08.13.08 » Source, Concepts & Initial Building

This is the Taco-34 Beetle from the Junk Tank Rock series of GKs out of Japan. I've been a fan of the JTR designs for a while now and already built their monocycle design. Unfortunately, the JTR guys won't sell their kits outside of Japan so unless I want to pay far more than the kit is worth, I'm unfortunately left with recasts. Now this isn't a bad recast mind you, in fact it's as good as some originals I've bought, but it's still a recast and that in essence sucks since it takes $$$ away from the original sculptors. I think if they DID sell outside of Japan then the need for recasts of this in order to build this wonderful design wouldn't exist, but whatever... that's a whole other story.

Like I said, this is a nicely done little kit. It has a few flaws, mostly where parts are to be welded, but these are easily fixed with a little Aves Apoxie Sculpt. Let's start with building the kit then move on to the base.

08.13.08 » Mmmmm... Tacos

First up is fixing a few issues with the body. There's twp parts that need to be affixed to the body within set spots marked out by weld seams. This is generally a neat idea, but seldom do the seams line up with the parts. Not sure if that's a matter of the recast or of the original is like that too. This is easily fixed by removing the original weld lines, super-gluing the parts into place, then rolling out strings of epoxie putty. Mold the strings around the part seam and use a dental tool or other sharp object to make the weld lines before the putty cures.

Here you can see the original poor fit. Plus I removed the kit's couplink for a hose and replaced it with some spring.

Green-coated floral wire was used to create some grab-handles.

Next-up is a gun for the kit. Another version of the beetle comes with some side mounted rocket launchers. This isn't that version. I wanted a gun AND a way to show off MechaSkunk.com's new machined aluminum bazooka shells so I went with a long recoilless cannon. This was made from various bits from a few tank kits and styrene shapes.

The gun mount snaps right into the hard-point on the side of the body so there's no need for me to glue. The shells will be shown in a box next to the kit.

Once all of the small clean-up and modifications were done I added some surface texture by stippling Mr. Surfacer 500 onto the kit with a hard brush. Do this randomly then smooth out when cured with some fine steel wool to remove the peaks. Below you can see the peaks.

Next up I primed everything with Duplicolor Self-Etching primer. This adheres to the resin quite nicely and is a nice shade of military green. At this point I also drilled out the original eye from the front of the body and will be replacing it with a 1/4" styrene sphere I got from mechaskunk.com. Next up will be painting the metal parts with Alclad II and then the rust/chip coat. I'm doing the hairspray method on this like I did on my Zeon Jeep.

08.13.08 » Rubble Rubble

For the base I decided on creating the rubble of a destroyed building. In this building I wanted plenty of stone and concrete debris, but also some corrugated steel sheet, wires, wood, steel supports, and other miscellaneous bits from the spares bin like a tire and some fuel tanks to make it interesting. On top of all this the Beetle will be hiding out waiting to fire it's cannon on some unsuspecting targets.

First up is the corrugated steel sheet. I read a tutorial on creating this material using ribbed styrene sheet and paper. First I wet the paper (copy paper) and placed it onto a piece of the styrene. Then I took a matching piece of the styrene and pressed it down stamping the shape of the styrene into the paper. I lifted up one of the styrene sheets and brushed the paper with white glue. When dry you get a nice sheet what holds its texture. A few coats of primer and it's ready to be mangled, painted and glued into place.

I'm also adding some various scraps of wood. These are test pieces I made and used while constructing the lighthouse standoff diorama. I made the shipping pallet from the same 1/32" thick plywood that I used to make the rowboat.

Once I had some of my debris painted I began attaching them to the bottom of a finished wooden box I'm using as a base. I'm using a few of the steel sheets to widen the groundwork a bit to ensure the Beetles fit. I also added some more plywood and some thin plaster chunks which I made by pouring some plaster onto some waxpaper. The plaster was broken-up, then tinted with acrylics and india ink. Some pieces were painted with a sage green to simulate paint formerly inside of the building on the walls.

To continue building up my debris I next added larger chunks of tinted plaster. To make these I poured some plaster into my larger rock-molds, let it cure, then wrapped it in paper and whacked it with a hammer. These are used as the foundation in order to build-up the height of the debris.

Inbetween the large chunks I added more thin pieces of painted plaster and my misc. model bits like a fuel drum, cables, and tanks. These were applied with white glue.

For the fine grit cementing it all together, I made a mixture of fine gray talus, medium buff talus, small plaster chunks (some tinted in paint and brick colors) and sifted yard dirt.

This mixture was placed into a large PVC end-cap which I use for mixing and grinding materials and ground-up with the blunt end of a screwdriver handle.

The result is a finer mix of debris ranging from original-sized pieces down to dust.

First spoon smaller chunks of plaster into larger crevasses. Now spoon small amounts of this fine grit over your debris and push it around with a soft brush up against parts and into gaps. To seal/cement it all together, first mist it with water from a mister bottle. This wets the grit slightly so that the next step is easier. Now take prepared matte medium (matte medium thinned with water) and using an eyedropper liberally apply it to the grit. The water will let this soak right in, otherwise the droplets of PMM will create clumped balls of glued grit. You may need to apply, repeat, apply again, etc to build this up. Once dry, the grit is nicely cemented into place without fear of it dumping or blowing about. Next up for the base is applying rusty and dusty pigments.

08.13.08 » Stretch it out!

So this Beetle, while cool in appearance, HAS to be a pain in the neck to pilot. Literally. So instead of using the kit-supplied figure, I cut apart a few soldiers from various figure sets and made a new figure stretching out with a kink in his neck. Here's the pics so far.

08.15.08 » Painting and Weathering Part 1

Next up is painting the various parts. First up is the "eye" part. I had drilled out the old eye and replaced it with a styrene sphere I got from MechaSkunk.com. I drilled a hole in order to attach it to a skewer then I dipped it in my bottle of Future. That makes it fairly clear as opposed to the frosted look is has initially. Next I dipped it in clear red, the again in FFA. The result is a ruby colored sphere which looks darker than what's pictured here.

For the body I first painted it in Neutral gray then applied random sprayings of rust and a black-brown color. Following that was a coat of gloss FFA and when cured a few layers of hairspray.

When the hairspray dried I sprayed on the camo colors. I decided to go with a blue camo. I have too much green, gray and tan on my shelf so having a blue tank will give it some variety. I used yellow-orange to highlight the tops of the leg and front armor. The blue is a mixture of Tamiya Medium Blue, Flat Blue and White. More white was added for the lighter color.

Next I used a wet brush to loosen the hairspray and remove the blue paint to create the paint chips. Afterwards a few gloss coats of Future were sprayed on in preparation for the decals. Decals were applied when that cured. The numbers are from a Corsair kit, the dice from a SAFS, and the maintenance marks are from a set I got from MechaSkunk. Very nice decals and set very well!

After the decals a satin coat of FFA was sprayed on. Then when cured I applied "The Filter" from Sin Industries (aka Mig Productions). The filter I used was Blue for Panzer Gray and came in the German Filters set. It dries to a very nice satin sheen.

After the filter dried for a few hours I applied my discoloration via oil paints. This time I used some new oils in my toolbox, 502 Abteilung also from Mig Productions. These oils are fantastic and blended very smooth without any grainy artifacts left over after drying. They come in a bunch of great colors for modelers. For this kit I used Industrial Earth, Snow White, Faded Navy Blue, and Light Rust Brown. Next up is a few washes also using these oils. I'm also using them to paint my figure and am having fantastic results with them versus my cheapie Winton oils from Michael's.

08.17.08 » Painting and Weathering Part 2

After the discoloration dried I applied a wash using light and dark mud oil paint colors from Mig's 502 Abteilung line. First I made a wash using the dark mud, then when that was applied and dried I added one with the light mud. These washes give it a slightly dirty appearance.

After that dried I assembled the legs so that the taco would stand nicely on the base. Once that was completed I began rusting portions of the walker, specifically the lower leg armor. They had almost all of their blue paint removed in the hairspray chipping phase. During the discoloration phase I added a little more rust-colored 502 Abteilung colors to those parts. And now I applied four different rust pigments dry with a round semi-stiff brush. First I applied Old Rust and Rail Rust which are nice darker rust tones. Then I randomly applied Standard Rust and Light Rust as a highlight color. This was also done to all the rusty portions of the base as you'll see shortly. A little rust was also applied to larger chipped areas.

Lastly before final images is a shot of the completed Beetle. A light mud mixture of Mig pigments, acrylic gel matte medium, plaster of paris, water, and sand was added to the lower parts of the legs. Afterwards a thinner darker mud mixture was added over that in spots to add variation in the tones as would be seen in real mud. After some additional dusting with pigments colors such as Industrial City Dirt, Dry Mud and Rubble Dust, a thin wash of a few drops of Future, water and dark pigments was added around joints and around hatches as fuel spill and wet greasy stains. Grimy Black and Black Smoke pigments were also applied in some of these maintenance, and exhaust areas. Black Smoke was applied to the smoke dischargers, exhaust, and gun barrels. The large cannon was rubbed down with Gunmetal pigment to give a worn metallic look. This was also applied to some of the parts of the Beetle where frequent friction would rub the rust away.

And last but not least is the completed base. For all rusted portions, I applied four different rust pigments dry with a round semi-stiff brush. First I applied Old Rust and Rail Rust which are nice darker rust tones. Then I randomly applied Standard Rust and Light Rust as a highlight color. Additional dusting was applied to everything using pigments colors such as Industrial City Dirt, Dry Mud, Russian Earth and Rubble Dust.

Not pictured is the final figure as he's still being painted and a calico cat.