Andy T's Bandai 1/48 AT-ST

[Waspie]

So sorry to hear of your wife's distressing news. I can empathise mate. Went down the worry road some years back but with a happier prognosis. No surgery or treatment required. Best wishes to you both.

[Tworrs]

Sorry about the not so good news Andy, all the best to Zoë in the treatment.
Hang in there.

[Andy T]

Thanks again for your support guys.

Back to brighter things - on with the build :smiling3:

I've framed the foam in balsa, cut oversize for now. I'll trim it once I have the basing material down.

I've also been trying my hand at a pine tree:

[Jack L]

Thanks Tim. It's hard to put a positive spin on it, and to be fair we're still in limbo

Last Wednesday we found out that my wife has breast cancer, but the extent was unclear. An MRI on Friday was supposed to address that but today's results have produced more questions than answers, as they found additional "indeterminate" areas.

What we do know is that they are confident the diagnosed areas are treatable with surgery / radio / chemotherapy, but they can't speak for the newly discovered masses until they've run further tests.

So more waiting & wondering, with everything crossed.

Sorry to put this here but since I blurted out my earlier post I thought I better had. We haven't even told family yet so had to get it off my chest somehow!

Awful news Andy, I can't believe the amount of people I know at the moment going through breast cancer treatment. However, thankfully, all have beaten it!

[Mr Bowcat]

Sorry to hear your news mate, best of luck.

[The Smythe Meister]

Hi Andy, just had a look in after a busy few days and saw your bad news! :sad-face:
So sorry to hear about Zoe, obviously our thoughts are with you from down in Devon. Here's to a full and swift recovery mate.
All the VERY best,Andy,and Rach.

[vizenz]

I'm so sorry to hear your bad news. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that everything will be fine again quickly.

[Andy T]

Thanks again for all your support everyone.

I (tried to) apply some sculptamold type material yesterday but I reckon it must have expired. Despite a good shake of the bag then a thorough mixing with water, some parts set almost instantly as lumps, whereas other parts are still quite sloppy this morning.

That meant any kind of sculpting or shaping was a bit haphazard, and pressing the various elements into it a non-starter. I'd even made a stamp so that I could form "footsteps" but that didn't really work in the material. .

I'll give this some time in the sun to (hopefully) dry out, and go over it with something else.





I've also purchased this bag of cheap plastic palm trees. Removing the trunks and adding some paint should produce decent fern looking foliage:

[Andy T]

I've got the first round of colours on. Well, 50 shades of (German) grey:

[scottie3158]

Andy sending our very best wishes to you and the Mrs. I know it is difficult but try and stay positive take care mate. On a happier note the build is looking very impressive.

[Andy T]

Thanks Paul. They've managed to squeeze her in for further tests on Wednesday.


In between painting the AT-ST I've given the base a quick background coat of grey and have started building up the layers of ground cover:

[Andy T]

I've started to weather this with some chips & scratches, a pin wash and some dry brushing:







The little ones have had a light coat of Mr Primer Surfacer:

[Tim Marlow]

This is looking good Andy. Great job.

[scottie3158]

Andy the ground work looks superb.

[Andy T]

Thanks Tim and Paul, I'm happy with how it's going so far.

My pine tree experiment came out looking a bit pathetic but I'm trying something else. Hopefully there will be plenty of lush vegetation over the top of this ground cover for the teddy bears to hide amongst.