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!!!