Tamiya T-55
Chernarussian Movement of the Red Star

This was my first tank and is a fictional T-55 based on the Chernarussian Movement of the Red Star armor from Arma2. I randomly decided to try armor modeling, having not really touched a model since being a kid and turning out some truly horrific looking planes as a kid in all of their hand-painted glory.

Since I wanted to play around with the weathering and heavily faded and chipped paint, to try my lucky with things like hairspray chipping and using mud and dirt effects, as well as things like using oil paints for weathering, I thought the ChDKZ tank would be a great place to start. In the game they were meant to be a sort of militia with Russian backing, so they often used old and outdated equipment and would be operating without much financial support to keep things running. They had a really unique camo pattern that involved these tan/yellow stripes applied in this zig zag pattern all over the tank, and then red ID strikes that were what I thought made the camo pattern really unique, to help identify them as friendlies for Russian forces who might be operating alongside of them.

The Tamiya kit went together really easily, with a lot of great fit. It also came with an Aber photoetch set and metal barrel, which was largely wasted on me, since I didn't have any experience with PE and was hesitant to use a lot of the included parts, since they required some pretty complicated bends and knife work on the model itself. I did use some of them, but outside of the metal barrel and a few random parts, I didn't use as much as I would have liked to in the end, but it was still a really fun first dive into the armored modeling world. The Aber kit had a ton of detailed parts, and would have been a great addition. Maybe someday I'll grab another T-55 and do it all over again to see how much further I've come in my skills...or be shocked at how little progress I've made.

I didn't take as many pictures as I should have, but I will try and upload all of the ones I did capture.