Sunday 2 February 2014

Tamiya 1/35 Challenger 2

Hello All and all hello ...

Well, as if I haven't been posting too much finished stuffs lately, here comes yet another from me ( and I'm sorry to spam you again ).

To be honest, I finished this since early December but this baby was meant to enter the stupid HLJ 2013 plamo contest and they have this one stupid rule that we cannot let anyone see nor post anything about our entry on any social network so I couldn't blog the wip nor the finished model until the end of the official date. The contest ended since Jan 31 so I guess I can start posting this now ( screw it, even if I can't, I'm posting this .. don't wanna wait any more.. stupid rule )

Anyway, we have here one of the best ( if not the best ) MBT in the world and the kit is no less then Tamiya. I have build both Tamiya and Trumpeter kits for this version and I have to admit, the Tamiya version is really something else. Solid build, clear part, crisply moulded and full of details albeit without the anti slip texture. I couldn't decide if I should put on the anti-slip or not and after doing much research, I noticed that the anti-slip texture on the Challey is not that rough and I didn't want to risk doing over-scaled texture on my model so I opted out of doing it ( I was even going to buy a Citadel texture spray can for this ).

As every one know, the colour of the Challey2 is something that is very hard to describe and narrow down ( akin to the IDF armour colour) so I really had no idea how to go about painting it at first. I finally decide to play with high light and shadow since this is a monotone vehicle so I used Desert Yellow, Dark Yellow and Buff and mix them up accordingly to play around with the shade.

When looking around on the internet for references, I came about this quite popular photo -

and I was inspired to put my Challey in a situation like this. Just like this photo, I wanted to show my Challey as a very used up and banged up fighting on the harsh desert and one side of the turret more scratched up due to the intense battles.

The streakings are done by oil - yellow orche and serpia yellow. I have a hard time streaking with brush so all I did was draw a very very tiny line and rub it down with my fingers. I gave it a first wash of Flory Models sand wash for the collected sands and MIG production neutral wash for the grimy look. MIG Production Beach sand was mixed with a dark toner of yellow pastel that I have in my tools to tone down the bright beach looking sand.

It's time for the photos - 
(If you think some are small, just click on them ) 





Close ups of the wheels -








The two Crew members -

Some shots of the Spilled fuel I put on -



The optics -


And as usual, my show case photos from various angles-











And as usual from me -

Well, that's about as much I can sum up about the build. 
As much as I really love how this came out, I am very unhappy of my impatience (I guess my impatience is my bane ) that leads to some of the badly done chips as evident from the photo ( not that bad far away but really bad close up). I am seriously pissed off at myself to realizing too late that I should have give the figures a wash to bring out the myriad of details on the uniforms. Another late realization is that I painted the little sight on top of the barrel all too wrong. I do love the streakings though.

Thank you guys for always supporting me. Thank you dear readers for your patronage as well.

Until Next time

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