The Unofficial Airfix Modellers' Forum

Cheers Al. I'm going for polyfiller and paint - I've done it before and I know what I can achieve with it (at least it worked 15 years ago )

Last update as it's basic done now so pics tomorrow.

I masked the wheels to the white rims. Not that you could tell and I had to touch up all three colours.



The kits spinner is very undernourished and so are the exhausts. Some carved sprue for the spinner mount an Al shaft. Some wider slivers of sprue were used to make retainers for the blurred prop. Plastic tube was fashioned into the new exhausts.

Completed Duck piccies!

Now that's just quacking.... ;-P

bestest,
M.

.. moving swiftly on.

I had spent quite a bit of time thinking about the shape of my dio. The picture has your eye draw into the far left so I decided to wrap my backdrop around this corner. A 13 by 6 inch piece of MDF was duly cut to shape. I then double checked the position of of the actors and marked directions onto the base.



As mentioned previously, I always planned to use 'polyfiller' to create my ocean base.

1. Twice used before for "Dragon" dioramas to great effect.
2. Can create 'dramatic' waves with nice texture.
3. Cheap 450g and easily obtained, cost be £1.07 from Wilko's

The filler needs to be mixed to quite a stiff consistence so that it will hold the shape of the waves and most importantly the peaks and texture that will become the foaming white of the ocean.

I then spread this on trying to build it up in places to suggest the rolling waves, our downed pilot is just at the crest of one of these. Once happy with the general shape the spatula was put to one side as this produce tool mark and unnatural lines. I used my fingers to do the final working, pulling them away from the plaster produces the wave crests that I was after.

When I'd finish the dingy was placed on top of the wave to make sure it sits in the water.

Nice!!

Looks like the top of a lemon meringue pie......!

Stunning build so far. I hope you can provide some detail into how you will be painting up the water for those of us that have never done such a project. These Box art builds are just getting better and better every day.

Thats cool - looking forward seeing the water ....

Well you don't have to what long Here are the first two stages:

Base colour. Looking at the boxart I wanted a "steel blue" ie mid grey-blue sea. I'm using my Citadel/Games Workshop colours as they worked very well last time ( erm about 15 years ago, same bottles too!). I used Enchanted Blue 60%, Moody Blue %15, Chaos Black %15 and Woodland Green %10 very approximately. It's just a matter of playing around. Surprisingly you don't need to use a massive amount of paint as they have very good colour density and you can thin the mix down to the consistency of full fat milk. It's then just a matter of slapping the paint on with broad brush. To stop it looking to homogeneous I added a little of the various colours onto the sea and work them in with the base colour. So don't worry if you need to work up a couple of batches of the base paint either.

I tried to cover as many of the nooks and crannies as possible but you don't need to be too fastidious as the next stage is too apply a dark wash.



I then went and cleaned the bathroom while the base coat dried.

Next is the dark wash which is just eh base colour with a lot more black in it an thinned enough that the base colour comes through. This can be used to cover up any last flecks of white plaster. Check from different angles to make sure you've got them all. The wash also ties together the variations in the base coat I added. Here I've down just over half the base.



I left that to dry and got on with some vacuum cleaning.

Ah, the old Sunday morning house-cleaning routine...I'll be into that in a couple of hours as well...

... so I got ironing done too while watching the F1...

To finish it just a matter of a lot of dry brushing.

First of all I started with my base colour with a higher proportion of Enchanted (light) Blue. I then went over the whole sea to bring out the texture. You can see before and after in this photo:



I then continually added light blue and then white to the mix but concentrated on the wave peaks, moving towards the tips as the paint lightened. At the end you can use pure white to do the very tips and represent the foaming white of a churning sea.

Our lost soul was then added to await rescue!

And THAT brings a smile to MY face!

bestest,
M.

Looks very lonely at the moment.....

OK so here is a mock up of the final assembly. I always planned to have quite a deep base to help enforce the low viewpoint. I've grabbed an offcut from when we had the kitchen fitted last year - I could do with something thinner but it's dark in the garage and there are spiders!

I'm very happy with the result...



... unfortunately I think I've made a booboo in the over composition and have place things to far to the right. I'd sorely tempted to cut about and inch from the left hand side if I knew that the plaster won't crack and break off.

A cracking job well done.

I think the empty space on the left hand side balances out the composition.
Call it artistic expression, just an extension to what the box is showing.



Alan..............

...an extension of the loneliness, the empty void, the vast endless ocean, the...oh, well, you get the idea.....