Ah yes the clip of that thing spinning out of control is priceless...when Churchill said they’d fight them on the beaches he clearly meant the Panjandrum’s crew vs their own equipment. I think the Kugelpanzer would have the edge, although I’m not sure how it was ever going to deploy with no weapon – a phalanx of them squashing the enemy in some kind of mass-pinball attack? Presumably the Panjan’s defence would be to barge the Kugels over onto their sides...that’s an unusual image, a bunch of them slowly rotating horizontally on the battlefield with their occupants dizzied to death

But back to Susie's rehab locomotion - this looks far more practical, Kopczynski’s...er... ground-breaking Walking Wheel design from 1949:

And noooow, in opposite corners ... Kugelpanzeeeer!🥊 ... versuuuus ... Panjandruuuum!🥊 ... 🛎 Ding!



No animals allowed on the beach, please!

—mike

It’s OK Mike (F) I’ve already packed away my workshop (sob) & the carving knife just won’t cut it. And Mike (K) yeah I’ve been looking at rehab vehicles and I think I’ve found the perfect solution...



...I think this Kugelpanzer should just fit in the Lift, maybe have to widen some apartment doors, but great all-terrain potential too so we can still go bush-walking and even with a dab of sealant here & there surfing too

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCqYALIc4jU

Lol!

Tim! ... Step awaaay from the X-Acto knife and the CA. Let the doctors handle it! 😷

—mike

Tim, I have to admit I love what you have done and are still doing - keep it up!

I guess you wife is going to be wheeling around on one of those one legged bicycles that you kneel on. Hope the healing goes quickly. If only I could "retouch" her achilles with Photoshop - that could fix her up real quick.

Thanks Dave, positive review very much appreciated! It was quite a shambolic series of never-ending back-lot scenes & trailers until Mike K came on board & solved the production issues. You should see the two images he’s just sent back to me for Seq 2 – good-but-deeply-flawed turned into beauties, coming to a screen near you next week. Susie says thanks too - more kisses blowing around, should I worry?

Outstanding beginnings Tim! I went back thru the photos again and its almost impossible to tell the canopy's been "touched". Mike you're the man!
Aaand you guys get my vote(s) for best adapted screenplay (pun intended ).
Oh WTH: best foreign film, best visual effects, best animated short, and naturally best film editing - hands down.

Big BRAVISIMO for you dude, thanks for your dedication to finish this one, I know this is a labor of love.

Regards Dave

...and good luck w/ the Mrs' operation too!

Hey Mike (K) I thought it was just me – I switched the .pngs to .jpgs such as 1-4, possibly as a result it’s a teeny bit blurry compared to your/my master (on my screen anyway) but it does seem more luminous - fantastic job yourself! Viewers should know that my shoddy work on various parts of the canopy (naturally I blame Hasegawa) has been superbly and undetectably corrected by Mike, any other faults you see are all mine. And to be fair the kit was hugely enjoyable to build & paint, all they really missed was some fine detail on the gun pods

Tim the photos look even brighter and better than they did when they were "visiting" on my computer. Fantastic, Great Job!
Keep 'em coming!
More, more!

Thanks Mike – haha well the other 50% of the time it’s supposed to be SWMO! Susie says you’re very kind...but I ain’t blowin’ you her kisses. They’re detaching an Achilles, reshaping the bone & er gluing it back on - I say Araldite. Glad you liked In-grid, your riposte rings bells - isn’t it similar to what’s still playing pending the Supremes return...?

Here’s the other 3 selections of Rudel & wingman flapping around looking for targets of opportunity, including my personal favo*rite 1-4

G'day Tim, and SWMBO,
Here's wishing for a speedy recovery.🤒

The latest photo installments look better than great, they look foe' real!!! Brilliant collaboration, guys! And mercy buckets for another fine musical quiz.🤔 Thank God and geeks for Google Translate!💡🤣

We await your return, so until then ... Hit it boys! ... 🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶... 🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶...

Cheers!🍺
—mike

Finally I’m DONE, ignoring the weather forecast and lucking out over two intense days this week to shoot Sequences 3 & 4 - six video clips & 85 stills all to be boiled down to a handful of final images. I had a blast...or two...and not a moment too soon, my wife’s about to have an urgent foot operation that forces us to rapidly/temporarily decamp to an apartment with full wheelchair access for 6 to 9 months. It’s not a dio-friendly pad so the enforced sabbatical starts right now, packing already underway.

Provisionally there are around 40 images in total but Post Prod’s stretched & fits pics in when time allows, so we’re some way off a Photo Feature...in fact it’s just too many for a PF. So in a somewhat rushed decision here’s the deal – comic strip. I’ll periodically post photos in this thread, moving through the storyline to completion hopefully before Xmas. Inevitably some will be, or resemble, test shots posted earlier - can’t be helped if I couldn’t do any better. Depending on how it pans out there may be room for a small group of monochromes of unseen + best re-cropped for a New Year Feature.

Grateful thanks to Mike Koenig/165thspc for helping on this project, a Master Photoshopper who saved a number of good-but-compromised images from oblivion & carefully tweaked others. I’ll duly credit those modified images primarily because he deserves it of course, and also because purists might want to know by definition that the other pictures are “as shot”. Modifications were typically for prop-spin/suspension lines but he also magicked away my more glaring constructional/photographic defects.

The storyline was set up in the first couple of pages of this thread so lights down & on with the show. Thanks for staying with me this long, I’m too beat to come up with a killer track involving vehicles so...here’s a jolly ditty from the dark side instead, interpret as you like

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vb5XXmGqYTY

Put me down for p1 and m3 , ......... cool works , ...... no pun intended .

Hmmm...?

Hmmm 🤔 ... There’s sure to be a firey outcome for those ”drums,”
💥💥...💥… 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

—mike

Cool !! Nice demo and the truck with its' damaged cargo looks the part as well.
J

Now addressing some burning issues with the convoy too, such as...











https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmEEMd5CQ0c

Glad you guys like the flame thrower photo.

One year as part of the big annual Memorial Day public event at the Patton Museum at Ft. Knox they brought in a Hollywood special effects person who's "thing" was flame throwers. He rigged up one to replace the co-driver machine gun in the Sherman and then also had a restored backpack unit that he demoed. I was lucky enough to get photos of both.

Holy KFC Mike! That’s superb, I had a feeling your er team was fryin’ the bytes on that as a side-order. Many thanks, it’s not part of the GAZ convoy but I’m reconsidering those old images sitting on the...wait for it...back-burner...maybe they’ll rise phoenix-like from the ashes..I know I really need help, it’s a sickness. (Copy that, will resend the first 3 Seq 2 images)

El Sticko! (sorry, having seen Toy Story 1 again after a long hiatus I had to see TS2 too, Spanish-speaking El Buzzo still guaranteed to render me helpless for several minutes) glad to hear you escaped the worst of that calamity - JR registered concern a week or more ago in either his or your blog & the silence was getting louder. I know we sent some fire-fighters over, hopefully they’ve helped & all got medals along with your guys. They may have to reciprocate after Xmas, preventive back-burning over the past months here will be nixed by the current rain-dump, the last thing we needed was major growth in Springtime ahead of a probably dry summer.

PS go to bed guys, it’s way past your bedtime if it’s 14.40hrs here!

Wow Tim! You and Mike make a strong combo!! Thanks for all the updates - fun to see! As for the rain, we are waiting for it here - wet streets in the AM last week, but no real rain yet! There were some big wildfires here a few weeks back - I live about 60 miles from the fire - but the air was thick with smoke for a couple of weeks - the rain did freshen the place up - ash was thick. Made for a smoky office and home so not good for work or building models!

Back on point - eh-hem...thanks for showing lots of your process - really interesting!

Cheers
Nick

Tim other photos not received. - Mike K.

Thanks guys, slowly slowly coming together – Mike K likes the spent shells too (possibly because he doesn’t need to p/shop ‘em) - I was lamenting I’d made a bunch but that they’d never be seen strewn on the floor of the Quad, until I had a rare moment of...Clarity

Nice screen grabs for sure. I love the cascading spent shells
J

G’day Tim,

That last pic had me fooled for sure — thought it was clipped from a newsreel! — maybe because I’d only gotten halfway through my morning cup o’ jarvee ☕️ ... naw, you’re just good ... reeeally good!


I would never lay claim to such a rediculous thought. The only YAMAHA I could ever handle (barely, at that!) had two wheels and a throttle! Lol!

Cheers! ☕️
—mike

Ho hum – Rain for 10 of the next 11 days, great news for flora & water-resource management but not me. At least by the time it’s over the jacarandas should have shed their flowers (beautiful as they are) and made with the standard green stuff. So, awaiting a reliable forecast for 3 straight semi-perfect days to shoot Sequences 3 & 4, a progressively more complicated outdoor set I don’t want to dissemble every evening, or risk getting wet or blown away overnight. No tent or canopy can be secured well enough out there so 15 + 24 + 15 consecutive becalmed hours required.

Meanwhile I’ve re-opened Seq 2 to add some extra narrative images – here’s some over-cropped mono-thumbs below from the past week that didn’t make the cut...







...and some virtuoso Waiting music for your entertainment. If you thought you could play the piano...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXhcplwkATo