Dust WIP

So yesterday was the 68th anniversary of D-Day, and at the same time the Swedish National celebrations. There is no historical precedence for exact this day, but Sweden has been celebrating on the 6th of june since the late 19th century.

Given an extra day off I decided to drag out my compressor and try out some airbrushed camo on the Dust Walker I bought earlier. I also managed to find my box of Vallejo Model Air panzer colours set that I hadn't used for at least two years. To my delight the colours were just in need of a good hard shake to spring to life again.

Liquid gold.

The Dust Walkers come pre-assembled and pre-primed. In theory they are ready to be painted straight away, but when I look at these pictures I do notice some mold lines and some gaps that need filling. Also I broke off the gunshields on both 88's and glued them back on since they were assembled slightly askew.

"This end towards the enemy"

I first tried a bit Dunkelgelb on one of the 88mm cannons and while the airbrush spluttered a bit I found that I could do some more intense highlighting on the inside of the panels and leave some of the grey shining through on the edges, just like real airbrush pro's do. I decided to preshade the body of the walker with dark brown, but figured the weapons didn't need it.

The 'Ludwig' configuration with twin 88mm guns taken from obsolete tiger tanks.

I masked off the markings and warning labels with some tape before spraying, I didn't dare to eyeball it and freehand around the markings. Trying to cut a piece of tape the shape of the red Pirhanas on the gun shields nearly drove me crazy so I left some grey showing round them.

The 'Luther' variant sports twin 10-barrelled nebelwerfers.

I then did a camo-pattern of broad Tank Green stripes on the body of the walker and some on the weapons. I tried to vary the pattern a bit, but as my cheap air-brush couldn't do particularly narrow stripes I had to settle on simple lines.

Showing off all the lovely rivets down the side.

Unfortunately when I did the camo I managed to remove most of the highlighting effects of the dunkelgelb. Instead I loaded up some black paint, which I was going to use to blacken the end of the barrels with anyway, and carefully shaded some of the guns and the big joints on the legs.

The 'Lothar' sports a power claw for close combat and an automatic cannon for mowing down enemy infantry.

However, the shading of the joints didn't turn out quite the way I wanted, so I refrained from using it further. I guess I have to do a good old pin wash and sponge chipping the hard way. Still, I'm quite satisfied with my work. The airbrush is a big time saver both for basecoating and doing camo patterns, as long as I remember the limitations and work within them.

The autocannon. The background text says it's a 50mm, but it looks more like a 37mm to me.

What I like about the Dust models is that they look like they could belong in World War II. For example, both the Luther and the Ludwig variants feature weaponry that existed back then. The gun shields on the Ludwig are identical to the ones found on the famous PAK40 anti-tank gun, and the autocannon looks like the 37mm flak gun in service at the time. Small details like mounting double 88's on the Ludwig to balance out the recoil (otherwise the walker would spin around by the force) give extra flavour. Even the power claw for the Lothar looks more like industrial heavy press than a high tech fighting device. According to the story most of the alien technology is still being analyzed, so while there are laser armed troops, most soldiers carry ordinary semi-automatic rifles or machine guns.

Notice some of the modl lines and gaps in the assembly.

I'm thinking of doing some red-brown camo stripes on the walker as well. While there won't be much yellow still showing I think a third camo colour would improve the look. That would also give me a chance to file away some of those mold lines and fill a few gaps, since I could paint over those areas with red brown afterwards. On the other hand it's quite good as it is, if I may say so. Of course it's not finished, but it already looks the part and wouldn't look out of place on a gamin table.