TANK UP (8)

By: Tony Leone
November 27, 2018

HILOBROW friend Tony Leone is not only an award-winning graphic designer, he’s an award-winning model tank builder, too. HILOBROW is pleased to present a series showcasing ten of his favorite builds.

MATILDA MK III/IV, DEFIANCE

The Matilda was an early-WW2 British tank, extremely well-armored for the period. The Matilda saw service in Europe, but earned its reputation in the North African campaign. It was impervious to many German anti-tank guns of the time and earned the moniker “the queen of the desert.”

Here we see Tamiya’s Matilda MK III/IV built as “Defiance” from 4RTR (Royal Tank Regiment), North Africa. I received this kit as a Secret Santa gift from a good pal a couple of years ago.

Built primarily out of the box, the only additions were various scratch-built details added to the turret — searchlight handles and lens, smoke discharger wires, antenna mount details and wiring, and various tie-downs. I didn’t include the external fuel drum that comes with the kit, as my research determined that the fuel drums only appeared on later variants. Defiance would have had a rack containing a series of water bins (called a flimsy) hanging off the rear deck instead.

I considered an after-market purchase for the water bins, but opted instead to maintain the momentum on the my progress. It’s all too easy for a model to stall out completely, due to some detail hangup. When this happens and a model ends up sitting on a shelf half-finished, it becomes what’s know by modelers as a “shelfqueen.” I’m always balancing possible aftermarket add-ons with the potential for a stalled build.

These days I try to give myself one major challenge or goal per model — this one was the dazzling Caunter camo scheme. With a little research and some crafty masking, the painting task went more smoothly than I had anticipated — it just took a lot of tape! As a designer and type nerd by trade, I quite like the contrast of the huge bold condensed number four against the lines of the Caunter scheme.

The figures are from the kit, although the heads have been replaced with those from an Ultracast set I picked up on a whim several years ago. The heads are little large for the bodies, but there’s something about the quirky exaggeration that I find charming.

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TANK UP (8)

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