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I reckon you're hitting a good time/cost ratio. As for the weathering, I....I dunno. The weathering itself is fine, they just seem...kinda clean in the non-weathered bits? Does that even make sense?

*edit* I think I see what it is. The weathering blotches are quite big, comparatively speaking. Could you maybe use the sponge technique to get some smaller chips, while keeping the time factor to a minimum?

Yeah, I've got to agree with M_i_J here. A little bit less pristine and a little bit more grime I think.
Nice work though.

Cheers guys, thanks for the advice/critique. It's hard to strike a balance between clean and mean. I shall tear up some sponges with all due haste.

BUT being me, and it being YOU two, you know I just have to argue the toss.. just a wee bit.
When I drive through a muddy puddle, only the lower surfaces of the car get dirty. The rest of the paint stays lovely and shiny. Similarly, when some dopey Moo scratches my passenger door because she's on her ****ing phone, the rest of the paintwork retains its luster.

By the way, what's with you two guys agreeing on something and ganging up on poor old defenseless me? Don't you have a laughing stock of a country to argue over?

P.S. Who needs friend, when you have beer and the interwebs

Mike the Pike wrote:When I drive through a muddy puddle, only the lower surfaces of the car get dirty. The rest of the paint stays lovely and shiny. Similarly, when some dopey Moo scratches my passenger door because she's on her ****ing phone, the rest of the paintwork retains its luster.

Get many people shooting at your car do you? Do you regularly drive over/through ruined buildings? Force your way through a lot of heavily wooded areas? Do you get many squads of Soviet infantry riding on the outside of your car? Perhaps you occasionally ram through a fence? (Oh wait, your Panzer didn't do that last one either. ) There's a lot more that can damage the paint on a tank on a battlefield compared to your car on nice asphalt roads.

Really well done mate. Some excellent work here. Can you paint me a Flames of War force?

To weigh in with some supportive criticism in the service of making your excellent paint jobs even better , I might say that the tracks and drive assembly and such are maybe a bit too metallic. Like, here's a tanque out in the world:



Basically no visible metallics at all, y'know?

Didn't anyone tell you never to feed a troll?

@TOD: I see you didn't actually look at all the 'Armour' porn from my trip. Plenty of metal tracks there. Seriously that is a little bit of artistic license.

@Prim (=pristine grime): no it doesn't, but after a wash it still gleams. And a bullet hit, still only damages the area it hits. Any my car can't crash through a fence either.

But seriously folks, thanks for the input, this first wave is just an experiment to see what is popular. I will adjust my style as the market dictates (at the moment the market is pretty silent). A quick survey inthe BA forums Soen to indicate 'moderate ' weathering was by far the most popular. I just have to figure out what the hell that means.

Just to continue Pikey's trend of arguing over minor points for no real reason...

The Other Dave wrote:To weigh in with some supportive criticism in the service of making your excellent paint jobs even better , I might say that the tracks and drive assembly and such are maybe a bit too metallic. Like, here's a tanque out in the world:



Basically no visible metallics at all, y'know?

Well, except for ALL of the tracks beneath the rubber pads added to each link. They aren't shiny, but they are steel.
Modern tanks and rebuilds going out on the road must have rubber treads. Steel track churns up the surface of the road, so by law road-going tracks must have rubber attachments. During WW2 every nation suffered from a major shortage of rubber. Synthetic types were used, but outside of the US, most nations minimized it's use on tracks or did away with it altogether. The US tanks and half-tracks went through a dozen different variations on the tread design because of issues with their supply chain and performance.
On roads, rubber treads were better, offering a smoother ride (less vibration through the hull damaging components) and they left the road in good condition for the vehicles following.
Off road, steel tracks had more grip in wet conditions and so the German tanks (with their poor supply chains) actually outperformed their lighter US opponents in the mud. Adding raised chevrons to the rubber blocks helped to improve performance.
Synthetic rubber abrades quite quickly, especially over rough terrain. Allegedly US tankers in Italy preferred bare steel over the rubber blocks as the rocky ground tore them to pieces.

So painting tracks in shiny, silvery metallic colours is wrong, but dull, grey steel should be the majority of the track surface on most vehicles on active service. Every other part of the tank should get a coat of paint.

D'oh, now I have to go and repaint all of my tank tracks.



...And according to one of the historians over on the Warlord forums who replied to Pikey, tracks are the only part of a WW2 tank which rusted. The paint prevented rusting and in breaks between fighting, crews would repaint the tank to keep them busy and out of mischief. The only vehicles which had time to rust were wrecks. Anything servicable was cleaned up and repainted constantly. Battles didn't really last long enough for tanks to get rusty.
The more you know eh?

Mike the Pike wrote:By the way, what's with you two guys agreeing on something and ganging up on poor old defenseless me?
Don't you have a laughing stock of a country to argue over?

A laughing stock? Hardly.
Just wait till Boris Johnson is PM, then you'll see what a laughing stock really is!

I like to buy my tanks pristine and then drive them through actual mud in my garden so it's all good.
Thinking of playing some Flames of War outside HG Wells style.

Because this might be relevant:
A gallery of the British Comet tank parked outside IWM Duxford in the UK. It's been standing outside for a while now and is showing some rust and weathering.
http://imgur.com/FkHsRSB