Tuesday, June 03, 2008

Death Race

 They're remaking Death Race 2000, now simply Death Race, with Jason Statham taking the role of Frankenstein. This may just be another example of the film industry running out of ideas, but at least the cars they've built for this version look suitably hardcore.

I've been collecting 1:32nd scale car kits for a while with the intention of creating a set of vehicles something like the ones made for Death Race. I think it's time to start work on a few of them so they'll be done by the time the film comes out.

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Wednesday, May 07, 2008

Baikonur and St. Petersburg

 English Russia keeps delivering the goods with cool photo collections. The Baikonur space launch facilities in Kazakhstan, as photographed by a visitor and the darker side of St. Petersburg.

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Sunday, April 27, 2008

More rat rod reference

 The hot rods of Dearborn.

Kustom Kulture.

Jake's Chop Shop.

Rumblers Hot rod hooligans.

100 percent kulture.

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Monday, April 21, 2008

Alternate Soviet navy

 English Russia has photos of planned Soviet helicopter and aircraft carriers that never made it beyond the planning- and display model- stage.

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Friday, April 18, 2008

Rebel Rodz

 I've found a local newsagent with a great selection of magazines that I've not seen anywhere else. I may have to visit once a month to pick up new reads.

This month's mag was Rebel Rodz, dedicated to old school rodz, bikes and tattoos. A great source of inspiration.

Sites mentioned in the mag include-

Chopper Festival.

Festivale de la Gente.

Ink-n-Iron.

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Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Aetheric Mechanics

SCUD, originally uploaded by warrenellis.

WArren Ellis has posted a set of reference images used in his upcoming Aetheric Mechanics graphic novel. They loo like prime materials for Luft '46 subjects.

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Friday, April 11, 2008

Soyuz on the train

 io9 has pictures of a Soyuz rocket being hauled across the desert to its launch site by a diesel train. It might be hard to scale match a model of the rocket (or even find one, I couldn't get a match for "Soyuz" at Hannants) and a Russian train, but think of the diorama possibilities.

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Monday, April 07, 2008

Rebuilding a Sherman tank

 Jalopnik has pictures of one man's project to rebuild a Sherman tank

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Thursday, March 13, 2008

Autorama

 Jalopnik have been to the Detroit Autorama, and have a lot of posts crammed full of inspiration for car modellers.

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Saturday, February 09, 2008

Russian soldiers in Chechnya

 This photoset from English Russia shows Russian troops in less hectic moments during the Chechen conflict.

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Tuesday, January 29, 2008

St. Petersburg reconstruction

 The anniversary of the siege of Leningrad (St. Petersburg) was recently celebrated with a huge reconstruction of the battle featuring authentic uniforms and tanks.

Wikipedia history of St. Petersburg/Leningrad

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Friday, January 18, 2008

Library of Congress photo collection on Flickr

 If you're interested in modelling any American subjects then you might want to check out the Library of Congress feed on Flickr, which is filling up with documentary images, mostly from the start of the twentieth century.

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Wednesday, January 16, 2008

American weapons in the Soviet army

 English Russia has a gallery of American weaponry sent to the USSR during World War 2.

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Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Down on the Street

 Jalopnik has a regular feature called Down On The Street, where old cars on the streets of Alameda, an island in San Francisco bay, are photographed. It just reached its 150th vehicle. Each of these little photo essays has loads of reference, whether for particular vehicles or just weathering and realistic damage.

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GAZ 51 hot rod

 Oh those crazy Russians. The GAZ 51 was a Russian workhorse during teh Second World War. Now one of them is being turned into a custom pickup.

Model Wheels do a GAZ 51 in 1:72nd, if you want to emulate the project.

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Monday, November 05, 2007

Mk 1 Zephyr Zodiac reference pictures

 I've got a 1:76th Ford Zephyr Zodiac Mk 1 model from Classix that may become another Small Scale Custom project. So I'm looking for reference pictures.

Zephyr Zodiac and Consul Convention 1999.

Image from the Cotswold Classic Car Club

A V8 Mk1

No Zephyrs here, but some quite mad Capris and Cortinas.

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Coop goes to the So-Cal Speed Shop

 Coop has a gallery up on Flickr from a visit to one of the most famous customising companies in the world- So-Cal Speed Shop L.A. Open House, 11/3/07

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Wednesday, September 05, 2007

Volksrods

 Volksrods are VWs customised in ways more often associated with hot rods and rat rods. They look like the creations of some sick but brilliant minds and are just begging to be modelled.

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Monday, September 03, 2007

Reader's Rides

 Pictures of hot rods belonging to readers of Hot Rod Gazette. As a number of these are very English it may be hard to get models of them in larger scales. But I have a liking of small scale customs, so I may take inspiration.

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Wednesday, August 15, 2007

Russian photo reference

 English Russia remains a great source of photographs for reference and inspiration.

World War 2 Photos by Dmitri Bal'termants

Military Aircraft Show in Monino. Moscow

Abandoned Trains of the Soviet Era

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Friday, June 22, 2007

A tank from a lake

 Tanks from the Second World War are still being pulled out of the lakes around St. Petersburg. If I remember my history correctly, the city was resupplied across the frozen lakes during the winter phases of the siege and at times the ice broke. The site refers to it as a "BT" tank. You can get BT5 or BT7 tanks in 1:35th scale from Zvezda, or BT5, BT7 or BT2 from Unimodel in 1:72nd. A salvage operation like this would make for an interesting diorama.

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Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Japanese Kei cars

 Kei cars are a class designed to get around Japanese tax and insurance legislation. They're tiny, the light weight making them nippy around town despite their one or two cylinder engines.

Jalopnik drove a trio of kei cars belonging to an American fan, then took anexample of Mazda's first ever four wheeled vehicle to a dealer so they could compare it to the manufacturer's current models.

If you want to model these cute little things, then Arii's Owner's Club range has a number of them, and the three wheeled delivery trucks and other classic Japanese vehicles of the 60s and 70s that you keep seeing in Kung Fu movies.

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Friday, June 08, 2007

Bizarre Russian tanks

 Strange Russian tank designs on English Russia.

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Monday, June 04, 2007

Mad Russian trucks

 Two photo galleries on English Russia-

A scrap yard of mad looking trucks and amphibians.

A part tracked ambulance.

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Friday, May 25, 2007

Ekranoplan

 Jalopnik has video of Ekranoplans, Soviet era transport planes that used the Wing-In-Ground effect to skim mere feet above the waves.

Revell released a model of the A90 ekranoplan.

Remote control WIG effect models.

Alternate history ekranoplan.

An ekranoplan blog.

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Sunday, May 20, 2007

A bundle of reference links

 Whilst going through the archives of Spinneyhead, I've found a few posts and links that might be of interest to modellers-

Fetch!
The Russian dog anti tank mine.

Captured
In the dynamic flow of a battlefield equipment can get lost or captured. A quick trip through captured and repurposed weaponry-
The world of captured planes
Captured Planes
Captured Allied planes (Warning- cheesey beyond belief music, which is a shame because there are some very useful images here.)
A collection of pieces about captured B-17s
Fleet Air Arm planes captured by the Axis
A gallery of tanks captured by the Germans
Modelling a captured Russian KV-2
Israel made good use of captured T54s and T55s and various other vehicles.
Russian tank museum, including many captured tanks.
Captured First World War tanks.
Ships captured by the German Navy.

Test Beds
I've just been to the Museum of Science and Industry and checked out the aviation hall. Interesting stuff-
Avro Lancasters were used as flying test beds for jet engines. Video of the tests is online here.
The Avro 707 isn't quite a flying wing, but I have a soft spot for the delta wing planes such as this and the Vulcan.
A picture of the Hafner Rotachute (more) hiding away in the corner of a painting has given me ideas for another novel way to land assault troops. The Germans used similar devices for spotting from U-Boats.
But the most affecting plane in the whole display is still the tiny Yokosuka OHKA, a suicide jet that was pretty much a desperate last gasp from the Japanese.

Wing and a Prayer
The Me-163 'Komet' was quite an astounding beast. I alluded to a similar plane when the Wasp squadron visited Dreamland (Chapter Three, blink and you miss it). Flight Journal has a long interview with one of the Komet's chief test pilots.
It also has to be remembered that the Germans weren't the only ones experimenting with new and unusual aeroplane designs. The Allies' first jet plane was the Gloster Whittle, a pre-cursor to the Meteor and test bed for jet engines.
The 'Hiller-copter' and Landgraf H-2 were early twin bladed helicopter designs.
America experimented with flying wings in designs such as the XP-56 and XB-35, which I've mentioned many times before, but there were also experiments with gliders along the same lines.
The Brits also experimented with flying wings, as well as canard and tandem wing designs.
Even the Swedes got in on the act with the Saab 21A.

And also- Engines of the Red Army

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Friday, May 11, 2007

Donut Derelicts

 Coop's photostream on Flickr is a great source for hot rod photo reference. The most recent set he' uploaded is of the Donut Derelicts cruise.

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Wednesday, May 09, 2007

More belly tank inspiration

 Hot Rod TV has a short clip on the early history of belly tank racers on the salt flats.

An extract from a history of belly tank racers. This disagrees with the video on one small detail. It says the first tanks used were from Mustangs, before moving onto Lightnings, whilst the video says they went straight to Lightnings.

The Monster Garage TV show made a belly tank racer from an F4 Phantom tank.

It should be possible to find a belly tank from the spares box if you've built enough Second World War era fighters, though it will probably be in a non-traditional scale for car modelling. A 1:48th speedster could be tended to by remodelled air crew, but a 1:72nd one would be tiny- though I guess that makes it more of a challenge.

Update There are belly tank racer models available. This online magazine (pdf) has a feature on one modeller's attempts and the three resulting models.

For more inspiration-



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Thursday, April 26, 2007

CODE Guardian

 CeeGee Studios created an awesome compueter animated short about Nazi super robots (YouTube part 1, Part 2). It got me dreaming up possible propellerpunk (that's my name for it, which I coined for a story called Heavensent, others call it Dieselpunk) battle scene dioramas.

Take the sort of robots and sci-fi subjects available through Hobbylink Japan, kitbash them with second world war era tank and plane parts then set them against some period tanks or ships. To give an idea of the size of the robot you'd really need to do it in a scale such as 1:144, or even smaller. Revell does a 1:200 oil rig, the destruction of which would be an opening scene from the giant robot movie. Mirage does a Polish harbour diorama in 1:400 or the Clyde, circa 1940 in the same scale. In larger scales 1:144 is well supplied. Here's Hannants' list, and that of interesting looking Japanese garage kit company Kami de Koro Koro.

I'm going to be on the lookout for giant robot kits now.

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