Vindicator #1 - Day 2

2 days of significant progress in a row.  Last night saw the completion of all the prep work.  I'll be ready to add paint as soon as I get some time to do so.  I'm coming up on the middle of my week and thanks to my night work schedule and my apartment complex's quite time rules, I wont have much time to sneak some airbrush use in.  I guess I'll see.

Supply Run
During my desk clean up phase in day 1, I discovered that I was down to the nubs on my favorite metallic paints and white primer.  I also needed a couple more colors for a black gradient I discovered I needed during my research (see below).

I tend to like getting some new supplies, but the amount of paint I've grabbed (and money I've spent) just to get this far is a perfect illustration of why there are so many gamers who aren't all that into painting their models.



Extra Detail
My time table isn't as aggressive as I'd like thanks to the aforementioned work schedule/quite time concern, so I have plenty of time to dick around with adding some extra juice to the model.  ...almost none of which will be noticeable outside of a close inspection.  Sigh.  I just can't help myself.

There are all these little indentations around the gun.  You can't
see it but they're drilled out.

I only have about two issues with the Rhino kit.  First, the front plates don't go together without a few gaps.  Second, the bottom of the tank is boring and featureless.

What if someone looks at this angle?

Look at models of real tanks:

There's at least something to break up the shapes.  Much more interesting.  And easy to replicate.

Some basic rough cuts of my shapes and some sketching of
placement on the tank itself. 

All glued on with some added detail of some 'reverse' rivets I drilled  out.

Priming
The first big step towards actual painting.  Nothing exciting here.  But I will point out that I masked off areas of contact between parts.  This will make the final assembly more sturdy.

A combination of blue-tac and masking tape

Then it's on to a lengthy priming job made all the more difficult by the weather and my lack of a decent place to spray indoors.  I'm using an old U-haul box.  The Duplicolor primer is a tool of champions as always and after multiple coats, the Vindicator is ready for paint.

plus, my gap filling came out perfect.

Note Taking and Research
The priming process took a few hours to complete owing to my lack of a good space to do it in and drying time.  In the meantime I took care of some odds and ends.

It's always a good idea to write things down.  This is the beginnings of a style guide
that will allow me to recreate whatever I'm doing now

I also do a lot of research for new projects.  Typically I at least look up new recipes and poke around the net to see what other people have done with the same model.  Tanks are a bit more involved of a process for me, so I do quite a bit more looking around.  In the case of the Vindi, I wanted to do some hazard stripes and quickly realized that my perceptions of the exact detail of the parts were a bit off.  Which is fine, because this is the exact sort of thing I do the research to avoid.

Anyway, these are the fruits of that search:

From Coal Legion Gaming

From Buypainted.com

There are also some videos.  This first one is also from Buypainted and despite the wacky accent, there's a ton of useful technique stuff in it.






And this one is just rad.




All of this is really just the tip of the iceberg.  I did a lot of digging in thinking in the week previous to this.

All right, day 2 is done.  See you tomorrow!