Motor King 1/100 Zaku Tank.

[Hunter Rose]

Ooo nice rock! Base is looking good, maybe keep it simple with some leaf litter?

[rockpopandchips]

8 hours ago, Will Vale said:

Coming along nicely! I like the big rear rock in the last picture a lot. It might be good to sponge on some washes of thinned paint, in a patchy fashion, to give a bit of large scale variation?

 

Not sure what to suggest for the ground cover - is it going to be dry or wet terrain?

 

Cheers,

 

Will

Cheers Will, after looking back over your dio I did add a few colour washes of green yellow and red, its added a bit of something...... the red/drown at the far right needs toning down I think. As for the ground Im think the track marks should be wet-ish turned over earth but not sure if I should go with grass or some sort of gravel road or a mix of both for the level area. 

 

[rockpopandchips]

21 minutes ago, Hunter Rose said:

Ooo nice rock! Base is looking good, maybe keep it simple with some leaf litter?

I need to make my mind up on what to do on the level ground, I think if I end up with a arid gravel road then I will leave the rocks as they are but if I add grasses then I might add some sort of tree/shrubs/flax on the rocks.

[rockpopandchips]

So mind made up going with a muddy grass thing, have orded some 2mm and 4mm static grass and made a start on the paint. I need to darken the mud but its only a start.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Will Vale]

Looking/sounding good - the washes do break it up pretty well. Two tips for the static grass:

 

* Don't use the ones with red fibres in, they look weird.

 

* Try the "hairy cigar" technique if you don't have a static gun.

 

Cheers,

 

Will

[rockpopandchips]

Had to look up the hairy cigar method and found a great vid on YT. I will definitely be giving that a go. Cheers for the tips.

 

 

Edited October 19, 2016 by rockpopandchips

[Will Vale]

No worries - I got really nice results with it although the 3M Super77 you need is nasty stuff - work outside or use a respirator and a drop cloth!

 

 

In this pic the grass on the right and on top of the bank is done with the hairy cigar, the wetter grass down the bank is cut up static grass sheet jigsawed together following a Dutch model railway article.

 

 

Cheers,

 

Will

 

[rockpopandchips]

That grass looks great Will. Im having scaling issues with this now, the 4mm grass is way to tall and the 2mm looks like long meadow grass, its knee to waist height on a 1/100 scale figure. I think Im going to have to paint the ground as it is and add some tufts of the 2mm grass around some small rocks  to brake it up but I think I really need to add some crew figures or some other transport to give it some scale. Im not great at paint 1/100 scale men but I think Im going to have get used to it.

[rockpopandchips]

A few small rocks are helping.....

 

[rockpopandchips]

Just a few more with two figures 1/100 gundam kits.

 

 

[Will Vale]

The figures really set the scale - it's an awesome machine.

 

4mm grass should be 400mm in 1:100, which is absolutely fine for wild grass IMO. If you add some scatter while the glue is wet (pigment powders, dried crushed earth, etc.) that'll make it look a bit shorter too. The longer grass on my 1/72 layout is 6mm I think which would work out similar to your 4mm in 1:100.

 

The Woodland Scenics ground foam scatters are very good - I'm using a lot of "fine turf" and a couple of the clump foliage things on my Tyranid dio, but I used the same products on a 1:220 railway layout and thought they were OK.

 

Good luck with it all - all the choices for ground cover can be a bit paralysing but once you start doing stuff it usually goes quite quickly.

 

Will

[rockpopandchips]

Not having dome this type of build before I guess Im just nevus about starting it and not sure what ground cover to use, so I have ordered a few more bit and pieces and once they arrive I will throw caution to the wind and go at it and hope for the best.

 

Im am trying out some gloss wood floor polish and paint mix as muddy pools and I will see how that turns out later. 

[Hunter Rose]

Wow those figures make you realise how massive it is! Looking good dude

[rockpopandchips]

Making my first ever grass tufts No fancy kit here, Im just putting a blob of pva on to the plastic lid pushing a pitch of static grass into it, then turning the lid upside dowm and giving it a good wack with a figer to release and loose grass and it allso seems to make the grass stand up. Im using the mortar mix as its very fine and it will cover any exposed pva. I really am just winging this dio build but its going ok.

 

 

Edited October 21, 2016 by rockpopandchips

[Hunter Rose]

Very natural looking tufts, like the sound of your flick technique!

[rockpopandchips]

Got a bit braver with the grass, i will leave it like this for now but not sure I've finished.

 

 

Edited October 22, 2016 by rockpopandchips

[rockpopandchips]

The painted grass needed a bit more colour shades so i did this. Not sure if its a bit much or not but it does blend better with the static grass.

 

 

 

[Dazzio]

 

  That is looking really impressive Rock!  I love the Zaku Tank (YMT-05 Hildolfr all the way tho! ).

 

  The base is looking extremely impressive.  I'm aiming to try a scenic display piece soon (maybe) and your build and Will's is really inspiring.  Mine would probably end up looking like a clump of turds tho

 

  I dont know if anyone else has noticed it or not, but those figures look really tiny compared to the Zaku, sure they are not 1/144's?  I can't figure out why but they look really small compared to what they are potrayed as in the OVA's/Animes/Mangas blah blah blah.  I'm not comparing the height to the sitting down one neither

 

  Looking forward to more.

 

  Kind Regards,

 

  Dazz

[rockpopandchips]

Thanks Dazz for the kind comments and i think you might have a piont about the figures, they are 1/100 scale but do not fit the scale of the tank when you look at the manga. I will have a look for my 1/72 pilots and see if they scale up better, if they do that would be great as i could get a few ground crew for the dio.

 

 

As for your dio just go for it get help from Will and you will be fine......

 

A quick preview shot.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Dazzio]

 

  I'm glad it's not just me who noticed that, the twin linked guns look off to me also? I'm assuming they are the main Zakus gun joined together? That's a 120mm gun but at that scale it looks likes 300-400mm? A good idea of scale would be 08th MS team as Eleanor drives the Zaku tank with the hatch open. I reckon 1/72 will look like a better fit. That last photo looks good, and I mean really really good

 

  Kind Regards,

 

  Dazz

[rockpopandchips]

These have arrived today and they are looking promising for scale and interest.

 

 

 

I won't use the full kit but the tool box and barrel are a must.

Edited November 1, 2016 by rockpopandchips

[Dazzio]

  they look better Rock. Is the round from the kit?

 

  Kind Regards,

 

  Dazz

[rockpopandchips]

Hi Dazz i think so to, they fit the scale much better and they are very nice figures as well.  The round is part of the amo belt i picked up from toaboa, sold as 1/100 scale, it fits very nicely with the galing gun thats also not part of the kit but a GK resin kit.

[Blastvader]

For ground cover at that scale you can try a couple of things;

 

For dirt you can use dried and sifted dirt from the garden, you can then mix this with some grout (powder not premix) of an appropriate shade (tan, buff, whatever) apply this through a fine sieve or a pair of your missus' old tights over a base of  watered down matte varnish or mod-podge (avoid watered down PVA, it dries semi-gloss).

 

For ground cover over the top of that, especially around trees and bushes, you can make your own scale clutter using nothing else but dried leaves, fine twigs, bark and a blender. Chuck it all in and blend like there's no tomorrow. Then sift it through a fine sieve, and either discard, grade or re-grind the larger bits. To tick this down, watered mod-podge or a matte varnish are, again, your friends.

 

Also, you can make your own ground-foam this way using a common sponge and a paint or ink of your choice. Soak the sponge in the paint, allow a couple of days to dry (or less if you have an airing cupboard or the like) and then chuck it back in the blender. You don't have to wait if you don't want to but clean up is more of a pain.

 

Here's a couple of examples of the ground foam and country/woodland ground scatter.

 

 

 

[Blastvader]

Also, I'm with Dazz on the figures. A 1/100 figure should measure roughly 18mm from the ground to eye level and a 1/72 figure should come in at around 25mm on the same metric. Are you able to measure the figures just for interest's sake. Because either they are too small or MK have  overscaled the tank a little as scaling (badly) from the drawing it is a bout 10 pilots high, which either means your pilots are only 4'6" or the tank is about as tall as a normal Zaku II at around 18m give or take instead of the 14m as it should be.