Wednesday, September 29, 2010

PANZERWORKS - now also in Portuguese! Agora tambem em portugues!

Due to the increasing number of  Brazilian followers and people accessing my page, the blog will from now on feature complete bi-lingual content!
Devido ao número cada vez maior de seguidores e visitantes brasileiros acessando minha página, o blog terá a partir de agora, conteúdo bilingue completo! 

Thursday, September 23, 2010

The Moche decapitator god

This is one of my horror characters (yes, I have quite a few...). I sculpted it some 7 years ago while I still lived in Sao Paulo and somehow, I never got to paint it until I sold all my figures to my friend Fernando Paz, in Belo Horizonte for some hard cash. A good reason to finish them...
This thing portrays "Ai-Apaec", the decapitator deity of the Peruvian Moche culture. Not much is known about this civilization, except that they were pretty naughty & perverted and ABSO-FUCKING-LUTELY  LOVED to decapitate and skin their sacrificial victims, drinking their blood and de-fleshing their corpses afterwards. All this, in tribute to Ai-Apaec, their god, usually represented as a spider (8 legs...) wearing a neat-o necklace of human heads, a sacrificial blade in one hand and a severed head in the other. Just your regular family guy...
I decided to go the "were the gods astronauts?" path with this one. I just love the contrast between the dark arrogant looking alien and the fresh heads. The base is still WIP and will feature 4 cristal skulls, kindly cast in clear resin by my friend Eduardo Howaldt from Sao Paulo. Ok, I know that these skulls are usually related to some other Mexican cultures, but I couldn't resist using them... blame me!
Here it is in all its gory glory:
a long time ago in far away galaxy...

first paint...

going for the full monty!
 

New "derelict car" project on the way...

Yep, time for another abandoned one... This time it's a smaller, 1/24 scale die cast model of a Ford Pick-up truck. It belongs to my friend Paulo Nakamura, (who also happens to be one of my bosses at work) and I thought it looked sorry in its all dull gray outfit. So, I decided to give it my "left on the farm to rot away" treatment.
Here's the start: removing moulding seams and giving it a battered look, using swiss watchmaker files. Next up, comes primer and rust colored basepaint. But that's still a week from now.

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

It's getting even weirder... the end

 Ok, it's been some time now since my last posting. In the meantime I finished my colleague's Whacky Racer nr 6.

I won't go into details, except maybe that I used Tamiya acrilics for the base paint and artist oil colors for the filters and washes, all really basic stuff that looks good and was fun to do. I particularly like the crew's grafitis on both doors. These were done using a white Caran D'ache pencil. Hope you guys enjoy the result as much as I did!

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

... and it's getting even weirder!!! - part 2

The whacky racer is on its way... Colour basecoat and first detail paint is on. Next I'll slap on some neat decals and then, it's on to finishing city! The way it's coming along it should be ready before the end of the week. Hope you guys like what you see. The pics are a bit grainy because I was too lazy to set up my photo session lights and it was allready dark outside.

Thursday, September 2, 2010

Assault with a deadly weapon!

As described in earlier postings, the turrtless Sturmgeschütz III type tanks were a typical German design. With a very low profile, they were initially designated as fire support for the advancing soldiers and as war progressed, these tanks received more armor and better performing main guns. As such they became formidable tank destroyers. Today it is widely accepted that a larger percentage of all destroyed enemy tanks in Russia between 1943 and 1945 are actually attributed to the Sturmgeschütz battallions. The successfull performance of this weapon on all fronts, prompted an increased production and by the end of WWII over 8000 stugs had been delivered. This, in turn, motivated the Allies to increase their bombing raids over German territory and in late 1943 the facilities that produced the chassis for the Stug III was heavily damaged. As an interim solution the superstructure with the gun was mounted with a couple of addaptions on the chassis of the Panzer IV, resulting in the equally deadly Stug IV (it's that very first model I posted here on this blog!).
The model presented here is the final version of its lineage, the Stug III ausf G "späte Fertigung" (late production). it's a Dragon model, formerly produced in the late 80's by Japanese firm Gunze Sangyo. Although a bit aged, it is still a very good and precise kit that builds into a very accurate replica of the real thing. The model received a couple of improvements, like the gun crutch at the front, new hatch detail and the stowage fence in the back, a feature present in most photos of these vehicles.
The model depicts one of the tanks that fought a desperate and vicious battle against overwhelming odds at Seelow heights, some 60km from the gates of Berlin


 
a little Photoshop play