April 28, 2008

1/35 Tamiya Ford GPA Jeep




I was browsing in Hobbytown this afternoon for some supplies and I saw that they had this Tamiya 1/35 Ford GPA Jeep on sale for $7.00USD. I picked it up and I think I will do a diorama with it. Originally I wanted to do the diorama of this amphibious vehicle with a sherman tank, but I am not so sure if that will work out to my advantage.


So this build will require a unique solution. Up until this point I have built most of my models in a 2d environment, that is the model is 3d, but the diorama is more 2d-ish. Save the half track and my waterline models, I think I need to take this diorama to the next level. I want to have elevation changes in the soil, as if this vehicle were climbing up the shores of Iwo Jima. Albeit I need to check the historical accuracy on that. At this time I am thinking about using plastruct as a base since it would be sort of a waste to clump on containers of sand.


The hard part will be getting the water just right. I want to portray the vehicle coming out of the water and onto the shore, so I need to make sure that the base is hidden well. This also presents another problem: the water will need to be elevated 5mm to 10mm off the surface of the base. There is also another problem, though I won't worry about it- that close to shore means that the water will be much clearer, making it very hard to model. Well.. maybe I can do it by touching up the base with the sand color then laying acrylic gel medium over the top to simulate this, but the problem then is that the acrylic gel is a bit too white for my taste. I dunno; we will just have to wait and see.


This will be one of those projects where if I don't have room, I will send it off to my grandparents. My grandpa likes collecting stuff, and he enjoys anything he can get from me. I also picked up extra aircraft sets (Tamiya sets #1 and #2) for spare aircraft- I wasn't happy with Trumpeter's F-14 set and I will keep the extra F-4 phantoms for a Vietnam era carrier in the distant future.

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