Ready for paints! (Patreon)

My friends, the build is finished and we can continue with painting! And I mean that literally, because the video is already finished as well! 😊

So as you can probably see I took your comments to heart and added some damage to the tracks (I planned to do that but laziness was starting to creep on me). I used a few historical photos of Shermans with duckbill extensions as inspiration. In some cases, a lot of these extensions were broken off and replaced with regular track connectors. Seems quite heavy to be honest, but hey, it was possible! 

I also added a few foundry marks, these come from the Archer 3D markings set. Also, the general consensus on shell impacts was why not, so I said why not? And added a few. 😁

Stowage was fun. Everything comes from a Legend resin set for the M20. I used Fury as inspiration, so most of the stuff is hanging from a rope. The rope is a regular sewing string soaked in VMS Paper Shaper. I had it at hand so I used it instead of PVA glue. The goal was to get rid of the fuzziness which is always present on natural strings. 

Tarps are also made with Paper Shaper, but instead of using the supplied VMS paper I went with regular office/printer paper. I wanted to try this, and also I think the VMS paper is quite thin for 1/35th scale. Printer paper seems bang on in terms of thickness and I'm convinced once again, paper tarps look much better than rolled epoxy putty! 

And that's probably it. I had 182 raw video files to edit, the uncut narration was 58 minutes long, the finished video is a 30 minute banger. I mean it, I'm really happy with how the video turned out 😁 And I managed to do it all yesterday. Okay, I finished at 4 AM, but it's done and the project can continue. 

I'll be finally able to take a breather today, I'll go for a ride in the afternoon. However, before the model is even primed, I'd like to make at least a very basic layout for the diorama. Mostly because I don't have any leftover tracks to make imprints in the ground, and it's really annoying to use a finished model as a stamp 😁 So who knows, maybe I'll be able to cut the basic shape of the diorama today and sculpt the road section with track imprints. Either way, I want to start painting it tomorrow. Post-shaded olive drab and black camouflage, here we come!