Antenoceti's Workshop Scout Car (and happy birthday to us!)

Greetings folks, today I have a shiny new thing to show you, a vehicle from a supplier new to me. Antenoceti's Workshop have for years supplied me with modelling tools and materials but this is one of their own design models:

It's a Warthog ADV according to the website from their Governance of Technology range. I'd been toying with the idea of checking out their range for a while, but lucky me, one of these was in the Inq28 commission pile as an Inquisition scout car. It's a mixed media kit with a resin body - nicely cast with only a few small air bubbles on the base - and wheels along with cast metal gun and axle assemblies and bumper. A brass etch carrying cage at the back finishes the kit. They aren't for novice modellers. The brass etch alone needs tricks I only knew about from reading a bunch of modelling magazines (razor blade and clamp is the way to get clean folds in brass etch). I wish I'd photographed the process but was concentrating too hard on getting it right to remember to document the process. One other thought, the struts that hold the wheels on are very, very thin. They're beautifully in scale but very fragile. Were I to make one again I'd replace them with stiff pinning wire as the soft cast metal is a smidge too bendy. Works fine here though. I also added some brass etch Inquisition plaques to indicate ownership.

The colour scheme - which has, as is the way with realistic camo, photographed poorly - is based on the urban camouflage used by the Berlin Brigade in the Cold War. We'd initially wanted to use some stencils to create hard edged digital camo effects to imitate the blocky Berlin Brigade. Sadly, the masking stencils we used were not suited to this sort of model, they're too stiff, they don't conform to the bends and lumps on this sort of model. The paint leaked underneath them and it just looked like finger painting. Yurgh. Instead I went with a softer edged disruptive scheme which can be seen much easier in this work in progress photo:

The colours used are Val German Camo Black-Brown, The Fang, Mechanicus Standard Grey, Val German Grey and Val Deck Tan. The reason the camera had trouble resolving these colours was the weathering stages that came later:

The weathering was the usual chips and dings then a few very thinned layers of AK Rain Marks sprayed through the airbrush and streaked away with Odourless Thinner. Using bursts of air from the airbrush over a brush laden with AK Rain Marks to be spatters and splashes. The lighting cuts through the delicate finish so imagine it a smidge more dusty than it appears. Good fun this one.

In other news it is the site's fourth birthday today! A bittersweet one this as I am going through the last twitches of the business wing of the site, doors close, others open. I'll be doing a proper "state of the nation" type deal when I am more concrete about the future direction of the site as my personal blog alone. I haven't forgotten the "Things I Learned Painting Models For A Living" series, it's just the second part is a little tougher to write as it is analysing the places where I went both right and
wrong so that it is of use. It'll come out when it's ready.

Until then, a very happy birthday to my little mascot Mulder and a very good weekend to you all.

TTFN