P-VLOG: Ersatz Panther – From Parts To Painted

Welcome to this Project VLOG where we're joining John as he builds and paints up the Ersatz Panther. In this first video we'll be giving you a primer as to what we're going to be doing in this project.

In this video we're going to begin building the Ersatz Panther from Warlord Games. If you want to follow along you can pick up one of your own!

Come and check out this tactical and technical trends article from Lone Sentry which talks about how the Germans had disguised these Panthers. It also gives us an insight into what the US soldiers thought of the tank and what the Germans had done to the tank.

We begin painting with a plan of action as to how we're going to tackle the project. Of course we want this to be as accurate as possible but we'll probably have a bit of fun too.

Getting the first priming layers down on the Panther we have a look at some of the techniques we can use to give it a level of preshading.

Now it's time to base coat the Panther with some lovely military green. This gives us a great level to work from and a nice even surface which means we won't have to do much cleaning up as we go.

It's time to have some fun with transfers where we make it look like a US tank just like the Germans did! This was an ingenious tactic that certainly helped them when they were searching for ways to outfox the allies.

Following on from the work on transfers we then get to the metallic aspects of the Panther and start tweaking the overall look of the tank with washes too.

When the Germans were painting these Panther tanks they wanted to get them done as quickly as possible and with as little green paint. With that in mind that means that some of the inner parts of the tanks they left them bright red and all sorts of other colours!

Now we get very detailed and start adding a degree of chipping to the Panther. Interestingly we can use a variety of different colours to achieve this as you can see in the video below.

The next step is to get some dirt and grime onto the Panther! We love making things look realistic and what better than a heavy dose of weathering for these hefty tanks.

Lastly we get to do some super detailing as we had some slick wet mud to the tracks as well as some rust too. We also add a nice bit of oily grease to the engine deck on this tank!

And here we have it! Check out the finished Ersatz Panther here and let us know what you think of it. You can then pick up your own and show us what you did to bring it to life.