Cars of the Apocalypse

[Will Vale]

My weakness in the face of distractions is well known, so here are a couple of converted die-cast cars for the game "Gaslands":

 

 

This started as a weird-looking Matchbox road roller (but with wheels?) that had extra wheels cast as part of the solid chassis. No idea if it's based on anything real.

 

I added the dozer blade/ram and a mortar on the bonnet, plus some bits of styrene armour and mesh screen to the cab. There's also a set of extra tailpipes (which could be some kind of rear weapon discharger) made from smoke dischargers with the ends drilled out. Given the armament I'm going to call it "Mortar-Della". Sorry!

 

I bought a handful of other cars but made the mistake of trying to strip the paint with bleach, which I discovered reacts with zinc and causes major pitting in the surface 😕 At least the cars are cheap and the one that I really left in a state of disrepair can be a wreck instead. I've switched to leaving them in a jar of lacquer thinner (hardware shop stuff, hotter than Tamiya) for 24 hours and then scrubbing with a scouring pad. While wearing nitrile gloves, obviously.

 

This one ("Laser Raptor", thanks Kung Fury) started as a Hotwheels 50th Anniversary corvette of some description, with a matte-ish paint finish that stripped quite easily.

 

 

I added a laser weapon from a mix of Games Workshop Skitarii and Tau spares and a tank part. Someone on the Gaslands FB group suggested moving the laser from the bonnet to the roll bar, and that did indeed look better:

 

 

I also replaced the thick guitar string with one I wound from brass wire and beading wire, which looks worse unpainted but should be fine when touched up.

 

Now to hope that my primer sticks - the roller/digger mudguards are made from very slippery plastic that superglue wouldn't stick to. To the point where I scraped the glue away and attached the hydraulic rams with metal pins.

 

Note to Sgt. Squarehead: The rams and cabling mean this is part of Spicer Harvest research and development and is therefore officially sanctioned

 

Cheers,

 

Will 

[Silver Fox]

Nice creative work, it is a good game as well. I've played it with unconverted cars scrounged from the kids so will have to follow your lead in doing some conversions.

[Will Vale]

Glad to know it's a good game, I did pick up the rulebook so I think my builds are game-legal, but I haven't played yet. It sounds like it might take a while? There's a lot of verbiage in the movement but it seems clever - especially the way the skid template works.

 

I have put some paint on both cars but the pic of the Corvette was out of focus, so here's Mortar-Della:

 

 

I primed everything with three of four thin coats of Alclad Black and dried it with a heat gun, then mottled some Tamiya lacquer Lino Brown and Hull Red for a rust base. After that I gave it a coat of hairspray and sprayed thinned Field Grey mixed with Yellow Green for highlights.

Shortly after the paint was dry I moistened it with water and chipped away using a stiff brush and occasionally a cocktail stick to start scratches off. You can get nice effects with different brush movements - stabbing, scraping, twisting etc. but it's easy to go too far. Or at least it would be if this were in any way realistic.

 

Thankfully the paint seems to have taken to the slick plastic fairly well, it passed the scrape test on the inside at least. It did reveal some hairy edges where I'd sanded the front mudguards but I think I've cleaned them up.

 

Cheers,

 

Will

[Will Vale]

Did a bit more on the other one, which was a slightly uninspiring faded burgundy but has perked up very well with the addition of a stripe and some black details:

 

 

It's similar to Mortar-Della, but with a Hull Red/Flat Red topcoat and highlights mixed from the base colour and Flat Flesh. After it was dry I dry-brushed with a little Citadel Blood Red to enrich the colour a bit.

 

Weapon stuff and plastic areas are brush-painted with Citadel Acrylics, and the  vents and shut lines have been filled with Agrax Earthshade, or in some cases reinforced with a lining mix of that and black where they were too indistinct.

 

I've given the whole thing a couple of coats of Tamiya LP flat varnish, which isn't what I'd call flat, but is nice and robust  It's probably going to chip still as I used a regular primer rather than an etch primer, must pick some up when I remember.

 

Cheers,

 

Will

[Will Vale]

 

Various things done to age and tweak the paint: I sponged chips onto the black bits with Mechanicus Standard Grey and added a few streaks with a brush. Then dry-brushed with Administratum Grey and washed with Nuln Oil to tone it down again. I mixed tiny quantities of Red Madder and Cadmium Red oils and blended that over the upper outer portions of the bodywork to enrich the colour. I also blended a little Raw Umber and a Raw Umber/Titanium White mix onto the lower body sides and inside the arches as road dirt.

 

The wheels have had their centres painted black and the rims touched in with a Molotow chrome pen. I dry-brushed the tyre tread with Administratum Grey and then washed the entire tyre with a mix of Zandri Dust and Nuln Oil, rolling it off onto paper to clean the tread surfaces. Finally I dry-brushed Zandri Dust onto the outer corners of the tread blocks.

 

The weapons have also been gussied up a little, with a wash of Athonian Camoshade and edge highlights of Ogryn Camo. Lastly I painted the interior using Screaming Skull and Zandri Dust for the leather, and Khorne Red/Mephiston Red for the belts. I washed the seats with Agrax and the rest of the space with Nuln Oil and then dry-brushed a little Mechanicus Grey and Adminstratum Grey around.

 

 

Hopefully painting some spokes onto the wheel will make it look less like a burned potato cake! The real '69 Corvette wheel (I think this is a '69 Corvette, or at least related to it?) usually has a narrow black rim but I need the black to hide the solid middle, so this is upholstered in matching leather to the seats. The tales we tell ourselves...

 

Will

[Pete in Lincs]

Nice work, Will.

Very different, but a change is as good as a rest, eh?

[Will Vale]

5 hours ago, Pete in Lincs said:

Very different, but a change is as good as a rest, eh?

Yeah, sometimes it really is.  The dreadnought has been quite a long process (which I thought would be quick) whereas these are now done  I think it helps that they're die-cast, as the shapes and fit are so rough that I didn't feel compelled to do anything too careful with them.

 

The dozer was sealed with lacquer varmish before adding a mix of oil and acrylic weathering and heat-drying the oil.

 

The blade was a bit of an experiment - I knew I wanted a shiny-ish scoured region, so I started with the Molotow chrome but it went on too thick and I ended up wiping most of it off with lacquer thinner. That gave me a sort of dirty black metal base, over which I painted a thin coat of Boltgun Metal, keeping the brush strokes vertical. Once that was dry I just sponged it with a lot of different brown and orange acrylics on the same sponge.

 

I needed to add some earth because the fillet at the bottom of the blade was made by flooding the square corner with thin CA and leaving it to dry. That gave a decent result along the bottom but obviously created curved internal corners as well, to be hidden by earth. If this was a display model I'd probably have mixed something from pigments, but instead I used nice robust Tamiya earth paste, painted with acrylics. It's not quite solid enough but it does the job.
 

The wheels are GW Averland Sunset and Yriel Yellow, and could maybe do with something to tone them down. Tyres are similar to the other car but I forgot the last step and need to dry-brush some Zandri dust onto the raised tread.

 

On the Corvette, I mainly had to paint in the metal bits, using a mix of GW metals and Vallejo Liquid Metal Copper for the laser fins.


 

I added another two coats of lacquer varnish after heat-drying the oils, and then some Alclad Flat on the non-bodywork areas and lower body sides. 

Lights are GW Mithril Silver with a coat of Tamiya X-22 or Clear Red, although the rears could do with a touch up. And I dipped the windscreen in Klear to improve the clarity.

 

I'll put some pics in RFI in due course, then get on with whatever I should be doing instead

 

Cheers,

 

Will

[Andy Moore]

They've really turned out great Will. I really like the contrast between the green hardware and the red bodywork on the Corvette, and that dozer blade looks spectacular.

 

Andy

[rockpopandchips]

They look great the bucket on he dozer is spectacular, really nice.  

[Pete in Lincs]

You have a fabulous blade, Sir!

They both look great but I love the weathering on that dozer blade.

[Will Vale]

Thanks all, the blade was a stroke of luck really. I mean I had an idea of what I wanted to achieve, but didn't expect that five minutes with a sponge would do it.

That's the nice thing about these really, they were very organic to build and paint.

 

I've put some more pics in RFI here:

 

 

 

Cheers!

 

Will

[Will Vale]

Busy with ghosts at the moment, but I scrubbed some paint off a couple of castings at the weekend:

 

 

This one's from Hot Wheels and has quite a bit of plastic to go with it including a big spoiler. I need to file down a few mould lines but it's otherwise cleaner than it probably looks - naked Mazak isn't that pretty.

 

 

The other two are from Matchbox (yay!) and I've noticed their paint is a lot more work to get off. Especially when coupled with the higher level of detail. The 6W truck probably isn't going to get used for Gaslands, I think It would suit a re-scale and some dressing to make It into a Judge Dredd-style Roadliner. There's a little cupboard door behind the cab that could be used to establish human scale and make it massive, especially with a wee etched ladder underneath.

 

The 4W truck would be ideal as a rocket truck in the same green and yellow as Mortar-Della though

 

Cheers,

 

Will

 

 

[Sgt.Squarehead]

On 10/2/2018 at 9:10 AM, Will Vale said:

The 6W truck probably isn't going to get used for Gaslands, I think It would suit a re-scale and some dressing to make It into a Judge Dredd-style Roadliner. There's a little cupboard door behind the cab that could be used to establish human scale and make it massive, especially with a wee etched ladder underneath.

 

Do it!