Tagged: finishing that ZH

DB says: Its about time I finished off that ZH...

A while back I stumbled upon AA654's photostream on Flickr, which now that I type this, makes me wonder what we ever did before Al Gore invented the world wide internets. I never used to be able to pick up this sort of thing on the wireless.

AA654 (a modeler I'm betting) has some really neat side-on detail pics of wagons in 'real-life' rather than 'ex-works' condition, and I hope he (or she (but he looks like a he)) doesn't mind if I borrow a few of them for this blog post and a ZH or two. I know that most modelers refuse on principle (or principal if you are a headmaster) to graffiti up their stuff, preferring to support up-and-coming taggers by knifing them, but the unfortunate reality is that most of the ZHs seem to carry unofficial paint schemes, and that's what I had in mind for this one. Being open minded and all. And I left my bayonet in my other trousers.

A little copying and pasting later had me printing a few ZH sides out, figuring this would make finishing the model super easy with a single decal containing Tranz Link logos plus graffiti plus built-in weathering. Ta-da:


Well, that looks like shite doesn't it. While the ALPS printers are pretty good at printing vector-drawings of logos and things onto decals, they're not that good at doing full-colour bitmappy style prints (remember my Kiwirail logo on the front of DX5293?)

After a bit of internet sleuthing, it seems that this dotty pixelated gritty grottiness is just the way things are with this printer and/or the XP drivers. So plan B had me thinking about removing the weathering from the pictures (which was where the graininess was showing up most) and just hanging onto the graffiti/logos. And then later I could weather over the top of them.

So after an afternoon at a bar eating nachos, drinking mimosas, watching sports I don't understand ("Hey, that was a forward pass!") and playing in Photoshop I was left with:

Hmmm, that looks a bit more promising. Which is a good thing as I'm out of decal paper...

Straight outta the South Auckland paint booth

And a little weathering later:

Yes, I know, there are different wagon numbers on each side for variety. I washed some brown on the ends and dark browny/back on the underbits, including the very bottom of the doors and then sprayed some 'dirt' on the top and sides.

The sprayed stuff probably should be a little less red and a bit yellower next time; I need to get into the beautifully lasered handgrabs on the door sides with some dark wash; and I might reapply some of the graffiti decals over the weathering if I can be bothered, to make it look fresh.
So the rating still stands: the laser cut ZH, while being a little scary and requiring some post-melt remediation to ends and unders, builds up into a very nice model for those into the modern scene.

Now to crank out a few more...

Send Evan some money to get one in its current state. If I have any unused decals leftover, I'll offer them up on the blog and/or nz120.org classifieds.