wagoneer

Hello all, I love to draw using Adobe Illustrator, mostly my job entails boring graphic design so occasionally I stretch myself and produce something like this: Drawn over a photograph of the real car with a bit of artistic licence thrown in. Oh, and this one too:

Definitely looks like a 3D model to me, but I like it all the same. Now, who's going to build one?

I'm looking for ideas for a T build at the moment and after a good googling found some reference pictures of a real tracked T. It seems that the T was turned into just about everything! Good luck with your build, daughters can be very demanding can't they!

My goodness that's intricate. Fantastic work there, you are a true craftsman.

There was some Youtube footage of a European truck pushing a small Renault Clio sideways down a motorway (freeway) without the driver noticing! Fortunately the lady driver was unhurt. The driver claimed not to have noticed anything. Anyway, nice model you got there. Looking forward to seeing it progress.

Bill, I'm really enjoying watching your build. You've inspired me to have a go at doors and hinges too so I picked up some K&S brass from my local model shop (they specialise in flying aircraft but do have some cool stuff too!) so I can have a go. My reworking of a Olds 442 is stretching my ability already, now I've got to try some Geary Greatness to push it even further. Kelly

Really nice colour there, a great deep shine too. From your pictures it looks like you're painting outside, is the cold not making it difficult?

Oh yes, liking that one. Good colour combination and great finish.

Nice proportions going on there. Those wheels must be HUGE in 1:1 scale, they look nearly as tall as my car. I don't know much about US pick-ups, but that looks factory after the mods you've done. Cool work.

Congratulations on your well deserved award. Yours is the sort of scratchbuild that has drawn me back to modelling after a few years feeling like I couldn't make anything worthwhile. Now I'm back into it, fearless and surrounded by offcuts of Evergreen! Thanks for the inspiration.

I'm in England which is apparently part of Europe, although we don't consider it so......but I'll look out for that at my nearest store and see what they really have. Fortunately I also have access to cad modelling at work with a friendly colleague who likes model making, best I do him some favours so he can return them soon!

Thanks for the welcome Hemi, Yes, they do get bigger, was just hoping to get them larger in line rather than having to click. I'm sure I'll work it out. The builds on here are very inspirational and I've already learned a lot, like the bleach strips chrome idea, so much better than brake fluid.

More progress. I'm a bit slow at this so no sleeping at the back! I decided that the arches looked odd. There's a recess in the factory arch that didn't look too smooth to me so I set about filling out the arch to make it look smoother whilst also blending the front and rear bumpers and taking all the trim off. Here you can see me running a strip of thin plastic card through my fingers to put a pre-curl into it so that it fits the curve of the arch. Here's the first of four curves. ...and stuck in place. I repeated this with the other 3 curves (but I didn't take any fuzzy pictures of that). You can also see a bit of Squadron Green putty filling the gap between the flared arch and my curve. With a bit of filling, sanding and more filling, it's starting to look better. The plastic card gave me a good edge to work to along with the original flare so with some gentle sanding I was able to get where I wanted to go. More to come. Next step, figure out how to make my pictures bigger in the post!

So, first actual model post for me after lurking around for a bit. There's some great inspiration on this forum and I hope I've not started something I can't finish due to inability and sausage fingers. There's no real plan here other than to refresh this kit that I build roughly 15 years ago. A marriage, two children and a house renovation have kept me away from this hobby a while....but I'm back to it. One thing I've discovered is that the parts seem to be much smaller these days..... I started with the idea of just a repaint but got carried away. Looking at the wheel arches, there was a fiddly detail that never sat well with me so I set about sorting it out.

Benoit, You're English is rather good. Certainly much better than my French, 'je parle un petit peu de Francais' is about my limit!

Oh yes. A whole load of want there. Those transfers must have been fun. Even Cartograph quality still takes some effort around those curves. I had the road going 131 SuperMirafiori in the 80s (a real one!) and it was a superb car, just prone to rust after just a few years.

Can you get a decend square on picture of the side of the car? If so, post it up here and let us have a go at doing some artwork for you! I recently did a London Taxi for a German friend, he wanted advertising of the products my company sells so I made decals that covered each section of the body sides fitting really close to the edges of each panel. Unfortunately I haven't any pictures to illustrate what I mean, but believe me, it looked OK.

Nice idea! I'm wondering if BMF or similar could be used to conduct the power to the led's, a bit like a printed circuit board I suppose. That way, power could run down the C posts into the boot (trunk) or wherever you intend to put the batteries.

Yikes! What an inspiring build Shawn. Your visualising skills, seeing a 3d item then breaking it down so you can make it from sheet styrene are absolutely amazing. It's almost as if you started with a real car and are just showing us pictures from a strip down. Patience is the greatest lesson here I think. Top work.

I've just joined this forum, and your jolly interesting build is one of the first I've looked through. YOU'RE NUTS! But it's brilliant all the same. The material on the door cards looks better than flocking in my opinion and I'll try that some time. If a '49 Merc ever cruised through the dark streets of a Cornish town close to midnight, I think it might just look like this. Utterly brilliant!