Heavy Gear Blitz Diorama – part 6.
I made this diorama over 5-6 months (20-25 hours of work in total) in 2022.
In the following articles, I will cover the production thematically through the following units:
• Painting, camouflage and weathering on figures (robots and trucks)
• Manufacturing and installation of parachutes
• Making the base
• Adding Texture
• Painting of palm trees - already described here.
• Additional vegetation
• Adding narrative details to the diorama (foot with rocket launcher, landing ramp on the plane, camouflage tarp on the trucks).
Adding narrative details to the diorama (pedestrian with rocket launcher, landing ramp on plane, camouflage tarp on trucks, smoke trails of anti-missile protection, jets on plane exhausts)
These details were not done at the same time, but rather over a long period of time, so I will describe them in chronological order. The landing ramp on the plane is made of plasticard, which I cut one early autumn weekend afternoon with plastic cutters and a scalpel, an experience that I would not repeat in this way, but I would buy myself an honest ultrasonic or similar apparatus for tailoring and cutting such hard and solid material, no matter what the price is:
I ordered the infantry with the rocket launcher along with the trucks at the end of November 2022. Since this is a 12-14mm tall miniature, I went for a fairly simple paint scheme. As with the robo and the truck, I put an olive green base color on the black primer, then Athonian Camoshade shading, and highlighting the jagged edges with a lighter olive green color. Then my personal friend and friend of the Association, Zlatko Grom, bought the STL files from the manufacturer Deadly Print Studio and printed a scaled rocket with a smoke trail in transparent resin.
I additionally colored that trail by using diluted tones of yellow, orange and red, in order to achieve the impression that the rocket is leaving behind a glowing trail.
For the cargo on the trucks, I used the stl file of the cargo box from the thingiverse page, and had it printed in the necessary dimensions and cut at Printing & Dragons. I then used cheesecloth dipped in a mixture of watered-down, yellowish-brown paint, which I attached to the trucks with superglue:
I darkened the gauze attached in this way with Agrax Earthshade and Nuln Oil washes from Citadel, and they fit quite well into the rainforest environment with the color:
At the very end, a day before the deadline for submitting photos of exhibits to the competition from the game manufacturer, I received 3d printed smoke trails, for which I bought an STL file at cults 3d:
The explosions on top of the smoke trails are from Deadly Print Studio, also a purchased STL file. Some fellow modelers, as well as my little one, think that the smoke trails, together with the orange-yellow explosions, end up looking like chicken or duck legs, but I didn't have the patience to add some extra shadows at the end, and the choice of colors for the smoke could be better, because the light gray of the Liquitex spray I used and the white are quite similar from a photographing distance. As for the jets on the plane's exhaust, they were printed for me by Zlatko Grom earlier in the year, and the STL file is also from Deadly Print Studio, as are the rockets with the smoke trail, and the explosions on the tops of the smoke trails:
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Science behind Acrylic Paints
- Binders (eng. resin) – form a film – in our case probably pure acrylates, I suspect they are styrene acrylates.
- Fillers – in addition to adding volume to the paint, they also affect the viscosity, coverage and appearance of the dry film
- Pigments – the main division is into organic pigments and inorganic pigments. Inorganic ones are more covering but have less vivid shades, while organic ones are often quite poorly covering (yellow for example) but their shades are vivid and bright
Additives:
- Anti-foam
- Rheological modifiers – affect the behavior of wet paint on the substrate (e.g. spillage) and the behavior of the paint when a force is applied to it (brush, roller, spray, airbrush). Rheological modifiers also include thickeners that affect the viscosity of the paint.
- Dispersants – envelop pigment and filler particles and prevent their agglomeration during standing. Good dispersion of pigment and filler affects the coverage and uniform appearance of the dry film. There are a bunch more but I won't go into too much detail
- Solvent – in this case water.
Contrast paints and speed paints – high pigment content, but not so much that it causes high coverage. They are formulated to spread, not to stay where you put them. The result of spreading is that the paint collects in the recesses, where a thicker film of paint remains than on the protruding parts of the miniature. Where the film of paint is thicker (the recesses), the shade of the contrast paint is more pronounced, unlike on the protruding parts where the film is thinner, which is why the shade is then influenced by the color of the substrate.
Composition:
- Binders
- Pigments
- Additives – all listed above + surfactants that reduce the surface tension of the wet paint film, which is why it flows
- solvent
- I would say they do not contain fillers, or contain very, very little of them
Washes – similar in formulation and behavior to contrast agents, only they have a much lower proportion of pigments, certainly no fillers, a higher proportion of surfactants, lower viscosity, and probably less binders.
If we want to greatly dilute acrylic paint or contrast, it is better to use a product intended for this purpose from the manufacturer of that paint rather than water, because it contains all the necessary amount of binders and additives for that paint to retain its properties.
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U ovom članku, naša Dunja nam otkriva znanost iza akrilnih boja.
Akrilne boje – visoki udio pigmenta i dobra pokrivnost. Ako su dobro formulirane ostaju tamo gdje ih naneseš, ne ostavljaju „brush marks“ i suše se dovoljno sporo da stigneš napravit što želiš na minijaturi a opet dovoljno brzo.
Sastav:
- Veziva (eng. resin) – formiraju film – u našem slučaju vjerojatno čisti akrilati, sumnjam da su stiren akrilati.
- Punila – osim što dodaju volumen boji utječu i na viskoznost, pokrivnost i izgled suhog filma
- Pigmenti – glavna podjela je na organske pigmente i anorganske pigmente. Anorganski su više pokrivni ali manje živih nijansi, dok su organski često dosta loše pokrivni (žuti npr) ali zato su im nijanse žive i jarke
Aditivi:
- Protiv pjene
- Reološki modifikatori – utječu na ponašanje mokre boje na podlozi (npr razlijevanje) i na ponašanje boje dok na nju djeluje sila (kist, valjak, sprej, airbrush). Pod reološke modifikatore spadaju i ugušćivači koji utječu na viskozitet boje.
- Dispergatori – obavijaju čestice pigmenata i punila i sprječavaju aglomeraciju istih stajanjem. Dobra dispergiranost pigmenta i punila utječe na pokrivnost i ujednačen izgled suhog filma.
- Ima ih još hrpa ali neću toliko u detalje
- Otapalo – u ovom slučaju voda.
Kontrastice i speed paints – visoki udio pigmenta, ali ne toliki da uzrokuje visoku pokrivnost. Formulirane su da se razlijevaju, a ne da ostaju tamo gdje ih staviš. Posljedica razlijevanja je skupljanje boje u udubine gdje onda ostane deblji film boje nego na isturenim dijelovima minijature. Tamo gdje je film boje deblji (udubine) nijansa kontrastice izraženija, za razliku od isturenih dijelova na kojima je film tanji zbog čega na nijansu onda utječe boja podloge.
Sastav:
- Veziva
- Pigmenti
- Aditivi – svi nabrojani gore +
- surfakanti koji smanjuju površinsku napetost mokrog filma boje zbog čega i dolazi do razlijevanja
- otapalo
- rekla bih da ne sadrže punila, ili ih sadrže vrlo vrlo malo
Washevi – po principu formuliranja i ponašanju slični kontrasticama, samo imaju puno manji udio pigmenata, sigurno ne sadrže punila, veći udio surfakanata, manji viskozitet i vjerojatno manje veziva.
Ako želimo jako razrijediti akrilnu boju ili kontrasticu bolje je koristiti za to predviđen proizvod od proizvođača te boje nego vodu, jer sadrži svu potrebnu količinu veziva i aditiva kako bi ta boja zadržala svoja svojstva.
" ["created"]=> string(19) "2025-11-20 13:03:37" ["modified"]=> string(19) "2025-11-20 13:03:37" } ["Member"]=> array(10) { ["id"]=> string(2) "64" ["group_id"]=> string(1) "1" ["first_name"]=> string(9) "Krunoslav" ["last_name"]=> string(8) "Belinić" ["first_name_mask"]=> string(9) "krunoslav" ["last_name_mask"]=> string(7) "belinic" ["username"]=> string(5) "Kruno" ["password"]=> string(40) "eb3fda45fbec0258e90d809803b10491c548b22f" ["born"]=> string(19) "2015-01-18 09:19:00" ["created"]=> string(19) "2015-01-18 09:20:39" } } Krunoslav Belinić, 20th November 2025 - We attended: ModelMania 2025 Marko Paunović, 5th November 2025
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