check back next session for the finale. Thanks for looking.

 

Z-95 Headhunter

 Another deep dive into my stash brings out JPG Models Z-95 Headhunter. Produced in 1:72 scale in almost 2 dozen parts of white resin and a clear vac canopy. The date on the box is 2010 - - WOW!   Giving the parts a good look, this appears to be another quick build model.

 

The Z-95 from the website was: 

 An outdated series of starfighter, the Z-95's endurance, adaptability, and large numbers has led to its continued use long after its initial production run had ceased. A multi-purpose starfighter, the Z-95 has spawned countless variants, with individual forces, government, squadrons and owners adding and adapting componentry and systems.

Developed in a cooperative venture between Incom Industries (now the Incom Corporation) and the now-defunct Subpro Corporation, the Z-95 is largely recognized as the premiere starfighter of its era, and the forerunner of the incredibly successful X-wing starfighter.

Most of the kit is perfect, but I have on little ding in one engine, and a different engine part looks like it got gouged some how. No worries I filled the gouged area with Tamiya putty and then when dry, sanded away. 

I had to think a little bit about the guns. It seems I just had to butt joint glue the tips to the mid part and then into the rear. Having those ting butt joints seemed like I was asking for trouble. So in my stash of styrene was a wire rod coated in styrene. Stripping the styrene off part of it it was small enough on one end to fit into the tip and fit equallt well with the styrene part into the rear. 

The was a small hole in the very front of the fuselage(on the bottom). So that also got some putty. While that was drying I glued the dash in place as well as the generator housing behind the cockpit. Toward the end of the session I gave it all a shot of primer, and will give it a once over. But that's for next time. Thanks for looking.

 

Bossk's Hounds Tooth Finale

 This session I tried my best to finish this ship off.   First step was the mist coating to make the ship look less than a giraffe.  BTW the base came from Starship Modeler. I picked up a few a while back for any "just in cases." ;)

Next step was to gloss the ship and put down the decals. Being they were for a garage kit, I figured the inking would be on one large film, so I cut the decals as close to the design as possible.  They were very thin but pretty strong - else I would have lost the "teeth" decal.

After that came the weathering. I wanted to make it look used but not too busted up. So the panels were more or less lightly stained rusted with 2 different colors.  I hit the entire model with a flat coat, and then gloss in the very large front windows.  With that, I was done. Thanks for looking. 

Upside down

 

Bossk's Hounds Tooth part 2

 This session the plan was to start the paint work. Lots of little details in the aft section. 

Looking at other images this ship comes in all colors from yellow the brown. I first saw it as a sort of rusty color.  I started out splitting the difference on the colors. 

I had picked up these Aztek Dummy masks from CultTVMan a while ago, and thought they would be the right touch to busy up these large plain panels.

The first go-round I kept the colors fairly similar. After that I went darker and darker. But not to worry a mist coat will sit them down on the ship nicely.

 Check back.

Bossk's Houndstooth

 For those who haven't taken their deep dive into Star Wars, Bossk was the "LizardMan" alongside the other bounty hunters in The Empire Strikes Back. 

From JPG's Facebook pages 

"The Hounds Tooth, or YV-666, is the Bounty Hunter Bossk’s ship. As seen in various video games and comic books, the most popular being Shadows of the Empire.

Scale is 1:144 to compliment the other .JPG Productions ships, The Outrider, and the Moldy Crow. This line of “Underworld ships” will continue with other future additions.

Consisting of 9 resin cast and 3D printed parts, plus stainless steel mounting rods for the wings, the FX-7 measures ~12” (30.5cm) high and ~ 9.5" (24cm) wide wingspan, ~2” (5cm) wide main body."

 

My first oops was when I tried to saw this pour plug off. I guess I leaned too hard and snapped the end off the ship... Got it glued on fairly well. The filler will do the rest.

 

Two rods were used to attached the engine area to the fuselage. Only problem there was the fuselage is hollow, and I easily drilled into the open area.

Just had to see it with some color on it.

More soon. Check back and thanks for looking.

Galaxy Quest Shuttle Finale

 For the last session, I added some Satin poly over the decals, and then when dry I added a few burn marks to the front of the shuttle. I didn't notice this is the movie, but a visitor was at Goblin Valley State Park, UT when a helicopter delivered the Shuttle, and it definitely shows burn marks on it. 

 

Here's the dio finished. Thanks for looking. 

 

Galaxy Quest Shuttle part 2

 I took a look at the project, and since it wasn't going to have figures (I still haven't found the ones I wanted), the dio looks a little dumb with all the now wasted space. Time to redo the base. This time I took a 6" diameter base, added a few layers of cork sheets, ripped off some of the foam rocknd glued it to the new one. Looks better.

 Next up was painting the windows. I saw a tutorial about painting windows once and it involved creating a gradient where the darkest color was up top and it got lighter toward the bottom I airbrushed some MIG NASA bluie after a bit of masking, and then added a few drops of the darkest blue I had to the cup, and just shot the upper left corner. It worked out pretty well. 

Then came the decals. They looked pretty poor as they weren't solid. But once down on the craft, they looked fine. 

 It should be able to finish it all up next time. Thanks for looking.

JPG Galaxy Quest Shuttle

 Just saw Galaxy Quest again on one of the myriad of channel, and thought I have to build a GQ model. GQ is a very funny movie lampooning or honoring Star Trek.  JPG.s model is 1:72 scale and comes in 16 well casted white resin parts. I haven't put the decals on the craft yet, but they look well printed. 

 You see in the image it's sitting on a weird arrangement of foam. At the same time I started building the Shuttle, I was asked by my local IPMS club to do a little slide show on build a diorama or vignette using foam as the base. We'll see more of that.  The scene where they retrieve a beryllium sphere, was filmed entirely in Goblin State Park, UT.  One blogger happened to be at the park when the shuttle was delivered by helicopter.

Never realized the char in the film!

 Running out of time for the demo, I looked up a bunch of images for Goblin Valley and took to some foam with my cheap-o hot wire cutter.

Not being able to locate the figures I was going to use (downside of a huge stash), the direction of the ship in the vignette will change. 

The ship is together. The only problem I had was the rear landing gear has an angle to them. The instructions don't tell how the angle goes, so installing the supplied legs was a *Nope*. Thankfully I had some rod the same size and set them in place. 

 

That's where we'll leave it for today. Check back, and thanks for looking.

Italeri Autoblinda AB41 Finale

 These past sessions I've been working on the base, making it look like it's in a Mediterranean climate. The Groundwork is foam, sitting on a wood base, and then wrapped with sheet balsa. The wall is foam, and the palm tree is one of those 10 packs from eBay. Thanks for looking. 

 I ordered figures to go with the scene, but as of yet they are a no show. I'll add to this post if and when they get added to the scene.  Thanks for looking.

Italeri Autoblinda AB41

 Hello, I'm back. I lost the mojo for the longest. But it was an 'out of my comfort zone'  group build from my model club that got me going again.  There was a long time member of the club who was heavily into 1/72 armor. He recently passed away, and  the build simply to build a 1/72 armor kit. Watching my son build his armor kits and watching him tediously put together all those tracks, I decided to try something with wheels. 

What I got was the 1/72 Italeri Autoblinda AB41 from Megahobby. Now I realize 1/72 is small. And I build all 1/72 aircraft, but holy moley this thing was down right tiny!

Even for a tiny vehicle, there was an amazing amount of detail!  The kit also gives you the option for four different versions - two Italian, and two German versions. With all the camouflage I've done from my Luft '46 planes, I decided a nice easy tan Italian car would be the way to go.

 

Being a big fan of "Uncle Night Shift" despite not doing armor vehicles, I followed his instructions for chipping and painting. All that's left for the vehicle is a mist coat to simulate the dust of the road.

 Being really small, I decided to put it on a little base, so out came the foam. I put down some glue and the sand, but didn't like it. Got out the Vallejo paste, but that's for next time. Thanks for looking.