Tough one for you guys.

Hi Everybody.

I am settled with a tough proposition and maybe you guys can help me out.

A friend wants me to build him a Dio of an AFV entering/fording a small stream.

So far no problem, I can do the water and the splashes of the AFV hitting the water from the embankment.

But how do I recreate the look of spinning wheels and Tracks??

Can it be done at all??

Any help, ideas or suggestions are welcome.

I have done GP Motorbikes running at full speed, spinning props and rotors, but this got me baffled.

Man, you got me stumped on that one. I never even thought of that. I’ve done spinning props on A/C but never even thought about tracks. Will def have to put that on my "learn to do " list.

You could just tell him the diorama captured the action at a very high “shutter speed,” completely freezing all motion!

If you get into trying to recreate motion blur on the wheels and tracks, you’ll have to try to do the same with the water and anything else that is moving, for continuity’s sake.

Personally, I think a dynamic expression of motion can be convincingly created just with the splashes. No need for gimmicky “special effects!”

Unless that’s what the customer is asking for, of course!

I’d just tell your customer he can’t afford that kind of realism!! [;)]

Eric

I’ve seen one thing where a guy used wire and placed his mud on the wire coming from the road wheels/tracks hitting the mud, it looked bad arsed as all heck.
maybe you could bend some clear plastic of some sort and add that resin water stuff from Faller add a little dry brushing and boom there ya go?

just a quick thought?

Since the tracks (top run… not bottom!) would be moving faster than the road wheels and the vehicle, I’d imagine that if you can figure out a way to smear the tracks with stained putty, acrylic paste or something similar to blur and obscure their outlines and details, you should be good to go.

Ron

if it’s what i think you mean by spinning, in battle of the bulge, near the fuel dump, one tank is seen “digging” in with it’s tracks in kinda loose ground. try building up what ever medium you’re going to use at the rear of the tracks, but progressively less along to track edges as you move forward. hope that helps. large sized pieces of kitty litter might make half decent gravel

Redleg, I know exactly what you’re talking about! I think it was in FSM last year. Great effect!
Ron, I think the smeared muddy trax would look just like that: mud-caked trax.
How about using a translucent resin or something to replicate a blurred look on the trax? I can’t imagine it looking very good, but ya never know!

but then, what do i know

maybe you could make some splashes in the water. also maybe you could get a clear, this acylic plastic rod and dip in it the water mixture (whatever your using) and make some water coming of the top of the track.[:p]

that article was in may, 2003 issue
and do you guys know who wrote that article??

none other than Ron Poniatowski!!! Great article Ron!!!

wow! kewl Ron!
(reading the may 2003 issue again for the 100th time)
what’s great about this magazine is…if u read it from cover to cover…there’s a tendency for the reader to close the magazine…then read it again. that’s what i always do.
great magazine! (free subscription? lol)

Thanks, for all your tips guys.

Adding acyrlic gel to the tracks and wheels to blur details might be the best option.

Water splashes are done fairly easy:
1.) Take a clear sheet fro vac-forming.
2.) Put part/kit upside down.
3.) Pull heated sheet over the kit/part and pull down to create a funnel type shape.
3.) Cut out, cut strips into the slash, heat the strip so that the curl and form globes(splashes).

Saw this done many years ago on a show called TV-Champion over here where they had one of their Pro-Modeller competitions featuring Takuji Yamada(J-Hulk might remember it), it was done for a figure running though a puddle but I think with a bit of trial and error I might be able to make it work for this.

The theme for the competition was “Water”.

Sorry, don’t have a pic of the original handy as I lost the mag (Hobby Japan) where it was also published.

TV Champion is a great show! All kinds of nutty challenges. I liked the one where the contestants had to build something out of styrofoam, which was then placed a couple of paces away from a a crowd who then had to pick the model from the real objects. They did a scooter, a chair with a shirt draped across it, a refrigerator, and some other stuff I can’t remember. Great stuff! The crowd was often stumped as to which was the model.
Yamataku does some great diorama work, eh?

Yep, he does consider that he is blind in one eye. I got his Diorama Book, if you haven’t got it yet I can highly recommend it.

His Kaiju Diorama are beautiful, but than so is all of his stuff. [:D]