"Das letzte Gericht" - Final Pictures

What-If 1947 Diorama. "Das letzte Gericht"

After 8 month and a few hundred hours of work I´m now finally able to present the finished pictures to you. Many of you were probably following the progress so far and some were even supporting me. I would like to thank you first for taking part!

The diorama features a custom-made E-100 which is a combination of the old Dragon 1:35 hull and the newer Trumpeter turret. The assembled vehicle was modified with a lot of additional parts. 
The diorama is fully made from scratch; It shows a half destroyed factory in Kassel 1947. There is of course no reference available and everything was assumed and made up. 

Meanwhile it was features in quite a few magazines (Art of Modelling, Model Time, Hobbyworld, Scale Military Modeller International, Polish Super Model and so on)  and I hope you like it to 

Thanks for looking!

Blitz built -> Out of the box in under 12 hours - Part 2

Hey guys!

Sorry for my long absence - but in the meanwhile I´m proud to announce the birth of my first son "Jakob Mandau" on March the 19th. Unfortunatly that means a little break of modelling; but I got plenty other old stuff to post here.

Here is the second part of the Blitz built -> Out of the box in under 12 hours article.
Have fun with the pictures

Blitz built -> Out of the box in under 12 hours - Part 1

Good Morning fellow Readers

First I would like to welcome you back to another (rare :D) update on my blog - glad you are still here.

It was a rainy weekend some days ago and my brother Florian Mandau and I were deadly bored while sitting in my modeling workshop down in the basement. My long-time project was lying in one side of the room and I couldn’t even look at it. Do you know this feeling when you sometime just have enough of your actual project and want it to be already finished? So we were thinking of a distraction that could delight our weekend. 

Really quick the idea of a “challenge” came up. Why do these projects always take weeks and month to finish? Isn’t there a way to create a whole diorama in just a few hours? So why don’t try it?

We set our self some rules:

-Build and finish a whole vehicle including a diorama in 12 hours

-No additional parts – Only use what is in the kit or the box itself

-Full photo-documentation

Considering the time, we had to make some compromises. We even had to lower our standards and skip some work steps. Some parts are not as beautiful and worked out as we would normally like to have it.

The target was set – but we still had nothing to build. We don’t wanted to “sacrifice” one of the more valuable kits from my stash and so we choose an old shelf warmer, which I bought several years ago on an exhibition for some dimes. The old Italeri Opel Blitz from the 80s – but the Kit itself is originally from the 60s. So the truck was older then us. By choosing it we also wanted to show, that you could still built something useful out of these old kits even without using those expensive additional retail-parts. 

First of all we had to share the upcoming tasks considering time and work steps. We didn’t want to have one of us just sitting around useless and wasting our precious time. 

Florian and I were building the framing simultaneously. While I choose the upper hull he decided to build the mechanical lower parts. 

When all the assemblies would have been married he would attend to work at the diorama while I start to paint and make the pictures.

So now have some fun with the pictures ;)

Btw, this article have been publishes in the "Polish Super Model" and the "Scale Military Modeller International". Have a look on them!

See you again on Part 2

"What If 1947" Part 9 - WIP

Hello fellow readers. First of all I want to wish you all a happy new year. I want to show you the next steps on the way to the finished diorama. In the next update you will see the final results (hopefully ;) )