Bandai "Box Scale" Dioramas

[monsterpartyhat]

To put this together, I sawed both lower wings apart with a hobby-knife saw blade, theorizing that after taking a close hit that took out its engines, the wings were damaged enough to buckle on impact. 

 

 

 

I added a lot of soot with Tamiya weathering master before putting it back together. 

 

 

I cut off the nose cone in the same manner, and positioned them both before encasing them in hot glue to form the mass of the snow. 

 

 

 

Then I spent a long time with the Tamiya snow texture paint, getting good coverage and adding a rut dug out by the broken wing. 

 

 

 

The canopy I drilled with a pin vise, then scored with a blade. The pilot is from the Bandai HobbyBuilders Parts HD MS Figure 01 set, with limbs slightly repositioned and painted like a rebel pilot. 

 

PA016275.jpg

[Meteors]

Excellent, love the dead pilot!

[monsterpartyhat]

Continuing the assorted dioramas....I've started a couple more desert planet box dioramas. 

 

First one is Jakku-style, with part of a large starship buried in sand. I've started with the starship fragment, completely scratch built from styrene pieces and a few random bits from Bandai vehicle model kits.  

 

Cut out a triangle, then add square tubing. 

 

 

Add another identical triangle on top to close the form. Scribe some panel lines, and cut one out. 

 

 

Then I used a hobby knife to carve up the hole some more, leaving ragged and beveled edges. I filled in the space underneath with pieces of sprue for piping.  

 

 

On top of that, I added some raised panels with more pieces of thin styrene (0.010" and 0.005"), as well as some more piping with other sizes of styrene rod and some thin brass rod, and a few blast marks. 

 

 

 

 

The back side will be less visible, so I just added panel lines, leaving out the raised details and destruction. 

 

 

I primed the piece and gave it a base coat of Tamiya TS32 Haze Gray, for a nice Imperial gray color. 

 

 

That was followed by dry-brushing Vallejo Duraluminum, and creating streaking from fluid leaks with Nuln Oil. 

 

 

The final weathering pass was with the Tamiya weathering masters -- adding some soot for the blast damage, and sand and light sand for a bit of sand accumulation on the raised surfaces. 

 

 

Next up is building this into a box-size base, with drifted sand all around and a speeder zooming by....

[rockpopandchips]

Looking good!

[monsterpartyhat]

I need to add some more metallic dry-brushing - the clear coat to seal in the weathering master makes the metallic chips and accents basically look gray, making the piece look more plastic-y again. I think just a bit of light dry-brushing will help bring that heavy metal feel back. Other than that, the wreckage is finished, and I'm working on the sand base - I've shaped some drifts with foam, which is currently sitting in a sun-beam waiting for the Mod Podge to dry. 

[monsterpartyhat]

Step one on making the base - make sure the whole thing won't be taller than the vehicle model box. 

 

 

Add some foam to support the wreckage and start defining the sand drift:

 

 

Unlike the snow paste, the Tamiya sand paste doesn't really have any body to it when it dries - it conforms pretty closely to the surface it's applied to, so I added milliput epoxy putty over the foam to get a smoother surface. I will also be using some snow paste that will then get sand over it for some of the finer adjustments. 

 

 

The sand paste looks kinda gross, like a thick layer of snot, when it goes down:

 

 

After drying overnight, it looks pretty decent:

 

 

At the next step the wreckage will become permanently affixed, as I add snow paste to build up the drifting over the edge, then put sand on top of that. 

[monsterpartyhat]

One more step of progress - got the sand drifted up over the edge of the wreckage, and picked a mounting spot for the speeder. 

 

 

 

 

 

Not done yet, of course . It's still a little plain. I've got a couple of "crackle" paints from the Citadel line for painting miniatures in the mail - part of the flat sand is going to become hard baked, cracked desert (that's the plan, anyway), and I have some 3D-printed cargo to finish painting and mount on the speeder too. 

Edited December 4, 2017 by monsterpartyhat

[monsterpartyhat]

Got the crackle paint yesterday - Citadel's Agrellan Earth:

 

 

I scraped off the sand on a corner of the base, then re-primed and gave it a sandy base coat before covering it with the crackle paint. It's a weird, goopy consistency, and produces bigger cracks where you put it on thicker.

 

 

That was my first attempt - I ended up scraping it off again and re-doing it. Because what, me, practice? before going at the real thing? Psh. Whatever. Here it is after drying and cracking:

 

 

It does flake up a fair bit - I laid some flat acrylic clear-coat down on top of it to seal it, and in the process tamp the flakes down flat. 

 

 

The Agrellan Earth is a mid-brown color that doesn't match my desired desert color scheme at all, so I first painted it with lightened Deck Tan. That turned out to be too cool of a color compared to the sand, so I went over it again with Citadel's Tyrant Skull dry paint. I lost some of the definition on the smallest cracks in the process, but I don't think that was actually a loss. 

 

 

To finish it off, I pin-washed the cracks with Citadel Agrax Earthshade, and also added a few highlights with Tamiya Flat White. I recently got a new 20/0 spot brush that makes working on tiny details so much easier. 

 

 

I also added some dry-brushed Tyrant Skull highlights to the rest of the sand for some variation, and added a bit more sand to cover the border between the sand and the cracked section.

Edited December 5, 2017 by monsterpartyhat

[Corsairfoxfouruncle]

I really like the overall look of this so far and your speeder is really good looking 👍