Mad Max Monster Trucks! Final batch painted.

The Client received his package of twelve Monster Trucks yesterday, and he was very pleased (which, of course, makes me very happy). This was a great commission to work on as I was given free rein, allowed to channel my inner George Miller, and create some crazy stuff. A few of the creations have also prompted The Client to adapt the rules for his games at AdeptiCon 2016, which is pretty cool in itself.

Just in case you missed the previous posts, here are some links you might like to check out:
• Building the first batch
• Painting the first batch
• Building the second batch

Included in this batch of trucks are a couple of homages to earlier Mad Max films, but I'll talk about that later.

This farm truck didn't need too much converting, I gave it the flatbed/fighting platform, hand rail, and armor plates on the sides. Once the cultivated rust paint job was added, the armor blended right in.

This truck joined the 'black paintjobs' group, with some scuffing and rusty patches showing through. I chose a desert yellow for the scuffed areas not yet attacked by rust. The rack of spotlights on the top (all originally speakers from the Imperial Guard voxcaster) were painted in a bone/white scheme, and thin cracks were painted across some of the glass fronts with a thinned dark brown.

The old hearse (or coroner's vehicle) just had to get the shiny silver coffin look to it. The doors and hood of this one need to be painted in with thin lines of a very dark grey.

Originally the "Donut Patrol" truck, I wanted to keep this one fairly straightforward, but quite different to the silver car from the first batch (the one with the big pipes). The paintjob turned out to be all important here. The back body (along with the scuffs and streaks all help to accentuate the bright pop of the red and blue lights on the roof of the car.

This car, while not a '59 Chevy BelAir, was the closest we'd come yet to the flashy car from the very first Mad Max film. That meant that adding the fake pipes on the hood, and giving it a red with yellow flames paintjob was pretty much a no brainer. Obviously it's not a copy, but more of an homage to part of Miller's original vision.

The last of the trucks is another homage, a not too subtle nod to the school bus in Mad Max 2 (aka The Road Warrior). All my life I thought that the bus in the film had a front-mounted engine (like this bus does), but when I started my more detailed research I discovered it didn't. The bus in the film has a flat front. So, again, this in an homage ; )

For those of you who have seen the film a ton of times, you might recognize the destination I painted in the front of this bus as the place the "good guys" are headed to, "2,000 miles from here. Fresh water, plenty of sunshine. Nothing to do but breathe!"

And as The Client had been very enthusiastic and generous, I decided to add in this little bonus. I decided to give his trucks a rabbit to chase. It was a simple wheel swap on a smaller muscle car I picked up a while ago, and then a simple but effective paintjob: black with some rusting along the lower panels.

I topped it off with a quick Immortal Joe logo, just so everyone was reminded of who is in charge.

It's about 150 days until AdeptiCon, but only three weeks until the tickets go live. Make sure you mark your calendars for November 23rd. Click HERE for the preliminary event listing : )

Cheers
Dave

Mad Max Monster Trucks - Part 4

And here we are, with the penultimate post on the Mad Max Monster Trucks. Something I forgot to mention in the first construction post was the strangeness involved in creating Fury Road versions of monster trucks. 

With a regular car, there are plenty of things you can do to "Mad Max" it up. You can switch out the wheels, you can raise the suspension, you can add extra wheels, you can add weapons, you can add thundersticks, you can enhance the look of the engines with superchargers, etc etc etc.

When it comes to these monster trucks, it was much more difficult. Obviously the wheels are what they are. There's no raising the truck up any further. My client didn't need weapons or thundersticks. So the rams and the fighting platforms and armor plates became the real focus for conversion. 

Anyway, let's take a look at the second batch of six trucks : )

As this truck had a hearse/coroners wagon on top, I thought it would be fun to use running boards instead of a fighting platform in the back. Rather than go for a log handrail on both sides, I chose to smaller handles on each side, imagining four pallbearers hanging on to the monster truck coffin.

The final two reminded me of other vehicles in the Mad Max movie series, so a little conversion work, and some extra effort in the paint jobs (see next post) helped to have them serve as a broader homage to George Miller's grand vision.

Cheers
Dave

Mad Max Monster Trucks - Part 3

In yesterday's post I presented the construction photos for the first batch of Monster Trucks that will be making an appearance at AdeptiCon next year. Now I'm ready to show off the finished goods : )

Note: I actually finished painting these last week, I'm not that fast.

When it came down to painting up the trucks in the Mad Max: Fury Road style, I had a fairly limited palette to work with. With the exception of a handful of vehicles, the cars and trucks of MM:FR are either silver (polished metal or chrome spray), black, or cultivated rust. This first body has the shape of a '70s muscle car, so I decided to go for the shiny (and chrome) look like the re-worked Interceptor (aka Razor Cola). This car is the one with perhaps the smallest fighting platform area, tucked away between the exhaust pipes.

When I was converting this armored truck, I decided to get some online inspiration and Googled "armored truck" images. One of the first to pop up was this armored police van which matches the truck VERY closely, so that supplied the color scheme (with additional scratches and rust streaks, of course).

When I first started on this project, someone asked if I could include a truck painted in a similar fashion to my Bullet Farm Truck. I couldn't resist, so the Grave Digger truck got the teal and rust treatment. The rust on the body is several layers of sponging, from a dark brown through to a bright orange.

The fighting platform in the back of this one is sloped and all kinds of rusted.

This truck got the "cultivated rust" look, much like the Elvis car from MM:FR. Rather than just sponge the top of the car, I took the sponges all over the body, and spent a little extra time afterwards shading some of the panels back with brown and black washes.

This truck initial reminded me a lot of the Bigfoot truck from the movies, for obvious reasons. So, I decided to paint it up in the shiny style, offsetting that with some rich, rusty orange patches.

And finally (for this batch at least) I went for one of the black vehicles. I added scratches and small rusted patches around the truck, as plain black would have been a bit boring. In the end, the highlighting and weathering really give the matte black some great depth.

I hope you like these paintjobs. Next up, the construction of the second six trucks : )

Cheers
Dave

Mad Max Monster Trucks - Part 2

I teased you all with a few shots of some Monster Trucks earlier in the month. Well I now have all of the first batch of trucks finished, and I am working on a second batch. I figured that I'd roll them out over the course of a few posts, so you can see the build stage and the finished pieces.

"The Client" (as he likes to be called) will be running some gladiatorial arena games at AdeptiCon next year, with up to six trucks at a time taking to "the pit". At the start of the project, we weren't 100% certain about the way we would go with the rams, so The Client let me have free rein to come up with something fun. I put together three different styles of ram, each of which will have different rules in the games. The first of these rams is the old-timey, cow-catcher type of scoop from the days of steam-powered locomotives. 

The second style is designed as more of a car-tipper. The angled rail goes in under the vehicle, which is then forced up along the steel beam and eventually the car tips over.

And finally, a three-pronged penetrator. This trident-style ram is designed to cause maximum damage to the worky bits of an enemy vehicle.

As you will see throughout the following photos, I also tried to add a fighting platform of some sort with a handrail the imaginary Warboys could be hanging on to as the monster truck races to war!

The bodies of the vehicles were kept separate from the chassis to make things easier when it came time to paint them.

The car-tipper was built separately, as it needed to contact both the chassis and body. Once all pieces were painted, the car-tipper was glued into place.

I'll post the paintjobs on these six trucks next time. I hope you like them so far.

Cheers
Dave