I'm aiming to get a couple of extra vehicles painted ready for a weekend of gaming in a couple of weeks. I have a rag-tag sci-fi army consisting of minis and vehicles from various different indie companies, and this Dune Buggy is from Seb Games from the Void tabletop battle game.
I run these as jeeps in Grim Dark Future One Page Rules, and as softskin technicals in Xenos Rampant.
It's quite an old-school model, being a hybrid resin and metal kit. It's pretty straight forward and intuitive to piece together though, the only extra thing I do is to drill and pin the wheel pieces to the chassis, otherwise they'd be likely to break off under their own weight. I left the gunner and the roll cage separate for most of the painting.
I intend to add a base like on my other dune buggy (pictured), partly for the look, but also it makes it sturdier as a whole. I'm just waiting on some cork sheets to arrive so I can build the base - for now it's drilled and pinned with 2mm brass rod which I've skewered into a big cork for ease of handling while painting - I'll also use this brass rod to secure it to the base.
The way I painted it is to prime the model black, then zenithal white, but only concentrating on the main chassis. I then airbrushed a basecoat of MP Light Turquoise on the chassis, which is a very close approximation of the 'duck egg' colour used on a lot of engines and industrial facilities.
I sprayed matte varnish over this because I would be using a stencil and wanted to ensure there was no risk of the paint lifting away.
I attached a self-adhesive chevron stencil to the hood and then stippled on the pattern in Pro Acryl Burnt Red with a piece of sponge.
I then blocked in all the wheels, suspension springs and metal areas in black, then painted the metals in Dark Silver, and picked out the headlamps in Bold Titanium White.
I added weathering by sponge stippling a few shades of brown and black, and some Dirty Down Rust effect.
Moving on to the crew, I painted their jumpsuits Dark Camo Green and their shoulder pads Mahogany. I also used Mahogany as the base colour for the gunner's skin. I used Shadow Flesh for the driver's skin. The jumpsuits were highlighted up by adding Dark Yellow Green into the base colour, with ivory added for the edges of the cuffs. The driver's skin was highlighted by adding Tan Flesh and Ivory, the hair was simply Yellow Brown with a Brown wash to shade it. The gunner's skin was highlighted by adding Shadow Flesh to the base colour, with final highlights including Olive Flesh.
I fully assembled the model at this point and gave the whole vehicle a coat of gloss varnish. Once this was dry I painted on Streaking Grime - normally for vehicles I'd airbrush the whole thing, but I didn't want any on the crew or interior. Before this dried, I used a lint free cloth to wipe away the excess, leaving the grime effect in the recesses.
I reapplied white to the headlamps, and then airbrushed white then yellow inks for the OSL effect.
Finally the whole model was sprayed with matte varnish.
The other vehicle I want to build and paint before my game is a second Mauler APC (Wargames Atlantic), which I bought this week - so we shall see how much spare time I have!