WIP [finished] Rolling Thunder

[jjgurk]

This is excellent stuff.
John

 

[Meehan34]

starting to come together.

 

[Jenseits]

Thanks Carl! Thanks John! Thanks Mike!

Indeed the plane now falls together, actually it is fallen over a great height and indeed I am to the point where everybody can see that i ended up building something that would have been impossible to create if I had buy the Trumpeteer F-105 kit, or bought the Expensive Aires detail set. I mean, the plane really needed to look like it was *completely* broken, so all the panels had to be created separately etc..

Okay that’s it, the plane is mostly completed.
I have been super detailing all the bays, added some wires (lead string mostly), some parts of my PE fret were especially designed to create some of the inside of the bays. I have been adding a bit of the radar hanging too. I also sort of detailed the cockpit. I have been buying some instruments decals from Mike Grant Decals tyo make for a few details, but I think that in the end, some ground cover or some rice fern will be hiding a bit of the cockpit.
Now I have a problem with super detailing. I know most modellers are keen to detail their models to death (including some invisible parts) but so am I not, as I think that everything that can distract from the main idea is bad for the whole diorama. Yet I didn’t have any choice here. I took the risk that the people say “look at his crap radome, where did he find some reference to end up with such shit”, instead of noticing the real nice lightning effects or the broken pilot.

 

[Meehan34]

I'm with you on the detail thing. If someone notices a bad detail that is all they fixate on and miss the story being told. Looking really cool so far.

 

[Jenseits]

Thank you Mike. Actually I will try to use the colour (or their lack) to dilute the details and to create the true hotspots i want

Sorry for not posting yesterday, i am currently fighting a cold that transforms my mind into mashed potatoes.

Anyway here we are with the fig this time
first a Magic Sculp silhouette with some piano string inside to strengthen it. the work is quite crude at this stage..

yet you may notice the nice coat of primer on the F-105 as well as the fact that the body is pressed against the fuselage for the exact shape.

On the following day i proceeded to sculpt the lower body and the abdomen. Apparently the flight clothes were one piece and quite baggy.. Actually i had some trouble to find valuable reference for a pilot's uniform.

so that was the first try, the body was too "high" so I had to cut it quite a bit. I inserted some Hornet hands, because I don't want to spend valuable time sculpting something somebdoy can do better than me -but note I will definitely sculpt the face &s i don't want to have some Roger Saunders grins and neck problems on my dioramas

:-H

 

[Jenseits]

Ah well, the pilot is not that busted in the end.. here is the face as glued, as well as some torn clothes done of Green Stuff. His right shoulder is dangling precariously though.
The fig still hasn't any ears or pockets or hair, but that will be for tonight.
I am afraid he looks more Russian than American though.. I may have to sand him a bit in places indeed..

 

[Jamie Stokes]

Very good, making a smashed aircraft like that.

Dont worry about the people who say (wrong radar) or similar.

Until they park a scratch built effort next to yours, 100% accurate, they haven't earned the right to say that.

As for the face, well it's hard to say if is his Russian or American or whatever. He does look smashed though.

If you want to, maybe research American hairstyles of the 1960s. Rather then a straight military cut, perhaps a bit of styling to his hair will help. Nothing helps convey an era then hairstyles (especially for women - just check 1940's hair styles to today!)

Just out of curiosuty, how does the pilot get to laying down on the fuselage?

As for the fuselage, great build up, detail work is excellent, and the building of the pilot is very good.

I also admire the way how you are ready to look at your sculpt, and are willing to rework a part if needed, or say "enough" of no more is needed.

well done,

and thanks for sharing!

Cheers

 

[Jenseits]

Thanks for your great input Jamie,
i agree with you about hairstyles, but then it seems that Ameriacn pilots during the 60's didn't wear anything fancy, just some basic short hair

Well about the pilot lying where he does, I have been wondering too -honest, the idea comes from a real archive pic which I posted on my own website here
My take is that he was still in the cockpit when the plane came down, and the north Vietnamese dragged him out for the picture as gruesome as it sounds.
thanks for your great compliments -of course in am ready to redo everything over and over until I feel satisfied, i mean this is not a race, better spend one year on soemthing worth than the opposite, and I like to be surrounded by things i can be reasonably proud of, so yes, i redo the stuff again and again


So now one of those bllloody moments, when I finish a work, take pics and realize they are all blurred. And now the fig was undercoated which means I can't show anything better.
Well here is the fig as it appears now, with some Green stuff details here and there like zis for clothes -and ears and hair too

 

[Ferris]

Hi Nicolas,

Still an impressive piece of work.
You and JBA seem to start a 'French School' with your dioramas.
I fully agree with you: better to finish a few things of which you are proud, than aim for building and painting the whole stash (if that will ever be possible...;-)

A gruesome scene indeed, but well, not all soldiers were happy and smiling all the time. Some actually died.
When I look at the original picture on your site I notice (yes, I actually took a rather technical look at it) that the pilot has some really squashed bones; his right arm lies in a continuous bend, and his right leg also makes a strange edge way above the ankle. Fits with the right side of the cockpit hitting the ground first I would say.
Anyway, it's up to you to decide to depict this or not....a difficult decision maybe, as now already people might ask 'why depict something gruesome like this'? (I'm not asking by the way) And if you DO sculpt the gory bits you might get figure people pointing out you really mis-sculpted the arm and leg.... ;-)

Long story short: impressive piece of modelling in several respects!

Cheers,
Adrian

 

[housecarl]

Nicholas you take as long as you like, I'm sure it will worth the wait.
Carl.

 

[Jenseits]

Thanks Adrian, yeah they should publish some book like you know "the gallic edge" aha!!
To be honest I would be perfectly happy to be a sort of Joseph Neumyer you know, an artistic director who lets a horde of Gremlins do the job at his place, I don't lack in ideas
Thanks for your thoughts on the pilot too, I must say I didn't looked as close as you did. i won't be showing much bones and stuff as you can see (it's not a Romero movie), but I hope the colours I will use will add to the dark shade of the diorama.
Not a difficult decision at all, a personal one. As weird as it sounds this diorama will probably never move from my home, and i model for my ownself, now if other people like it well that's great, but I also know that if in the end the diorama looks great I should avoid most Flak.
The point is that i want to do something dark, beautiful and slightly disgusting. The diorama should be finished in some 2 weeks and I still have a few rabbits in my hat, I hope I see you there and you can say me "job done"


Thank you Carl as usual

Something i am not ashamed of: using some broom hair for my small rice-field.
but then not any ole brrom!!
Nope I need a broom whose tip is actually *pointy*, not *square*, that's VERY important.

then, I use some string and make a knot over a few hair. I cut the hair and set the bottom of it in CA glue

Then I built a sort of plastic box that will hold everything, especially the rice field's water..

left is the plastic, right is the original plan i made for the diorama. You may notice the 17 or so rice plants.

 

[Jenseits]

Now some boring work: underpainting the exposed aircraft machineries and then masking them with tape.
Unforutunately I have been sitting on my airbrush's needle (how dumb can you be) And am waiting for a replacement one to come to resume the painting of the F-105.

How come the rice plants could hold straight on the base? that's right let's dig some holes with a screwdriver..

 

[Meehan34]

I can really see how this is shaping up. I gotta say to scratch build something like this is just amazing to me. I really like the effort you put forth to create the authentic scene that you are building.

 

[Jamie Stokes]

Nicholas,
good work, and glad to see the photo that inspired your work.

Yep, he is in context as a trophy.

Dragged out and plonked onto what is left of his plane.

so well done, and artistic licence accepted with this.

War is not always about posing in your best uniform with medals.

groundwork - looking good, has the visual look of a rice paddy.

Very good work, I like what you are striving for. And appluad your efforts.

Cheers

Jamie

 

[Jenseits]

thank you Mike always appreciated

Thanks too Jamie. I know I don't say that in the right place but as a rule i don't like shiny uniforms for my diorama, they always distract from the scene or what's going on. Really, for my dioramas to work, the guys must appear to pop up their environnement. Here the olive drab of the Fly clothes will be perfect.

Here is the plastic box built around the plastic base. there are some borders on the *underside* too because i will have to "tune" the ricefield.
As you can see, all are fixed using a small Magic Sculp lump.

that's it, If i want all the little plants to be roughly of the same height, I have to press out the plants more or less through the holes I carved.
In the end I have this.. think that 3 to 5 mm of the plants should be underwater which should end up having those small rice plants popping out of the water..

 

[Jenseits]

So i just ended up painting the pilot. Oil over acrylics as a base coat. The uniform is a sort of Olive drab colour and I have been actually mixing some *blue* and some *yellow* to get the right shade! That’s right I don’t have any olive drab paint at home. I hate that colour (I had to wear it myself sadly) but hey it has some advantage that it should really blend well in the landscape.
It’s not very obvious to paint a realistic dead man, so I have been reducing reds to a max, and used a mix of blue and red and black at the places where bruises should be (wrist, under the neck etc. I have been using some transparent brown on the places where the clothes are torn.
My pics are rather poor because the wet oils are doing some reflects but I hope you catch the work being done.
Ah.. important precision: the guy is painted in clearer and shinier shades on his *left* and you soon will see why

 

[housecarl]

He doesn't look alive anyway Nicolas, I think that he's convincingly dead.
Carl.

 

[Ferris]

Creepy....those eyes....
Quite deadish indeed.

Adrian

 

[Jenseits]

thanks Carl, you know I got some critics with my previous dioprama Tsushima 2 because the guys in the water looked too alive!

Well Adrian he sure looks a bit off colour, but with a good doze of matt varnish he should do And then maybe the sun will ligt up his face at some point


Thanks to my friend Alex for lending me his Mig airbrush while my G-35 was out of service. I painted the various plates individually, using some paints from the mr Super metallic range for the light metallic tones and some Mr Color dark iron for the shadows.
I used masking tape etc. The last airbrush stroke was of light gold in some places so that it would look like the sun is not too far away..
Now of course I will have to weather this as well as paint each and every trapdoor..

And finally a small preview with the yet unpainted pilot

 

[Ferris]

It's still exciting to follow Nicolas.

Cheers,
Adrian