Project II/12

I admit openly, that this year's projecting under the labels of painting and building has been pretty slow. Despite that my second german cat is done! Awesome, wonderful and exciting!

The final stretch

Those track links I advertised the last time found themselves painted, messified and cleaned up before I threw them to the rear sides of the tank. There were six slots for these and I had four sets of track pieces to divide however I pleased. For a change I went asymmetrically and gave the left side three pieces and a single one on the right side.All the empty slots got those L-shaped pieces to show that there could be something. The remaining eight L-pieces I cut short and glued them on the top of their places. Should someone take a look at my model from below, that one'd notice that the bottom parts have gone missing.

A mess

To make my model pretty I made it dirty. A muddy tank was my goal, so the tracks, the rear deck and the top of the copmartment got some Tamiya weathering master set's "mud" pigment. I guess it looks like some people have been roaming on top of my tank with poopy boots. At least I hope that's the impression any observers get. The muzzle brake of the 88PaK43 was dirtified with Vallejo's 73116 "Carbon Black". I really have to learn how to use that stuff, it feels so weird compared to the Tamiya's makeup.
Lastly I poked the tracks and the lower hull with my Tamiya weathering stick ("Mud"). Maybe this time I didn't get overexcited with it?

 

SdKfz 173 Ausf. G1 Early Production

Pictures, as usual, tell more than a thousand words:

The infamous muzzle brake

Of course I could've changed another lens to the camera, but I wanted to see what kind of photos I get with this one, in the dark of the evening and under electric lights. Now I've tried it out.
Should anyone know what I used as the background, they'll get a point.

Coming up

Next I'll take up the brits or polish army but I shall still remain rolling in mud and who knows what. Maybe even next week my "almost FiFo" work queue pops out my gift kit: Italeri's M-10 Achilles.

Rustification preparation

Lasse's earlier comments in my silly blog's finnish version stuck to my head and I decided to try his method. More or less, because I don't have the exact colours he mentioned but that's never a real issue anyway. The idea is what it is and I'll do what I get to do.

This is going to be ugly

My target is the set of track links on the rear sides of the tank, they aren't muddy and lumpy but pieces that have been hanging there for a good while. So the base is going to be Flat Alu, dirtified by a very diluted mix of Flat Brown and my own custom orange made of Vallejo's Game Colors (Bloody Red + Bald Moon Yellow). I think it sounds like a good, useful idea but you can disagree all you want ;)

Carrying more crap

This time I added some of the missing knickknack to the sides and winterized them, too. Not much is left anymore, the tow cables (should they survive) and the fixing of the tracks. Right now I just couldn't find the motivation to fight with them so I did something else, while I still could :)

Even the tow cable is there!

Dirty tracks

I got something done again, track-painting to be more exact. You'll see it in the pics that my badly set lights (I rushed to paint on the expense of proper preparation) ended up causing some "bald patches" that I need to fix later. Yeah, it's my own fault.

In any case, the process was pretty straightforward. The base layer was done with Tamiya's XF-10 (Flat Brown) and later on top of that I liberally drybrushed some Tamiya's XF-16 (Flat Aluminium). Because that Al layer didn't look good enough I applied a Citadel's devlan mud wash. The result ended up pretty decent in my opinion, it's just a shame that I have to fix a couple of places afterwards.

Now the big cat can hunt!

Rumbling

I admit that I hadn't figured out all the coolness in these Magic Trax when I started. Those are tons better than what I used to work with, if I use them properly. The victory is reached via pain and suffering, so maybe  at some point a tank model of mine looks like I've envisioned it in my sick mind.

Or maybe not, but being "close enough" would also work. So that I wouldn't need to be too embarrassed. I'd like that.

Tracks are done, the kitty is on the prowl

A piece is off, I've got to fix it!

Now that the tracks are just about done, after one last fix, I'll start looking towards my paint pots again. I know that it'd been tons easier before gluing the tracks on the tank, but this is how it goes after I started changing my mind in the middle of the build.

Oh, and the finishing touches and last pieces are still missing. That shouldn't take long. And yes, I know, you've heard that one before ;)

Lazy linkage

Somehow building the tracks has been very, very slow. I even changed my mind about the assembling/painting order because my original idea just didn't feel that nice. About half of the pieces are done, the rest, meaning the shorter curves I think I'll do in one sitting, whenever I get to :)

The painting of the tracks will be its own project, we'll see later how it turns out. Just don't bother holding your breath while waiting, even if you were the legendary Guybrush Threepwood himself...

Borderlanding

A couple of years ago I got a copy of Borderlands as a gift. The makers called it a Role Playing Shooter and just about everyone else dubbed it "Diablo with guns". Oh well, I once tried the first Diablo for almost fifteen minutes and didn't like it, so that description didn't really help me understand what was going on. But when the teaser had a huge guy punching a leg off a midget, I was getting quite interested in the game already. I know I'm sick, so what? :)

"Strip the flesh, salt the wound!"

Pandora's landscapes are neat, immense and the machinery is insane - just like everyone on the planet with the ex corporate employees, indigenous life forms and what have you. Not that there was a lot of time to observe the sceneries, but a bit anyway. Of course there was even less time to take screenshots and I only started doing that in the last places, but that's how it goes sometimes.

"I'm gonna rip your arm off and beat your baby with it!"

I'm not going to try to write a deep or specific story about the game this long after I finished the game for the first time, but I'll mention that the first playthrough of the base game took a bit over one hundred joyous hours. So what next, as I didn't feel like starting the second playthrough straight away? To the wonderful world of ripoffs, someone would say - but not me!

DLC 

Of course I did some research about the three DLC packs that were available at that point. I don't have the habit of blindly throwing my hard-earned monies away. Usually.
The first one, a zombie island thingie, promised more shooting in the spirit of B-class zombie movies. Moxxi's riot offered multiplayer-friendly arena fighting (I wasn't interested in the least) and General Knoxx's set was described as a long new story with more vehicles and a higher level cap, to begin with. Not that the LC was important to me, my character wasn't even at 40 at that point if my memory serves. So I chose the zombies, even if no one guaranteed chainsaws or flamethrowers.

Dr Ned's type B Zombie Island

Zombies. An insane amount of zombies and werethings and other thematically appropriate enemies attacked like a tidal wave of evil. Limbs flew around, brains fell on the ground by the dozens and they still kept coming. Every once in a while the going just got hysterical and damn difficult when there were just way too many zombies. Just like in the greatest classics of the genre, those buggers just aren't even the classic slow zombies... Lucky me had an awesome machine gun with explosive x4 bullets, bwahahahhahaa!

On the story side dr Ned has been working on a cure to the undead problem, but so far all he's achieved is a couple of more or less voluntary test subjects turned into wereskags and other abominations. Of course I had to help my fellow man with his problems but maybe not that surprisingly I had to mow him down a few times, too, in the end. Oh my, I'd never guessed! But that's how it has to go in these stories 8)

The legs were left behind but still it goes on... tenacious bastard!

Knoxx's gun locker

The Secret Armory promised more of the story (hohoo!), more vehicles (at last!), rarer and better guns (wohoo!), more loot (yay!) and eviler enemies (errr...). General Knoxx of the Atlas Corporation's Crimson Lance arrived to Pandora on an unclear mission after the Vault was opened and the guy called every once in a while to chat a bit. He was a jolly chap, until he had to start working himself.
To get to the gun storage I had to solve a good bunch of quests, running errands following the greatest traditions of RPGs and drive around narrow roads. All this while being hunted by a team of assassins who struck either out of the blue or obviously - depending on how busy I happened to be at the moment... No matter what, it was always when I maybe didn't quite need that sort of extra entertainment.

"Oh, hey, I sent Gamma team over to kill you. No hard feelings. Love!"

The foulest enemy in the whole game, Crawmerax the Invincible, was found in the end of this pack. I've heard that this megaworm could be slayed even by a single player Mordecai, as long as you're on level 69 and the maggot is 72, but but but... I'll squash it one day. Of course I could give in and go for a multiplayer session against Crawmerax, but those few I know to play Borderlands haven't been of company in those ultrarare moments when I could've spent the time.

But wait, that's not all!

At some point Gearbox declared a fourth DLC pack: Claptrap's Robot Revolution, obviously with extra goodies and who knows what. Of course I got it, too. If the story was taken to the mad path in Knoxx, CRR kept on it and went further. INAC and its minions / victims have installed modchips into the heads of just about everyone dead or alive on Pandora, so I had a sea of weirdoes from Skagtraps and Psychotraps to the trap-versions of previous bosses - some of them repeatedly. Oh, and waves after waves of different sorts  of Claptraps. I really enjoyed destroying those at last. The story? "Wade through blood, oil and bodyparts, find INAC and end the revolution quickly and preferably violently". That is exactly what I did, oh yes.

This looks sane

"I heard that your entire life flashes in front of your eyes the second before you die... that’s a load of crap…no wait…okay, there it goes."

If there's something I'd complain about the DLC sets, it's the lack of FTN nodes. You get to the startpoint of the hub via the Fast Travel Network but from that on you need to walk, run or drive to wherever you are going. At least in tSAoGK it gets a bit old sometimes, because the map is so large. A simple jump point in the opposing edges of the map would've been awesome, especially after all the roads are opened and there's no story-based reason to make you drive from one extreme end to another - repeatedly.

Why am I mumbling about this game now?

Because...

Yes, indeed. I pre-ordered that over eagerly in last month when my internal calendar was a bit off. At least I won't forget it!
Because of this I took it as my business to get my Mordecai to the level cap before my vacation and to roam around just for the fun of it before succumbing to the sequel. I had finished the main game's second playthrough (there's no way around it: the Destroyer is an anticlimax if there ever was one) a couple of months ago, so I suddendly noticed that I'm playing the playthrough 2.5 (being rewarded with tougher monsters, mostly at my level +2), so after running up and down the Eridian Promontory a few times I was done.
Why on earth did I keep playing that same level a handful times instead of advancing to the DLC maps for more variety?  Those buggers got too difficult and especially too slow compared to the amount of XP and entertainment they provided :p Sorry, I'm lazy and comfy sometimes :)

That's it, what next?

Kuat Systems Engineering Firespray-31

Years ago I took it as my business to build and paint Boba Fett's neat ship. This modified patrol and attack craft wasn't easy to paint like its real life counterpart, as you can clearly see from the photos. In hindsight I could say that I started my weathering nicely, in my own opinion at least, but today I'd do a lot more and stronger. Back in the day I was happy with the model and it looked good to me. I guess I was just a bit cautious and didn't want to ruin what I had already achieved.

Slave I

Captain Solo

Lambda-class shuttle Ondiv

Because I've been so very productive this summer I thought it was time to take a couple of weeks off. To compensate, I'm sharing more treasures from my archives! Sadly these old photos are awful, thanks to my bad equipment and even worse mindset that I suffered from back in the day. I just didn't care enough of the proof. I'm awfully sorry and ashamed.

It's always the same

There's actually a short and typical (to me) story behind this model. Back in the elementary school I visited the Fantasiapelit shop with my friend every once in a while, just in case they had something interesting. At this time I had already bought and built my first MPC-manufactured Imperial Star Destroyer model. Once I noticed a box containing another MPC model, the Tydirium from the Return of the Jedi. I was really interested in buying it because I had always like the ship itself but I didn't happen to carry those 100 FIM in my pocket at that point. Of course I could've walked those 20+ meters to the ATM to get that (I didn't even have a debit card at that point in my life, just a simple ATM card, mind you), but I was stupidly lazy and thought that "I'll buy it the next time."
Of course the next time happened to be the very next weekend. Guess, if that kit was available anymore? No, it wasn't, that one box was all they had ever had in that shop, as far as I know. I swore like a pirate.

Attempts to rectify my situation

A good bunch of years later I started - to torture myself I guess - browsing eBay and of course there were unopened boxes of this model. But how could I have bought one at that time when I didn't have a credit card and neither did anyone I knew, for some reason or another. I couldn't and that's how it was.
Many more years after that, when I had finally joined the broadband world (yes, the story and I are both that old) I got to know and even became friends with some people on the other side of the Atlantic.

Somehow I agreed with one of them that she'd bid for one of those kits on my behalf, send it to me and then I'd pay her back for all her trouble - obviously. There was one question: "how high are you ready to go?" and my reply was simply "I need that :P". The following day I was the happy owner of an old model kit and all in all one hundred euros poorer. Yes, instead of paying 100FIM I paid 100Eur (about six times more) but I guess that's how it goes when you waste ten years...

That packet took quite a while to get here, a few weeks even. When I finally got my large box in my hands I noticed curious markings on its sides. As everyone knows I live in Finland but for some obscure reason my box was first sent to Thailand instead, where they rerouted it somewhere else (IIRC it went back to States according to the logs) with a friendly "out of gors" scribbled on top. Dear USPS people, what's the difference between Finland and Thailand, hm? :)
Didn't matter, I was happy to get this model at last and I showed it by bouncing around the office, to the amusement of my coworkers.

Assembling after a 10 year wait

There's not horribly much I can tell about the assembly, other than some faded memories, so I'll skip most of them. One major issue was the joining of the right side wing and the hull. It was either badly done or I had ruined something while building (the left wing went in and worked just fine), because switching from the landing mode to the flight mode and back wasn't smooth at all. So I had to cut and file a bit to get the pieces together.

The world of choices

While building I noticed that one has to make a permanent choice at some point: which mode it's in, flying or standing. If it was going to be standing on its landing gear, it couldn't be set up in the flying mode at all because the landing bay doors would block the wings. And if it's flying it would stand on its belly because the doors would be glued shut. Somehow I had thought you could alternate between these modes freely but that was not the case. Of course if the landing gear was built as retractable, it would've been way too flimsy to support the weight of the model.

The ramp opens!

I decided to build it more or less complete in the [landed] mode, take a couple of photos and then finish the model in the [flying] mode. This is because I definitely wanted to have it flying around instead of sitting on its armored butt. It's just a huge, huge shame that the few pics I took are so awful :|

There's not much to say about the paint job itself. It was done with a paintbrush + some drybrushing, with Revell's enamel paints - two shades of gray. Some gun parts were painted with Citadel's Gunmetal (for some reason I thought at that point that guns needed to have metallic parts) and the engine ports were painted with Revell's glossy white. Somehow I didn't take any publishable pictures from the rear side of the model and I didn't remember to take new ones for this post, sorry.

SHU Ondiv

Because this project wouldn't have even been started without my friend Ondiv, I named the vehicle after her. Oh and besides, there's been enough of Lambda-class shuttle models named Tydirium, don't you think?

Mode: landed

Mode: landed

Mode: flying

Clickety-clack

We'll see how those tracks end up after all... I've been somewhat busy lately, again, to say the least. Still, I should pay attention to what I do and do things properly or else keep my fingers off this beast.