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Looking great. Really good freehand writing.
and lol.

Getting close. Just decoration and weathering left.

Hi-Larious.

Gits, are there keyholes on the padlocks on the back of the ork/grot bikes? If so, I can't really make them out...if not...add some!

I think there is... I'll go back and accentuate or add them. Thanks for commenting Brian, been kind of a slow day on Dakka & it's nice to have your input again.

Waiting for the final touches.
This coloration is the best You did yet on the grot tanks IMHO.
You should paint that flag in an other color and add a glyph that say something like "shoot" or "forward"

I've been tres' busy, iRL!

I love that grot tank so much, I have to take a shot at making some of these myself someday.

Are those check patterns on the turret in relief? If so, how did you do that/where did you get them?

@A Kvlt Ghost: They're part of the turret. I just washed the area black and then carefully added white to the raised areas. Simple.


Well, I think I outfoxed myself... I wanted to add dilute turquoise to the mix in the seams to give it a verdigris look and it didn't turn out like verdigris... more like a ghostly blue glow seeping out. I'm going to fool with it and see if I cant mellow things out a bit. No guts, no glory right? Sometimes... you just f up.



Keep in mind, the tank on your screen is what... 6-8" tall? The one in front of me is 2" tall and the blue is no where near as obnoxious IRL. Still, I'll try to fix it.

Edit:
O.K., daddy fix. (really, the fix worked out fantastically well) More tomorrow night. I've got 3 or 4 more spots to "decorate", then it's on to the weathering!

Can't wait to see the finished product! Great job all round.

Well, the fix worked so well that I might add it to my permanent bag of tricks. I'm really scratching my head over the final set of decorations. I need to make it a bit more Bad Moon like, then perhaps some more checks (though I thought the bit in the wheel was inspired), a glyph or two and finally some grot-ffiti.

And.... I don't want to overdo it so I lose the character of the base color.

Modest, aren't you? I meant to say how much I liked the checks. I would consider not adding much more to it - it could cause eyeballs to explode.

Yes we'll, that's the boggle. I'm thinking a glyph on the front, something on the opposite side and one thing from the top view... I think that would make it interesting without overdoing it.

And yes, I'm an egomaniac... but then you knew that already.

I blame the internet.

I blame myself!...










.... and the internet!

I wanted to suggest a couple of places for a glyph, but You are way ahead.
And I blame the internet as well for that

Holy Crap Gits! That's got to be the best grot tank I've ever seen! Excellent work man!

Thanks guys, really appreciate the support, especially those of you who are shifting the blame away from me!

I think the grot tanks are my favorite 40k models... period. So I dote on them. They make me smile and lift my spirits. I paint them with that in mind. One or two more nights and she'll be done.

That's an awesome looking tank mate

I got to make some of these. That looks just soo amazing. Gods I would love to drive something like that. LOL.

Grot tank is done with the exception of the weathering. I really put a lot of thought as to where I would put the "decorations" and what they'd be. It was tricky from my perspective... wanting to add humor, color and interest without completely overwhelming the basic color of the tank. I left the turret plain for that reason, the curve of the turret shows off the base color to wonderful effect. The wheels turned out to be a good place to add color as they don't really conflict with the paint job all too much and the track areas were very dark to begin with. All-in-all I'm pretty happy with her. A little bit of chipping and mud and she'll be good to go!

Yep, brilliant. Love all the little details (especially the little rocket sign on the front).
Good job on the checks and dags and all the freehand.

So, what was this brilliant fix for the green?

Strangely adorable and now I want a toy one.

It's looking fabolus Git!
The checkered wheel inside the trak is proper geniality.

The "fix" was simple, a wash with "Athonian Camoshade". Kind of a muted, grassy green that toned down the blue nicely without killing it.

The little rokkit glyph is actually a Forge World decal. Usually I prefer the look of hand painted adornments, but small glyphs are nearly impossible to make and the little decals do the trick nicely. I add a little bit of my own paint on them to make the color match the rest of the tank, add a quick wash of sepia and they're good to go.

There's actually a checkered wheel on the other side of the tank too, but it's a small wheel and doesn't show well in the photos.

I see that and I'm on my phone.
At soon I'm home I'll check It properly.

 Gitsplitta wrote:
The "fix" was simple, a wash with "Athonian Camoshade". Kind of a muted, grassy green that toned down the blue nicely without killing it.

Cool.

The little rokkit glyph is actually a Forge World decal. Usually I prefer the look of hand painted adornments, but small glyphs are nearly impossible to make and the little decals do the trick nicely. I add a little bit of my own paint on them to make the color match the rest of the tank, add a quick wash of sepia and they're good to go.

Yeah, the right decal in the right place can make all the difference.
To be fair, the rest of your freehand is good enough to be mistaken for decals, I wouldn't have been surprised that you had done it...

There's actually a checkered wheel on the other side of the tank too, but it's a small wheel and doesn't show well in the photos.

Those wheels were probably an interesting challenge to the usual checker-ing technique?

Naah. My checkering technique is stupid simple. You can to it anywhere. (see link in sig) I just make the guidelines freehand and the rest is paint-by-numbers.

Ah yes, I've even read that before
Not had much cause to do checks so far. Something else to keep in mind (and actually remember) for the future.
Good tutorials. Like the rust/chipping one and have actually used that.

Seen It with zoom now
And It's not done yet...

I thought I'd point out a couple of details of things that I did that might not be readily apparent or were outside of my usual standard practices.

Normally, these grot tanks come with a wide variety of weapon options... flamers, big shootas, grotzookas and of course missile launchers. As far as the actual IA stats for the tanks go, it doesn't really matter much what you give them (i.e. I think the shooting stats for the tank are pretty standard... but I'm not sure). The reason I'm not sure is that none of the gaming stores in this area run tournaments that allow IA rules. There are a number of reasons given for this, but I suspect the real reason is that the stores cant sell the Forge World figures (reliably or profitably anyway) so there's no benefit to promoting something they can't profit from. I get that.

So, if I want to use any of the FW figures I have, I have to come up with a reasonable proxy for them out of a normal codex. In this case... rokkit buggies. Now because the original rokkits that come with the tanks are tiny (see the lower rokkit launcher sticking out of the front of the hull), I decided the main gun needed to be more substantial. It's also supposed to be twin linked, so I wanted to represent more than one rokkit.

My approach was to discombobulate a regular, plastic ork rikkit launcher and use it as the basis for the main gun (used this same technique on all 4 tanks so far). I carefully trim off the grasping hand and extranious bits until all that's left is the main shaft and the rokkit at the end. Unfortunately I gakked up this one and had to replace the shaft with a brass tube, no biggie. I then take a section of tubing the right size to fit in the turret recess, drill a hole in each side, one for a magnet, the other for the shaft of the gun (I have pics of this somewhere). I fill the tube with green stuff, push a magnet in one side and the gun shaft in the other. Put a matching magnet in the turret and viola... magnetized gun mount. I then scratch build a couple of extra rokkits to give the gun some beef and add them to the end of the gun.

The rokkits this time were an experiment. I am looking for this kind of rokkit for another ork project down the road and want to experiment with some prototypes. I made these by taking a bit of brass rod and sharpening one end to a point, then sliding a plastic sleeve over it and filing it down to make the "head" of the rokkit. Probably would have been easier to just use green stuff, but at least the rokkit heads are a uniform diameter this way. Then just took little slivers of plasticard to make the fins. Then I took a really thin strip of plasticard to use as the band to hold the three rokkits together.

The "ocifers klub" door was from a resin frame of doors, hatches & glyphs made by FW at some point. Looked good but was twice as thick as it needed to be, so believe it or not... I took my jewler's saw and cut it in half to the right thickness. (What a PITA.) The switch next to it was a remnant from the ML I used for the main gun. I used a little piece of "L" shaped plasticard for the step.

The skulls on both rokkit launchers are there because I screwed up the alignment of the magnets so that both guns were in the "happy to see you" pose. The skulls just hold them at the right angle.

Let's see... what else...
The bad moon elblem is just some bit I picked up somewhere, I think it's actually a fantasy bit. The glyph on top of the left tread cover is just made on a piece of platicard... took 3 tries to get the damn thing right.

I guess that's it. Just thought you might be wonding about some of the modifications. With the exception of the main gun, all minor... but all adding to the effect of the whole.

The next bit is actually the trickiest as I have a tendency to overdo the chipping and rust. Well, there won't be any "rust" on this one as the metal involved isn't ferrous... but you get my point. Light touch Gits... light touch.

I'm actually short one ork RL, so if anyone's got a spare... I can pay you or trade something for it.