The Tanks (Model Process)

The First Tank

The picture you see at the top of this post was the first tank drawing I did prior to starting this project. It was just a doodle that I accidentally left lying around, and I started having people come up to me and telling me how great they thought it was, and that maybe I should consider doing something with tanks?

I've always loved armored vehicles; they're big, scary, and pretty dang cool. There's few vehicles in the world that so elegantly combine the function-over-form aesthetic with raw killing power.

Problem was, while I may like tanks, I didn't really know much about how they worked, aside from the basics. I did a heck of a lot of research over several months while I began crafting how my tanks would look and fight.

Smile!

Initially, I was just doodling made-up tanks for the heck of it. As I got into writing the actual story they'd go into, I realized very quickly that I needed to standardize their appearance, and that I needed to be able to draw them "on-model" from any angle very accurately to keep the whole illusion together.

Very Early IL29 Doodle

One of the first things was figuring out what 'era' of technology these vehicles would belong to. "Dieselpunk" was a pretty obvious choice, so I chose it and never looked back.

Inspirational Doodle For The PP22 APC

But doodling was only going to get me so far. So, I went ahead with what seemed like the most logical solution to my concept/reference dilemma - kitbashing. In November 2011, I started buying Tamiya, Revell, and Trumpeter 1:35 scale models and kitbashing them together.

Early K45

Initial experiments were extremely positive...

K45 + Very Early K10 Prototype

Things were going pretty well for a while. I think I spent around $150 for my initial batch of models, but it was worth it.

K45 Test Illustration

The real "baptism of fire" for my models occurred before they were even finished. The above illustration was created using a 75% K45 model; observe some of the goofier stuff like the raised gun-sight, boring turret-face, etc.

From this illustration, I knew I had it made. This was exactly what I had been looking for.

IL29 + K10 In Progress

K45 + IL29 + K10 In Progress

PP22 Nearly Done

ON89 + K10 In Progress

K10 Nearly Done

I ended up creating a total of six 1:35 scale tank models out of ten model sets, costing somewhere around $300 and two months of work. My main tools during this endeavor were an xacto knife, a dremel, and glue. I used a few "foreign" bits here and there (the white thing on top of the K10 is a Pepsi bottle cap, for instance), but 99% of it was from the model kits. I think I probably handled somewhere around 5,000 individual parts in the course of assembling these...and I still have stuff left over!

First K10 Illustration.

In the end, it was all worth it once I sat down and drew out the first tank for page 1. It simply wouldn't have been possible without the models.