Pz.Kpfw. IV D

Silver medal

Awarded: Silver

Users' choice

This gallery has 1.16% of the users' votes.

By: Marcin Czerski

Manufacturer(s): Mirage Hobby

Modifications: New muffers, smoke candles container, additional equipment and a lot of small parts are made from scratch with a plastic card and strip of metal and wire. Many details of the equipment replaced the other parts of different sets of models.

After-market parts: PART PE set, ARMO gun barrel, MarS resin cans, Eureka XXL cables.

Description: Pz.Kpfw. IV D from 4.Kompanie/Pz.Rgt.5, North Africa, Libya 1941. Model painted in entirety Vallejo acrylic paints, chipping and rubbing a dry brush made - emanel Humbrol, weathering, filters, wash - MIG sets. Dirt, mud, dust - MIG pigments and diluted acrylic paints.

Judge 1
Nice work with the PE and the home made upgrades. Some damage on the fenders could be spectacular. About the paintwork. This color is too yellow for me. It can be becouse of the photo, but it's too yellow. Decals are wll applied, and details are well painted too. The weathering is also nice, but some more chips could be useful. You could apply some highlights, shadows, deeper wash, some rainmarks, and a few rusty effects. What could be very spectacular is the dust. You used a very similar color for the dust as the hull has. But if you see photos from the desert, on many of them, there's the dust visible, because the dust has a light grey color. MIG's Pz I is a perfect example for the dusty DAK vehicle. So, your model is well done, but there are still some things you could do on it.
Judge 2
A very nice build with plenty of extra detail to smarten up the already respectable base kit. Paintwork and decals generally look good. The basecoat does seem a little flat, lacking noticable highlighting and the colour is also quite vivid, however this may be a result of the lighting used for the pictures. Weathering is very mixed, the paintchipping is subtle and well executed, I think you could have made more of this technique as it provides an interesting contrast to the monotone basecoat. The mud on the lower hull sides does not look terribly convincing to me and as the first judge mentions a heavy layer of dust might be more appropriate.
Judge 3
Your photos although sharp with a good depth of field are washed out, there are several photo editing programs available -some for free- that can solve this problem with 2 or 3 mouse clicks. The build and your handling of the PE is simply first rate. The paint work is also very good and could be further improved with some subtle streaking, fading and tonal variation to break up the monotone paint scheme. I really like the chipping and scratches they are very subtle and authentic. The weathering is pretty good and could be further improved by making more contrast between the dust colour and paint scheme -and this is not an easy thing to do. Overall a very impressive model, good work.