Chi-Nu Kai/Chi-Nu II WIP

Nice, big and glossy box as we are used to from IBG  

I am aware that the turret isn´t cast 😉 but I wanted to go for some texture anyway. I again used it in an artistic way to give some initial "character" to the plain surface. 

The texture i actually less intense than it may seem at the first glance, though I´m curios to see the painted result. Maybe I´ll texture the front plate (~50mm as the turret) too, but I´m not sure yet 

Rather nice crew figures. Maybe I´ll scratch a map or something of that sort to hold for this particular guy 

Some really fiddly photoetch parts were involved... 

Yeah. the texture REALLY isn´t THAT overdone 😉 

Unfortunately, the barrel was warped, which is not ideal by any means. Here you also see the new hinges 

Here we go! Three-tone camo made with Tamiya paints. I just went with hard-edges here for the late war Japanese pattern 

Lucky me, the texture turned out quite nice under some paint layers 🙂 

highlights were painted for each of the three main colors. Hopefully a wash will further enhance the detail. And yes, maybe I should have sprayed some highlights for each layer but whatever...
 

Tracks left of for weathering 

I got to say, I love doing these exhausts! 

It´s just a couple of steps to get there:
1) base painting with dark grey steel color
2) while still drying work in different thinned layers/spots of light grey acrylic
3) tap on some mixture of dark brown/rust washes (enamel) to get the oxide pattern 

Tracks and rubber parts of the suspension are basepainted, but we´re still lacking any weathering 

Again I used light and dark grey for the tools and tried to blend eversthing with a rusty wash 

I treid to do some wood-grain on the stock as well as to make a "non-metallic-metal" type of look on the main body of the gun. I just manage to get out of control with fully metallic colors way to hard some times 😉 

Initial chipping was done with acrylics that where lighter variants of the individual camo colors 

Some of the chips still seem "odd" to me, so I gott to tone them down during weathering 

A dark brown wash was also added to bring the details into focus 

I refined the chips using a dark grey/brown mixture thingy paint 

Additionally a very subtle oil-dot weathering was added, which is situationaly visible and made the colors somewhat warmer and less uniform 

It starts to appear "lived in"... 

I will likely use streaaks to tone down the "odd" chips here and there 

Some heavy rainmarks and splattered mud tones have been added  

Still got to work on my rainmarks though...  

some splatters of mud, oil and grease aree visible on the rear hull. Fresh stains were given a "wet" shine using wet effects fluid 

Running gear is as good as final and will be attached when I´ve figured out the exact composition of weathering that is still needed to "adjust" the vehicle to the scenic base 

After all I´m getting used to the really gritty look of the vehicle. It´s somewhat fitting if you´re imagining it driving from battle to battle in some more mountainous regions  

We could also just say that the vehicle fought in a city before and all the accumulated dust is now being washed off by the rain 

I´m not going to use another slide to try to justify my streaking-fail 

Tools fitted. Yes, the pickaxe is supposed to be in this position (apparantly)  

Tracks fitted and imho it looks quite nice 

just some work on the headlights left to do 

bEnT bArReL 

Some splatters of dirt have gotten onto the upper hull parts, but this is what actualy happens when there´s crew walking around and mud flying 🙂 

AA machinegun has to be superglued in place... 

Sitting on the WIP diorama again 🙂