Walking Tank Unit M27
Finally I’ve finished the Munny Project I started all of those days ago. At first I went into this very excited and interested. I was bursting with ideas and color schemes and things of that nature. I was about to work with a new medium (Super Sculpy) and creating something 3D with tools I haven’t used in this manner before. Needless to say, it was some what of an adventure working on this.
It all started off really well. I sketched out about four or five different ideas and settled with the “walking tank” concept. The first part making this was nice and easy. Heating up the vinyl Munny with a hair dryer made it nice and easy to cut with an exacto blade. After mapping out where my cut lines were I sliced into the head and took the top off. Working with Super Sculpy I created a flat top for the head. All of this went surprisingly well, including the second layer of Sculpy that the tank piece was sitting on.
For the tank that sits on it’s head, I used a U.K. Challenger II Die Cast model from the Forces of Valor set I found at Target for about three bucks. Unfortunately I learned that it is not all Die Cast when the first version of the tank went into the oven…. needless to say, my amateur mistake cost me a few more dollars. As it turns out though, this gave me a chance to also purchase a can of camo spray paint from Home Depot and some really good glue to attach the tank this time since I couldn’t bake it into it.
Once I got started things went much smoother the second time around. I disassembled the tank using parts of it in places to help realize the “walking tank” concept. Then I created the backpack looking power unit on the back and used headphone wires as cables to the arms to give it a more robotic look. I spray painted the tank one solid coat, but I messed up once again when the tank’s cannon fell off and I dropped it on the pavement. Though unfortunate, gave me a reason to sand it all down again once it dried and provide the coarse looking texture the tank has. As I see it, a battle tank should look like it has seen some action and the sandpaper provided the perfect texture.
Spray painting it again for the final step helped give the surface a little dimension which is where I started when I painted in the details with a brush. I gave it a skull and crossbones first to give it some character, then using a mix of colors splattered it lightly with a lot of water mixed in. This helped build on the dimension that the texture provided giving it a weathered look. After a few layers of that, I went in with an Xacto and fleshed out the weather/battle worn look. Here is a few photos for you to check out the detail!
I had some struggles building and getting this admittedly overly ambitious first attempt at custom toy designing off of the ground. But each step of the way I was still able to stick really close to the initial idea that I had sketched out on paper before I started. For a first attempt at this, I’m going to say I am pleased with the results. So I’m sure I’ll be doing more of these and posting pictures of it along the way. Shoot me an email and let me know what you think!
