Following an electrifying showcase of talent in the 2023 Mega Build-Off (31st October – 31st January), we are thrilled to unveil the champions below! The creativity and skill on display were nothing short of awe-inspiring.
Stay tuned for the next exhilarating Build-Off competition – it’s coming soon, and it promises to be even more spectacular. Get ready to unleash your imagination and potentially etch your name amongst legends.
1st Place – Gary Karnatz
Nissan Vertex PS13 (Cyber-Punk Theme)
Gary Karnatz talks about his build
“What a great challenge this build off was, a mystery kit with a mystery theme. But as soon as I received the kit and I knew what the theme was, I had a picture in my head, that it had to be a flying car. This turned into the biggest challenge….how!?
I cut up the bonnet to allow a 1/35 tank engine to fit into the engine bay and modified to the rear end to look like the rear bumper was missing.
The body was painted with acrylics, starting with a rusty paint job, with a matt black top coat, along with a homemade shark mouth decal and freehand painted rivets.
I then weathered the paintwork using a salt chipping technique, weathering pencils and oil washes.
I replaced the most of the windows with plastic mesh and painted them in a rust effect.
Most of the added extra parts were spare from old kits such as the Back To the Future Deloreon, old Warhammer vehicles and random wires, chains and tubes.
It’s mounted to a resin base using acrylic rod, which also allowed me to hide the led wires.
Extra details and pictures can be found on my Facebook page: ScaleOneTwentyFourth and Instagram @scalemodelgaz
Thank you to Kent Models for putting on another great competition and thank you to all who voted.”
2nd Place – Dean Prudence
Toyota AE86 Sprinter Trueno (Retro Theme)
3rd Place – Oli Weekes
Toyota Kunnyz JZX100 Chaser (Wild West Theme)
Oli Weekes talks about his build
“For the chaser build the biggest challenge was trying to work out an idea based around the wild west theme. Luckily I remembered I had some train tracks and wheels from an old aoshima BTTF kit so used that as a base and started researching old trains with the idea of going down that route.
The kit came with 2 sets of bumpers so that gave me another idea to make both a road and rail version.
I scratch built a roof box using cut up lollipop sticks, the blue tarpaulin was made from a piece of kitchen towel along with watered down PVA glue to mould it into shape ( covered the part in cling film before doing it to avoid getting glue over everything ) and built the “cow catcher” front bumper and exhausts from styrene tubes.
A lot of chassis adjustments were needed to get both sets of wheels to fit.
To achieve a worn look all I really did was skip a clear coat and used some 4000 sanding sponge and lightly sanded back the paint in places and added some streaking grime in places.”
