IPMS Vancouver Fall 2013 Show / Part 2

Lest you think that Monday's promise of more blog posts was full of false promise, here is part 2 of my first IPMS experience!

Where was I?  Oh yes... gorgeous planes.

There's that pre-shading again, but now under an olive green basecoat.  Let's take a closer look at the cockpit area:

Sweet.  However, I'm not sure what the reasoning is around the placement of the paint wear marks.  I'm sure the painter studied tons of real life reference pics before going about this, but not having any references myself, I'm not sure what the logic here is.  Why is the paint wearing in the corners of the panels?  Grub shaped wearing sprinkled here and there?  Why not on the wings too?  Why not more wear where the pilot and crew would step or stand?  I don't know the answers to these questions, but I'd sure like to find out.

Not my favourite entry of the show, but I'm a sucker for nose art.  Ever since seeing the movie, "Memphis Belle", I've been fascinated by this art form.  The height of it's popularity was during WWII on Allied bombers, it seems, but this kind of art has popped up here and there, mostly as a form of morale booster as crews sought to personalize their own rides and make them distinct from all the other vehicles of the exact same make.  I've tried to do the same on various models I've worked on as well (this one I did years and years ago, long before the plastic kit came out, and this Forgeworld resin kit had just been released):

Pin-up art seems to be the most popular form of nose art for a military predominantly populated with young males (go figure...), and my favourite artist of our era in this art form is definately Andrew Bawidamann.

Anyway, back to the IPMS show:

Beautiful metallic finish.  Not sure how this was done, but I'm guessing either some sort of metallic rub-n-buff, or perhaps airbrushed Alclad.  I have absolutely zero personal experience with either of these materials and techniques, and someday I hope to give them a try.

Funny... not sure why Korean-war era fighters often had this finish, and modern day fighters don't.  If anyone knows the historical reasoning behind this, please leave a comment.

See?  A totally different approach to painting jet fighters.  Nice pre-shading, great metallics on the engines, fantastic camo patterning, and great scorching on the exhausts.  So, so nice...

Again, very nice.

While I love all sorts of modelling, I admit to having a real weakness for armoured vehicles.  This is the kind of truck I'd love to have in my personal driveway for when the zombie apocalypse strikes.  As for the model, I really liked the use of pigments in the tire treads, although the rest of the model seemed a bit under-done.  Deeper shading would have added more contrast, and some more weathering to match the nice tires would have added extra impact from arm's length viewing distance.  Still, overall I really liked it.

Not sure if this was the same artist.  At this IPMS event, it seemed like you could enter more than one entry in each catagory.  Just about everything I said about the previous model could apply to this model as well.  I do find this one to be a great example of the boat-shaped hull that many nations developed for vehicles in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Supposedly, it would deflect the pressure of the blast from an IED up and away from the interior of the vehicle, giving the occupants the greatest chance of survival.  It doesn't make for a very "pretty" vehicle in terms of macho military styling, but it makes sense when the main threat is from under the road, not from an incoming projectile fired laterally at it.  Ever since the Russian T-34 tank in WWII, I guess it's made sense to present a sloping surface towards the direction of greatest threat.

A beautiful "tankette" in winter setting.  So cool... I'd love to try something like this in a Warhammer 40K setting, although there aren't many mini-tanks in the 40K universe, as far as I know.  It's like the Smart Car of armoured warfare... tiny, easy to maneuver, and probably good on gas.  ;)

Anyway, once again, it's getting late, and I need to get some sleep because tomorrow's a work day.  I'll keep plugging away at these entries (which still only represent a fraction of what was there at the show... there was a ton of model eye-candy, and I only took pictures of those that immediately grabbed my attention).  I hope you guys are getting something out of all this. I try and explain what it was that drew my attention to each model, and the things that got me thinking about what I could apply to my own personal projects in the future.  I sure hope it's doing the same for all of you.