The Beast

[Wardukw]

Well guys its me at it again and in this thread its all about The Beast ,,the largest scratch built model i have ever made and it all started with a good friend of mine and me sitting around talking about crap like  single dudes do .
We were talking about the massive four tracked tanks used in the Command and Conquer game called the mammoth and one thing lead to another and then the hunt began .
The net is such a wonderful place to find pics and i found a heap of pics of four tracked tanks ,,the next step the purchasing of a large amount of sheet styrene and to go thru the parts boxes cause i needed tanks ..4 of them .
After the hunting ended i had my tanks for the build ..two Tamiya T62's and two Trumpeter T55's ..these are the drive pods ,,all four were cut down the centre and i think 35mm was removed out of the centres and then the half's were glued together and reinforced .



I put this little dude onto one of the drive pods to fool the guys who were involved in a What if campaign on the other site i am on,,worked a treat


The result of the reinforcing was this ..4 sets of tracks ready to start building on.

Once dry the real building begins ...I built a frame off each one to give me the desired size i wanted and then just let the mind go from there to form the shape ,,i dont draw much as i find it easier to just let my mind come up with the final look as i am building it ..oh so far i have used about 4 sheets of 1.5 mm sheet and this is what i came up with,all in all i think i used about 30 sheets of 1mm,1.5mm and 2mm sheet styrene for the entire build .



Thats the fronts done for now ,,time to work on the rears .
But no ,,didnt work out like that ..had this idea and this is what it was ..

Intakes ,,,,, they needed something and this worked nicely .

Least are the rears ..made them look like the fronts ,,easier and it made sense to me to build them the same ..makes repair easier in the field if parts are compatible .


Here i also made a start on the hull,,test fitted to gauge the size and the alignment and it looked pretty good so forward i went .





Now this is where i started to detail the drive pods ... i had to cut and then test fit every piece of styrene to make sure it sat just right on the pods ,,then i cut ( by hand ) all the angles on the edges of the armour plate ,,one caused it looked very cool and two it looked like crap if i didnt 
I made all the hand grabs from copper wire and pliers,i also puttied the intakes to smooth them more into the drive pods .




Work progressed on the hull with the drivers position and the turret hole , i test fitted the first weapons station too ( notice first )



Now it the turn of the turret ,,this is big so needed alot of bracing and the mantlet,the barrels where also test fitted .





Now its big test fitting time ..i started with the air/ground defense systems and put the rest of the lower hull together ,,the guns are MASTER 1/32 M61A1 Vulcan's and took nearly two hours to build the first one and one hour to build the remaining three each .
The main guns are RB Models 105mm Centauro barrels with the muzzles turned slightly to there sides to make them look different ,,it worked 





Here you can see the drivers position with its grab rails/roll cage in place too .

The air/ground defense guns in there original layout before i disliked them alot ..no the balsa is not the mounts 


And a size comparison with a King tiger ..Oh by the way ..its 1/35th scale too .
 
Now its back to the detailing ... after many minutes of hunting thru the parts boxes i found a mixture of Warhammer 40K parts and 1/16th tank parts and some bits i have no idea about but they looked very useful and started just putting this here and that there so get the feel for the look i was after ,,after a short while i started getting the right look and the gluing began ,,thas is what i came up with,the turret was first to get attacked .



Remember when i said about the first weapons station ? ,,well it got moved 








Now the final layout was complete ,,the air/ground defense weapons stations are now in there right place ,,i wanted to bring the profile of the Beast down a bit and this idea worked best ,,keeps it lowish and smooths the whole thing out to my liking alot more and looks ten times better too .












Some of you might be wondering why the first weapons station got moved ..well then you might not be wondering but i am gonna tell ya anyway ,,and this is the reason was the brand new release from RB Models ,,the 20mm M197 Gatling Gun,,oh i had to have that so i ordered 4 of them and built this to replace the first one.





Next is painting .

First off i sprayed the entire thing in automotive gray primer and once dry it was completely sprayed in a automotive yellow ,,the reason ? ,,well this model was based on the sulfur world of Priphos 9 and with it burnt and yellowed land scape this camo works best and strange as it sounds it really does work
It broke up the entire profile of the beast which trust me i didnt plan on ,,i just wanted a different colour camo on it than the normal greens and blacks .
Here's the Beast in its yellow ..



Here's the first part of the gray camo going on .


Its a pretty simple paint job ,,the masking is of course the longest part on something this size and seemed to take hours but the results speck for them selves .





Next is the real fun part ,,weathering .
I wanted this thing to look like anything yellow and gray would look ,,so i used a black wash and black pastels to bring out the detail but also to make it look like the hard years of fighting this thing had done ..make a sort of ol timer on the battlefield.
The decals are just odds and ends from years of modelling which i knew one day i would need for something  and this guys is how it all turned out ..the final result .























There you have it guys .... The Beast in all it glory   

Phill 

[Old Wombat]

Love the build method, Phill! (It's something like mine. )

Not sure I like the yellow but that's a personal taste thing, so is quite irrelevant when it comes to deciding that this is a great model!

Love the skull decals. Are they Warhammer?



Guy

[NARSES2]

Whoaaaa, that's some build 

At first I thought you were building that German WWII tank that had the 15" naval gun turret

[Rheged]

Is anyone else reminded of BOLO,  Keith Laumer's s/f writings  concerning the Dinochrome Brigade?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolo_(tank)

[PR19_Kit]

Strewth, it's a World Styrene Shortage on tracks! 

Awesome build indeed. 

[pyro-manic]

Love it, love everything about it!

Well, apart from one thing - how do the "air/ground defence systems" work? It looks like they're fixed to the turret, and so can't traverse or elevate?

[buzzbomb]

Yep.. love it

good use for Trumpy T-55's.. everything above the track line is pretty ordinary but the running gear is quite useable.

[Weaver]

Wow - what an awesome project - nice one! 

If you like this sort of thing, you might like this (MUCH smaller) effort of mine from a few years ago: http://www.whatifmodelers.com/index.php/topic,29096.0.html

[Wardukw]

Thanks guys ,,this was one hell of a build and i have evil little thoughts about something else along these lines but i'll see about that later .

Guy ... Yes mate they are Warhammer decals ,.,old ones from some of their earlier kits ..they might be able to be found with some hard looking
Narses2 ,, Oh you mean the Ratte ,, well your gonna love this then ,,,I will be building a 35th version for a customer once i'm in my new place..to be honest with you guys ,,aint looking forward to building this .
Pr19_kit ,,      You dont know how right you are ,,my LHS had to reorder those sheets 5 times cause of me alone 
Pryo-manic ,, Ok time to get all techie on ya .. the turrets for the air/ground system us what is called a seamless join..they can pivot up and down and the main turret moves them side to side ..seamless joins gives the guns no shot traps and it stops foreign objects from getting into the joints
Buzzbomb ... I couldnt agree more ..the T55 is pretty much rubbish ..the profile aint bad but the turret is wrong ..like ya said ,,i used the best bits   
Weaver ,,,Mate i took a look at your work and its brilliant ,,small dont mean do do when its that cool   

[Cobra]

This is a Superb Build Reminds me of Tanks from a Game Called 'OGRE'! You did a Top Notch Job! Any plans to Build Something Bigger and Nastier? Keep up the Superb Work Dan

[NARSES2]

Narses2 ,, Oh you mean the Ratte ,, well your gonna love this then ,,,I will be building a 35th version for a customer once i'm in my new place..to be honest with you guys ,,aint looking forward to building this .

Looking forward to it. Someone does a kit of it but I'm not sure of the scale

[philp]

Fantastic idea and fantastic build.

So many ideas.

[pyro-manic]

The Ratte kit is 1:144 - http://www.hlj.com/product/MTUAFV-46/Mil . Still quite sizeable even then!

Pryo-manic ,, Ok time to get all techie on ya .. the turrets for the air/ground system us what is called a seamless join..they can pivot up and down and the main turret moves them side to side ..seamless joins gives the guns no shot traps and it stops foreign objects from getting into the joints

Makes sense!

[Wardukw]

Cobra ..Ya the Ratte and with the link pyro (many thanks for that to dude  ) put up now i have a pretty good idea on the shape ..the layout is not even close to what the real thing was meant to look like ,,the real thing was just a twin gunned turret and bugger all else ...i like this version more tho
I've started doing the math (which i suck at ) and this is gonna be one freakin huge model i can tell ya ..its going to me a little over 1 metre long and about 350mm wide  and about 400mm high,glad i have a large work bench .
Now there is one problem and its a biggie ... the guns ... having a nightmare trying to find the measurements ,like the thickness of the barrel ,,the measurements which the taper along the barrel starts so i can have them machined ,,without those its not much of a model 

Phill   

[Captain Canada]

Wow ! That is awesome ! What a beast indeed...I sure wouldn't want to be in front of it !