Ola People

hereby I show you the pics of the Opel Blitz I`m working on at the moment. Most of the building for this vehicle is finished. Some minor things have to be glued one but for now the whole thing is still in subassemblies for the painting. As this is a vehicle that comes in an ardennes german retreat dio this truck is loaded with everything that could be usefull in Germany and therefor he is loaded with an amount of Jerrycans. couple of oildrums a bike a motor without a frontwheel more load will be added nest week as I`m awaiting some stuff for it. The Fallschirmjaeger are dragon and I did some small (Really small) sculpt thingies to make the scene more dramatic.

Well enough talk here are the pics:




on the next pic two of the (really) minor sculpt thingys are visible. The soldier on the left has a bandage on his head that covers his left eye. The right has this sort of armcarriage made of a piece of cloth

The Whole Blitz is built OOTb only thing I did so far is scribing woodgrain in the back


More pics can be found under this link
Opel Blitz in Progress

As always I like to hear all the feedback. Tips and hints are welcome and if you have something that would make the vehicle cooler please say it too

Hi Robert,
The assemblying is good and I liked the loading of cargo esp the bike.I think the misfit of the engine cover and roof of the compartment is due to you did not fix it yet to paint the interior first. figures choice is very good ..please do not forget to clean the molding line on the right hand of the figure with rifle and the lines of the rubber tyres (:-)
best regards

Ola Graywolf

As you said it yourself the misfit between the roof of the drivers compartiment and the drivers compartiment is still one of the pieces of sub-assembly.
Also you are right about the molding line on the right hand of the left figure this was a mistake that I didn`t saw until I posted this pics

I will fix the mistake this week and then it`s on to painting. Thanks for the comments on the built and the figs.

Ola Faust,

Looking good and solid. Love the loading, is the bike resin or plastic?

That's pretty sweet. What are your thoughts on showing the weight of the load on the rear springs? I see that most of the weight is forward of the rear axle, but I would think that there would be some sag from all those fuel cans and personnel. I think it would be a small yet interesting detail....just a thought

Looking great Faust. This is such a cool diorama piece. Great idea. Believe it or not, I have had roughly the same idea, but put it on hold as I have over commited to campaigns (again).... using the full set of the dragon paras and Italeris mercedes truck and a load. I have the paras built for painting but I was a bit dissapointed as the detail will be a bit hard to paint. The straps etc,are very "flat", more like 2D representations. To paint a splinter camo and then try to get the belts looking proper, was a little off-putting to say the least?

If you are not happy with the sitting of the figures as they built for a tank, a good idea is to sculpt some bedrolls and push the figures into them, then when hard the figure will have a perfect, and comfartable, sitting poistion. This will also add to the load detail. Good luck with the painting ..... I will be really looking forward to this.
Will you make it a stand alone piece, or include it in a bigger diorama?

Robert,

A nice featue to add, would be arched canvas supports.

Kris

Ola People

Thanks for the comments and the feeback
Dave:


The Bike is plastic and comes from Italeri`s Schwimmwagen set

IDhunter


You are right about that and that was something I haven`t thought off. I don`t think I will change it on this one as this one is all glued down but as this is the first of a series of 5 I will change it on the other 4. Great tip thanks for that

Plasticbattle


Actually the poses of the sitting figs are not too bad. They both lean a bit forward when they are sitting and that`s exactly what I want to show. I want to show like the vehicle is moving. Therefor I gave the standing Para a new rightarm to show that he is more or less holding himself.


It`s not going to be a standalone piece It will be part of a huge ardennes dio that I`m planning for next year and as I said in the answer for IDhunter this is the first of five.

Crossbow.


Actually the Arched Canvas supports are there on the model only they are laying at the cabin side of the trunk. Those are the rod like thingies on the model

Yes, I've noticed, but I meant that you have them fixed upright, that's how you see them on most wartime pictures (or is that just my imagination?)

Kris

Kris

You are right and in most pictures you see the Arches standing upright without the cover but I wanted to show a vehicle that is used during the retreat from the germans out of the Ardennes and therefor I wanted to do this one open (without Arches). For the same reason he doesn`t have a back door in the trunk too wich usually was on these things. As I said before this is the first out of 5 and they will all differ a little from the other :-)

Great job, Faust!

I like the load in the bed.

What's the final paint job going to look like?

my vote would be for a dirty, muddy winter scheme maybe Russia? (don't know if these rigs were in use there)

Can't wait to see the finished product.

Hhhmmm I must have missed the last post

Well Captain to answer your question. The paintjob will most likely be panzer grey and quite dirtied up. Also it will contain signs of the first snow that fell in the ardennes and the road is tore apart by the whole convoi that is moving uphill. The Fallschirmjaeger are late Ardennes and the driver is also wearing late war clothes. So the whole scene will be late ardennes.

Well looks like a great start to a good Dio .
Is this the plan Faust?

Ola Robert,

Great idea and nicely built. One thing springs to my mind: I find the bike to have an unnatural pose. It's too flat. Maybe you could turn the front wheel a bit so that the tire and steer face upwards.

Greetz,

Ola Guys

Thanks for the replies.

I will first start with Bep.
You are right about the bike and it looks too static now the adjustment of that wheel and steer is quite a simple operation wich I will do very soon. Thanks for pointing me out on that.

Jeff



More or less yeah that`s the plan. a better way of saying would be This would be a small step to a great (read huge) dio depicting a scene in the Ardennes. I`m not going to say too much about it but In every progress picture I will post from this dio you will see all the vehicles I built till that time for it. You will actually see the dio grow bit by bit