Toy conversion: M113 APC

[Christian]

Hi all,

I bought the following tank in a bag of plastic toy soldiers for about $2.00. Had it sitting around for a while until I had some ideas to bulk it up and finish it off. Namely, the armour on the sides. That's made out of circuit board.

Anyway, aside from being something on the large side, I'm not sure if it needs anything else to finish it off? Decals or something? Not sure. Maybe some mud splatter?

I'd love some feedback... some WIP pics below, next to some German marines from LAM:







The idea was to give it a "lived in" look.

What I had to start with is below... Looks a little big to me?

[Westfalia Chris]

It does indeed appear to be a bit on the big side - 1/35, I guess? I had one converted as a Chaos tank many years back and suffered from the same problem.

I wonder if you could add a suitable tank commander (and maybe a driver) to give it some more scale. The "problem", if you want to call it like that, would possibly be that the M113 is so instantly recognizable.

IIRC, Ironworker did a nice job of "downscaling" a Piranha toy by adding anti-gravity banks in place of the wheels.

Paintjob is nice and dusty, though, and it would be a shame to spoil that.

[Christian]

Thanks for that, Chris. I'll track down some of Ironworker's stuff. I guess the giveaway as to it's scale is that the tracks clamped to the front are actually from a 1/35 Marder kit! Next to more heroically proportioned figures it isn't so bad, but it's still rather big!

I might even try to pass it off as a historical model Maybe in a diorama or something.

[Bergil]

No complaints from me, it looks great.

[Christian]

Thanks, Bergil!

What I've decided to do is go with the 1/35th scale of the vehicle and get some figures to go with it! Grabbed a box of these for $13.00...



While I don't want to get too period specific, I think these are a good match. My plan is to give each of the figures plenty of attention, convert a few bits and bobs so they could be inserted into a range of scenarios as contractors or mercenaries... anything from modern conflicts to post-apoc. I don't have any grand plans just yet, but I'll do some more updating in here as I go ahead

Just so happens I bought a copy of Brink of Battle for small-scale skirmishes... and another project is born 

[area23]

Great. I have the same toy but I never got to making something satisfying with it.
It's about the same size as a warhammer rhino tank and looks fine with space marines and similar sized figs.

[Christian]

Yes, embarrassingly enough I've put some 1/35 figures next to it and they look rather big. I think the perspective of the size comparison shot gives the wring impression.

More pics coming to show you what I mean

[Doomsdave]

Nice work.  I have converted several of these same tanks.  I posted as Sister of Battle convo on here some time ago.  Yours looks convincingly modern/realistic.  I think they size well enough, it's probably down to the angle of your pic.