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Dan Lee
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1/32 Tamiya T-Rex

May 23, 2020 · in Diorama · · 11 · 2.3K

I made this one for a friend who is a big dinosaur guy.

It took longer than I thought because I'm not a wildlife modeler and dealing with the headaches I had figuring out how to redo the surface detail such as scales and seams around the legs, arms and body. In short, I used Apoxy sculpt and Vallejo plastic putty for a lot of the redone details. Also used CA glue and or Vallejo plastic putty dots to represent skin warts, blemishes etc.

Instead of the classic colors of T-Rexs from my yout', I went for a more brindle pattern instead of iguana stripes or basic lizard green. I sprayed very light coats of desert yellow, dark yellow, german grey, and dark green crosswise the model in an approximation of brindle.

I then painted the nose area bright orange based on the latest info on what a T-Rex looked like. The eyes were brush painted using 's very nice instructions.

The feathers I took from a feather boa I bought from a craft store. Dinosaurs may have had feathers which seems to be more like peach fuzz or baby feathers which I couldn't recreate to my satisfaction. Instead I decided on full cockatoo plumage and glued each feather in using white glue or CA glue.

The background and shrubs/trees were built/painted based on Tamiya's instructions.

Lastly, I used an oil paint wash of black/burnt umber on the T-Rex to pop out the details and it was sealed in using Tamiya flat coat. I used water color wash and Tamiya enamel wash for the base.

I presented this to my dino loving friend friend a couple of years back. It was something out of my usual aircraft/armor/SF stuff range.

Reader reactions:
4  Awesome

6 additional images. Click to enlarge.


11 responses

  1. A T-Rex of a different plumage, looks great.

  2. Great dio, story and weathering job! I'm not talking about tanks this time...

  3. As a very good writer whose work I love reading says every Friday in his blog, "Dinosaurs existed then to give pleasure to us now." You've done the same. I like this a lot!

    The great thing with this model is there is absolutely no possible criticism that can be made about it regarding accuracy. 🙂

    • Thanks! True, accuracy is not an issue. When I was working on this dio, I did speak with a paleontologist about the current look of a T-Rex (I didn't explain to her why I was so curious though.) She did point out that a T-Rex would not look like a giant scary man eating chicken as some folks joked about and so out went plan A for avoid fixing issues with the details.

      I am sure that there is some 6 year old kid dinosaur experten who would be more than happy to point out mistakes in the color scheme.

  4. Looks great, Dan! Something out of the ordinary. An excellent job of what looks to be a difficult build.
    All the best!

    • The kit wasn't hard as dealing with the worry "How am I going to fix this?" running around my head. It is a Tamiya kit afterall.

      The worst part was fixing the details and hiding seams. That took way longer than it should.

  5. Very nice dio. I just don't like the metal-rod.
    I have two on the work-bench. I just put some weight (old nails) into the tail - as you put it into the nose of airplanes - and it stands without problems. I'll soon post a photo.

  6. This Dino needs it's own Heavy Metal T-shirt m/!

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