I also thought it would be a starship or something like that. Super cool walker.
Happy Modeling,
Zon
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I started another spaceship yesterday, based on a brand new V1 kit from revell in 1:35 .
Glas is from a slaughtered vintage model out of the stash, maybe a F111.
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Beautiful walker, Doug! It is really coming together very nicely!
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Build eleven more and put them in an ornithopter mother ship.
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LASER SHARK
Original color plan was United States Army desert sand with a black magazine. Looked kinda cool in black primer so ran with that. Camouflage is intended for burned out urban areas. I call the scheme Ash. May go back to Plan A.
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Leave it as is ⌠thats looks cool.
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It looks awesome just like that.
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LASER SHARK
Okay. I left SHARK camouflage as is and did some effects painting with an airbrush to dirty it up. Foot pads were made using the little rings in the middle of some part trees.
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Things went good for this, fixing the glas into the fuselage was difficult, rocket engine is ready.
I think about adding some skids as landing gear later .
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It looks killer on the second and the fourth photo!
I vote for a more yellowish pattern. It looks absolutely gorgeous but as a desert mech, it would be even better!
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Looks great, Doug. Beautiful paint scheme 
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LASER SHARK
Many hours of oil painting laterâŚLASER SHARK does not look all that different. 
Without meaning to, I ended up with an over lightened Panzer Dark Gray tank. It is boring.
Yesterday, one leg broke off. That was my fault for being too rough with the model during painting.
All that remains is a very small amount of detail painting, touching up the broken leg, adding antennas, and a final flat coat. Antennas will take a few days because I have another one of my âbright ideasâ.
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Although the colour is not flashy, it works. If you wanted to add a splash of colour, you could add a simple call sign/ unit ID on the angled sail/mag in red or black ??
But its a really cool concept and build and very well executed.
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I donât think itâs boring at all. The many subtle variations of grey make it interesting to look at overall, and your oil work really pops all the details all over it. Oils, if done well, donât make drastic changes in the appearance of a model. Itâs all about subtlety and layers. I think youâve achieved that and I say itâs an excellent looking model.
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@Johnnych01 I so wanted to put a pin up or big number on the central fin. The reason I did not is two fold.
First, the entire reason to camouflage a vehicle is to not be seen. This thing needs to hide from similar machines, and their pattern recognition algorithms will be excellent. A huge blue and white â7â on the central fin breaks camouflage. Since this is a LASER networked autonomous machine, it does not need friend or foe identification for use by humans.
Another issue is that the central fin is a clip holding 75mm ammunition. After a burst, it returns to a supply machine, loses the clip, and receives a replacement. The clip is essentially disposable.
Plan 1 was to use brown and light tan camouflage. Plan 2 was to use light tan camouflage with black stripes. Plan 3, what you see, is to cover the whole thing in neutral gray, radiation absorbing paint with a lot of tooth, so that the machine naturally takes on the color of the dust where it fights. Plan 3 is the most realistic. (As I recently learned, modern Israeli tanks use this trick.) The problem is, Plan 3 looks boring. (It looks boring on Israeli tanks, too.)
@SSGToms I agree with you that the oils did what oils are supposed to do. Airbrush work could be better but given my control abilities, it is on the better end of the spectrum.
The problem I need to solve is coming up with a color combination for these machines that looks cool but also makes sense. MADMAN was also boring.
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Hi Damraska,
Actually the model you made looks very weird and way better than what I planned to make ever. Congratulations to your skills and techniques, I can only wonder the result!
About breaking the âboringâ look I agree with others that you could consider to use colours. I do understand your argument but let me explain this: the camo shall work from a certain distance. Just look at the UKR soldiers using blue stripes on their arms - the uniform they have is similar to the Russiansâ one. And they have no problem with it.
So my idea would be to use:
- various 1/48 or 1/72 stencils for the hatches just like on the airplanes as the maintenance staff does need it
- light field green or blue stripe on the sides
- stencils on the ammo fin
- safety marking on the legs (for the maintenance crew)
- any big ID numbers or insignias in low visibility grey / white / black colour just like on US Navy planes
- some stripes on the top surface on some key hatches / access panels
- safety lights (red, orange) on the vehicle to be used in case of travel, maintenance, parking at home garage
I do agree it is your build and your imagination and a full Sci-Fi theme but I think any subject looks way more realistic if there are some âreal lifeâ details added (e.g. markings, lights etcâŚ) as seen on contemporary vehicles and weapons.
Please do not take it offensive, just some friendly suggestion to make your amazing model a bit more interesting.
Happy modelling!
Tamas
7 Likes
Tamas, this is an excellent idea. Adding low visibility stencils did occur to me. I chose not to use them because autonomous machines have no need for identification markings. However, you rightfully point out that maintenance personnel very much do benefit from service stencils. The next few generations of these machines will not have the ability to maintain themselves, therefore such stencils should be present.
It then occurred to me that no one sells generic stencils for science fiction machines. To my knowledge, the product does not exist.
This is what I will do. In order to gain a campaign completion, I will complete LASER SHARK in the current paint scheme, without markings. In the science fiction forum, I will start a project to design and publish generic stencils for science fiction machines. These will be in scalable vector format, available to everyone here on KitMaker Network. It will be a simple matter to download the files, scale them as desired, and print them on decal paper. In this way, I can make a material contribution to help model builders who frequent these forums.
Once the first sheet of stencils is ready, I can go back and update older projects with new decals.
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Search eBay or another such site for a set of the decals for the 1/72 Millennium Falcon. It came with a bunch of stencils that might be suitable and they have that âscience fictionâ look and there are a few vendors selling reproductions/extras there sometimes.
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A search for âgeneric gundam decalsâ will provide many, many options in a variety of scales and colours.
@Damraska I quite like the current look of your build. If you photographed it in itâs âoperationalâ setting the monochromatic look wouldnât be nearly as stark. When I look out our cabinâs window in the winter near sunset everything goes a sort of âgrey scaleâ (lots of snow and evergreens) and your model would fit in perfectly. Having said that, if you added some sort of ID markings or lettering it might provide a more obvious sense of scale.
Thanks for sharing your build and Iâm looking forward to your next one.
Cheers,
Colin
4 Likes