Worklog

I wanted to do something different from the examples I found online and the suggested colouring patterns found on the box. Given this specific van was produced around 1981, I thought that a full-blown 80s style was due. This is a bit of the collection of work and the selected pattern I decided to use at the top.

I decided to scan the manual and try to apply the pattern, to get an idea of the end result.

it's interesting to see in these old Aoshima kits that they could be converted into RC kits (or maybe just motorised ones, like mini-4WD). Here you can see the battery bay.

and here is the slot for the switch, which I will instead seal off.

Lights and bumpers. I wish I had more time and resources actually to make the front lights correct, currently, they're just two hollow sockets.

Interiors, before doing the flocking of the floors and completing some detailing of the HiFi and TV set.

Flocking and detailing of the interiors done.

Under the suggestion of several people on IG, I've started scribing all the panels for better realism, doing a dark gray primer before moving towards the white primer.

some dry fitting of the bumpers over the white primed body

Finalised the white coat using Tamyia cans.

Finding the right colour for the two strips has been challenging: since I'm yet without an airbrush, I was limited to what the can producers would offer. The only one that was close enough to what I wanted was provided by Montana, and I have to say, while it has a great drying time and coverage, the final result is also extremely coarse, which forced me to spend some considerable time wet sanding it.

All the printed decals after hours spent designing them by hand. I also realised that the outline in the manual was widely inaccurate, so I had to vector-draw the outline from a photo I took of the van.

Now into the step of cutting all the decals into the right shape. There was a bit of guesstimating of sizes, but overall I have to say that they all worked perfectly.

This has been a very tense moment as I had to re-print some parts as they broke as I applied them. The joys of being able to print your own decals!

more decals and more details. Here I notice the 4WD logo on the sides, which is a nice addition. I will then proceed to create it from scratch (the original decal sheet does not provide a black-only version).

The front view.

DO THIS AT YOUR OWN RISK: the intention here was to mask off the windows and do all the black trimmings in one go. The idea looked cool at first and I thought this would have spared me any manual detailing

Unfortunately, this wasn't the case on top of having to anyway go through each of the window trimming one by one, I also noticed that the tape ate a bit of the gloss coat, which probably ended up too thin after the wet sanding.

the only other area that suffered from this shortsighted approach

Finishing off the whole body with all the rest of the details

And now with the rest of the interiors, underbody and wheels.

Before closing down the sleeping lady, a set of shots showcase the detailing done on her. This was probably my second attempt at mini painting.

This is the finished sleeping beauty, ready to be hidden away 😄

The small detail that most might miss. One thing to note is that it was clear that this van is not built for non-Asian people. I was lucky enough that she was crumpled and fit well in the van's rear.

on to work on the rubber dingy. I wanted to have something very 80s, and I thought the classic blue/yellow pattern would have worked well.

Finalised the pattern (I will, later on, add some more details on the ropes using ultra-matte colours.

And here are the dingy and the surf with their decals applied.

I noticed that Aoshima left a lot to the imagination when they provided flippers, a mask and a breathing tube. For as much as I liked the details, I had no idea how to place these in the context of the kit. So I decided to create a duffel bag myself, using FIMO, since I don't own a 3D printer, nor I'm literate enough to work with such software.

Here is the duffel bag with flippers

a close-up of the duffel bag

Some test shots to understand how to put things together.

For these shots I have used another base I'm currently building for another small diorama.

At this point, all the clues pointed at a sandy environment, perhaps the entry to the beach. I used some air-drying modelling clay (again made by FIMO, as that was the only thing I found) to mould the base on top of the display case I had lying around.

once that was dry, I had to apply some plaster to cover some cracks, and then used PVA glue to have the sand stick to the base.

a close-up of the sand effect. As you can noticed it will smoothen a lot the curves, as intended.

after that, I had to paint the sand with some "light Sahara beige" acrylic colour from Montana, to make it more uniform and hide some pink-ish tones underneath.

While I wasn't extremely happy with the sand effect, I had to reconsider it once I took this photo.

To add more consistency to the whole set, I found some signs from the island of Itoman in Japan, so I replicated them in vector format and printed them on white decal paper. The whole thing ended up being weathered as needed.