Japanese builder Moko brings us this awesome model of Gipsy Danger, the humongous alien-fighting war machine in Pacific Rim, Guillermo Del Toro’s high-budget homage to mecha.
Tag Archives: Military
The Battleship Iburi
Although the Battleship Iburi never actually existed, TBB rookie Eínon brings enough skill to the project that is easy to believe that it might have. According to the builder: “This model is the first ship of a new huge diorama that I´m working, with over 20 ships, representing the fictitious Second Naval Battle of Tsushima, between Japan and Russia.” If this model is any indication of the shape of things to come, I look forward to blogging Eínon’s further explorations into “alternative history“.
AH-64 Apache
Tyler Clites (Legohaulic) has taken flight with this lovely piece of airborne eye-candy. The cockpit is especailly well-done but the whole thing exudes sleekness.
In the bunker with Jerry.
Trench warfare is today’s topic in military history and our guest lecturer is BeLgIuM ww2 bUiLdeR, who has just posted a fine example of the genre entitled Red Tree bunker All the boilerplate is present and accounted for: radio room, racks, command and control center, searchlight and of course many weapons and soldiers. According to the builder, the bunker system is not modeled after any one specific location, but rather a representative sampling of many locations. My favorite detail is the decapitated tank turret re-purposed as an anti-tank gun emplacement.
The vast empty wilderness inside your mind...
Whether you’re trekking across the inside of your brain-pan, or just shooting dudes in a covert spy mission, this Inception-themed tracked Hummer by Project Azazel is sure to get you where you need to go. I’ve seen plenty of military Humvees before, but I think this is the first tracked one. The fact that it’s winter camo instead of grey, green, or tan makes it all the more interesting.
Sunday VTOL Roundup
Constant reader, the staff of TBB understands that you crave VTOL conveyances of all shapes and sizes, but you don’t have the time to scour the wretched corners of the internet to find them. With that in mind, please enjoy whatever is left of your Sunday night and allow your spirits to be lifted…vertically…by this crop of talented builders.
Let’s begin with the OspreyDrone 2063 by Cam M.
We’ll stay in the same general neighborhood with the W-09 Wasp by Anto-Nio.
Why not push it even further into the future…or perhaps another reality with The Savage Angel Airship by forrest_john…
…or maybe get small with Paul Cross and his Micro Space Cargo Ship.
More VTOL action after the jump!
The Fabulous Flanker
Way back in the eighties, I bought a book about Soviet combat aircraft that contained two grainy photographs of the Soviet Union’s latest air-superiority fighter: the Su-27, which received the NATO code-name Flanker. At the time, this was very exciting, because the Cold War hadn’t ended yet and very little was known about this fascinating aircraft. That changed only a few years later, when the Berlin Wall fell, the Soviet Union collapsed and the Cold War ended. Russian aircraft manufacturers could no longer rely on large orders from the Soviet Air Force and started offering their most advanced fighters, including the Flanker, to foreign customers. Because of this, an ever growing collection of different versions of the Flanker was regularly displayed at airshows all over the world, often in oddball camouflage schemes and performing jaw-dropping maneuvers.
Everblack, whose F-15 Strike Eagle was featured here earlier this year, has now built a nicely shaped scale model of one of the latest versions on offer, the Su-27SKM. It is a multi-role version of the basic single-seat fighter, intended for export customers. The particular jet he modeled is the demo aircraft used by the manufacturer. It carries an interesting combination of air-to-air and air-to-surface missiles, which is used at airshows to demonstrate the aircraft’s versatility. My favorite feature is the camouflage, which is a faithful reproduction of the white, grey and black color scheme of the demonstrator.
Oribital launch is go!
I see a lot of rockets and spaceships, and a lot of bases and landing pads, but I don’t see cool scenes of things using controlled explosions to escape gravity nearly often enough, and I’m guessing you don’t either. LukeClarenceVan‘s diorama satisfies admirably with what must surely be the most picturesque launchpad in the world. I’m not sure what the backstory is here, but I’m guessing this is the hidden lair of Bond villain.
Brickfair Va 2013 Military highlights
Some of the great models that were on display at Brickfair Virginia have already been blogged here in the last few days. I haven’t posted much of anything recently myself, because I’ve been taking a vacation in the US and have been traveling around since before Brickfair. However, today I have a little time to share some of my favorites from the show. Since the models I took to the event were in the military theme, the military tables were more or less my home for the duration of the show and I’ll highlight some of the builds there for now.
The guys I hung out with the most, Matt Hacker, Evan Melick (Legosim), Corvin Stichert and Aleksander Stein, built a collection of military vehicles, mostly based on existing vehicles, with a few fictional near-future vehicles thrown in for good measure. The quantity was impressive, but it was the quality that impressed me the most. Almost all of the vehicles have working features, such as opening doors and hatches or suspension. Even though they were built by four different people, they all seemed to fit very well together.
As good as these were, the award for best military vehicle went to the M1070 Heavy Equipment Transporter built by Christopher Jenkins (Jenkballs), which is well deserved as far as I am concerned. I saw this model a few months ago and liked it then, although the photo wasn’t all that great. Seeing the vehicle with my own two eyes makes all the difference, however.
The M1070 is the standard heavy hauler for the US military and is used to transport M1 Abrams tanks, for instance. It is not the most common choice of subject, but I like trucks and have long been thinking about building one myself. This model is superbly done, with every detail painstakingly built out of tan elements.
Also on display was a collection of models from the Battle of Gettysburg. This famous Civil War battle took place 150 years ago this year. The ‘Defense of Little Round Top’ diorama, by Gary Brooks (Gary the Procrastinator), won the award in the ‘Best Historic’ category.
Little Round Top is a rocky hill South of Gettysburg. A counterattack by the defending 20th Maine Regiment against Confederate troops was a pivotal moment in the battle. There is nothing I don’t like about this diorama. It’s the sort of model where you keep noticing new things as you turn around it. The landscaping is fantastic. The hill looks muddy and slippery somehow and that is no small feat.
These were just some of the highlights at the show for me. I spent a lot of time meeting other builders and looking at their models. I still have dozens of photographs to go through and will highlight some of the other models that I saw in the next few weeks.
Drone 25
Big Flak Attack
iomedes! makes his triumphant return to the Brothership with the decidedly inconvenient title of “C-EYES – SPAGS : quad 35mm Self-Propelled Anti-aircraft Gun System“. You can’t really appreciate this model without inspecting it from every angle; this is one of the rare cases where the photo of the back-side has more hits and favorites on Flickr than the front. Influenced by legendary artist and scale-modeler Makoto Kabayashi, Iomedes! holds nothing back on this machine of war that comes with his personal guarantee that the SPAGS will keep the skies of your home prefecture clear of enemy war planes.
A big thanks to tipster Blair Archer on Facebook, who was quite correct in his assessment of the model as “strikingly badass“.
Bandits at 8 o’clock!
Air Marshal Jon Hall (Jon Hall18) remains ever vigilant to keep the skies of your home prefecture clear of enemy warbirds. The A-37B Marauder is the latest weapon in the never ending war against Eurasia or is it East Asia?…I always forget. For you purists in the audience giving that camouflage the disapproving skunk-eye, you can rest easy, the builder claims the effect was achieved by cutting up only the most official decals available from our Danish overlords.
