Hi Guys,

Im currently in the process of building a stryker ATGM (M1134) and this will be my first land vehicle that I'm going to airbrush.

I was wondering, do you change building order to facilitate painting? For example, my build starts with the bottom half of the stryker body after which the suspension and wheels follow and lastly the upper body.

I'm thinking about changing the build order to lower body -> upper body -> paint -> suspension -> details. Quite different from what I'm used to (submarines, which is basically build -> paint).

Yes, I find with most AFV's I change the build order to paint. For wheeled AFV's, and tanks, I tend to leave the wheels off to facilitate painting. For softskins I usually apply a coat of paint to the frame and lower side prior to completing assembly, just to ensure paint can get into some areas that may be difficult to paint once fully assembled.

sometimes it is necessary

I always start my tank builds with the lower hull minus the bogies and wheels, but I do assemble them as a separate sub-assembly. Now I prime, then paint with the basic color, followed by a few washes of earth, mud, dirt, etc. Then I install the bogies, and wheels. Next I complete the assembly of the upper hull, then paint the basic color. Finally the turret assembly is built up, and also painted in the basic tank color. From there I do the fading and modulation applications. Now I add the tracks which have been already painted. From here on it's all about weathering.
Joel

All the time.

In fact, I only ever use the kit instructions as a guide for parts location and pretty much ignore assembly sequence (unless there's some specific reason a particular sequence is necessary).

I build and paint in sub-assemblies and usually do final assembly at the same time as I'm incorporating weathering so that I can get all of my desired weathering effects where I want them without interference from other parts of the model.

I would suggest that you use you knowledge of your own painting skills and preferred techniques to suggest to you where you think you might have trouble reaching areas or doing detail painting. Let this be your guide to determining your assembly and painting sequences.

You can almost always assemble things that have already been painted without much trouble, but you can't always easily paint things that have already been assembled.

HTH,

Hi!

I think separate the parts of kit is necessary and something that greatly facilitates the process of painting.

In my case, I usually fixing tools, lights etc. But, tend rolls, tarpaulins and backpacks, I like to paint and put separately later.

Wheels and tracks are always painted separate from the rest of the kit, as well as turrets, guns etc.

Cheers!

Marco

Generally I assemble the upper and lower hull and add the suspension and paint that as one unit and paint turret, wheels, and idler and drive sprocket if it has them separately.

I normally paint some of the sub assemblies, wheels and stuff, off the model, but sometimes there are situations where it isn't possible, and you may have to weigh up what is going to be the easiest - a harder paint job, or the difficulty you sometimes get of having to assemble parts that have been painted.

It does interest me, those people who paint the entire model with almost everything assembled. I think that Tony Greenland does that in his Panzer Modelling book, and then look at this build and paint job by Eric Rains that was featured on this site recently:
Battlewagon M4A3E8 ETO build

Part of the tracks were left off, but get the way that all of that stowage, the camo net, the sandbags, the fuel cans was all painted in situ - and note how some parts are primed in separate colours despite already being in place.

If you can face doing it, I suspect it is what gives this model its very unified look, and means of course that construction (gluing the plastic) is made easier because you're not risking messing up painted parts.

Anyway, I'm not saying either is right or wrong, it's the different approaches that are intriguing.