by Thobe Appel-Christiansen

Being my first kit from the MashinenKrieger series I had planned to build it straight out of the box at first, then the contest came up and I brought up the idea of a SAFS wreck getting lost in heavy fighting during winter time, the machine heavily damaged and the pilot buried dead inside. The military would possibly be very interested in recovering their expensive suits and the remains of their pilots but under certain conditions this may prove to be impossible. This diorama is showing one of these cases; the SAFS has fallen to enemy fire in the wintertime in a barren landscape of trees and masses of snow. It has lain there and rusted right until early summer / late springtime when it is found of some surprised by passer. I thought the cutting difference of woodland like environment in full growth and the remains of wrecked snow-camo military gear would make up a good opposing feeling and tried to catch it in this piece.

The kit was built from the box with some few added PE parts from a WW2 tank kit. I then broke up the chest to make the battle damages and then covered the already painted damaged parts up with parafilm masking tape (you got to get used to it but if you got the trick its really nice for covering up difficult areas). I then airbrushed on a four-color winter camo scheme in cubic areas.

After that I started to weather and shade, which at the end left the camo scheme close to covered up fully. I found out a quite nice technique, which is done by adding bright brown and orange spots with water-based acrylic paints and afterwards rubbing it off again partly with cotton ear-cleaning tips dipped into alcohol. Decals were added and weathering continued layerwise until I thought it would be enough. At last I added some pigments to the different surfaces.

When weathering I found out that a real killer is when surfaces are not totally matte, rust in general roughens up a surface leaving it without any gloss, so glossy surfaces are generally speaking a real "no go" when weathering.

The scene it self is made directly onto the frame (which I covered with masking tape). I cut up pieces of hard foam (styrodur) and checked that the armored suit fit into it. Stones and gravel then covered the styrodur. Then I put on a layer of modelling plaster of paris and added more gravel and bird-sand for texturing. Trees were added beforehand and the rocky edge on the back was cut out directly from the foam and then covered up. The whole thing was painted in different earth tones mainly with drybrushing techniques and static grass was added. The squirrel like creature was made from putty and then painted.

I hope I caught the overall idea of it - the SAFS designs are really top notch I must admit!

Image: Front view

Image: Side

Image: Back

Image: Feet

Image: Head

Image: Damage

Image: Flora

Image: Fauna