Introduction

So you have built an Italian M30/14 and you are stuck on what to do paintwise? Why not finish it as one that was sporting some nice Australian livery? You don’t know how? Glenn Bartolotti guides you through the whole process in his latest Step By Step Vol 39 in which he transforms a standard M30/14 into one that was captured by the 6th Australian Division and that was adorned with huge Kangaroo markings.

A lot of modelers, who buy a nice new kit will start looking in their reference books or online for the most unique way to display his or her model. More often than not this search ends in the realm of the captured or ”Beute-” vehicles. Pretty much every side during WW2 have at some point laid their hands on enemy equipment and if it was still serviceable put to action as well. There are countless examples of US and German vehicles in the hands of the Soviets, German vehicles in the hands of the Americans, Italian vehicles in the hands of the British and the Germans used everything from everybody. First thing any vehicle crew does is make sure your own troops don’t start lobbing grenades onto your roof which means they had to be immediately recognized as a friendly vehicle. Usually this meant painting the general marks of your army on it. Usually quite a bit larger then normal. The Germans had their Balkenkreuzen. The Allied troops mostly used the white star. The soviets mostly did not care and went with some vehicle numbers and maybe a small red star. And the people from Down Under used Skippy

The Step By Step

Mister Bartolotti let us in on another set of his great modeling skills with this E-book. Starting off with a rundown of the materials used on page 3 with a nice image of what the endresult should become. And then some information and a period picture of the M30/14 in the Aussie markings on page 4.

The built itself starts on page 5. Glenn uses the Tamiya M30/14 from the 70’s. What I like is the fact that he builds it pretty much out of the box and gives some additional tips to enhance the appearance in small ways. Track sag, drilling out headlight etc. The whole paint process is detailed in the following pages starting at page six. Here he goes into priming and adding a preshade with a dark color. On page 7 and 8 the vehicle gets the green base coat, sun-bleached highlights and decals are also added here.
Pages nine to twelve deal with detail painting, different weathering styles with different media bringing the whole tank to it’s dusty life.
Also included on the tank is a British figure in a leather jerkin and Glenn shows what the origin of the figure is and which paints and colors were used to paint him.
Pages 14 and 15 show the tank from all angles and some neat photography picking out some of the details on the M30/14.

Conclusion

I think this is a very interesting resource for any modeler to have. However I think that certainly this particular E-book is a must have for those modelers who are less experienced and who just purchased their airbrush looking for some cool project. I say this for the simple reason that Glenn uses a minimal amount of materials that most modelers already have from the start or can be easily purchased for small amounts of money. He uses a simple single action airbrush and the methods he shows work just as well with enamel as with the acrylics he uses. Plus he starts with a simple out of the box built. Tweaks it with some small tricks and shows you how you can end up with a stunning model. For $1,95 I’d say that it is pretty hard to get more value for the money.