HOW TO MAKE A CAR BURNING (SCENERY AND TERRAIN)

Today I want to share with you how to make a burning car that looks ok on the game table, and with the plus that it seems that it is burning to make it more realistic ...

Starting on the post I made about vehicles to play wargames in 28mm (if you want to see it click HERE), I have selected a typical 1/43 scale car, the kind you can find at any gas station. To this choice we will add a fake led candle, the typical ones that we find anywhere at a bargain price.

We disassemble the vehicle in all its parts, some are disassembled in one way, others in another way, but ALL can be disassembled. If you do not know what assembly mode they have, use logic, and if that fails, use force... we are going to make a wrecked vehicle, who cares if it is damaged?

To my surprise, the vehicle I have chosen has a removable roof, but hey, it doesn't matter, it's exactly the same as any car that has the roof fixed.

Once disassembled we proceed to cut the front windows with kitchen scissors, to give the effect that the front windows are lowered or broken.

If you are going to put the vehicle on a base, keep the pieces of plastic to put it on the base as pieces of shattered glass, as it is not my case and it will go without a base, I discard them and throw them away.

Now let's go with the candle. The first thing is to disassemble it, and once it is disassembled, we will cut out all the parts that we don´t need when fitting it into the car, and then we proceed to paint all the parts in black.

Now we will adapt the interior and underbody of the car so that the candle can fit inside without problems. We will cut the front seats and once we have the rear ones loose we will glue them to the interior of the car.

With the bottom we will do a similar thing, we will cut the entire central part so that the candle fits, and the two parts we keep (front and rear) we will glue to the car.

With this we achieve a vehicle that is empty inside and below, so that we can place our candle inside.

We have the car almost ready, so let's get on with the smoke. For this we will take a few pieces of cotton and we will give them a light layer of black with a cheap black spray.

To hold the pieces of cotton we will use some special pieces that can be purchased in specific stores... no way... if you use two wooden sticks it is more than enough...

As we are changing the whole car, we are going to do a couple of details that look great on wrecked vehicles, and one of those details is the bullet holes in the windows.

For the bullet impacts we will use a nail, a wire or a fine precision screwdriver, we heat it with a lighter and when it is hot we go through the plastic of the glass, making a clear hole.

Once the hole is made, we proceed to scratch a "spider web" with a exacto knife, making it like a fragmented glass.

Then, using the same exacto knife technique, we will proceed to make a "spider web" on the front glass, to simulate that it has exploded due to the heat of the flames or any previous impact.

Once these details are done, what we will do is paint in the vehicle the marks that the fire would have left on it, focusing on the roof and the lower part of the windows.

We will use black and chocolate brown in the proportions that we see ok. The good thing about being a wrecked vehicle is that we can  test techniques, no matter hoe bad we do them.

Once we are happy with how it has been painted, we place the candle inside it and glue the pieces of cotton that will serve as smoke, and then... we have finished our vehicle burning in a realistic way.

Now we get to the best part...

Once we have finished the car, we press the switch below, and it will make the candle light up, giving that burning vehicle effect that we have been looking for since we started the post.

I hope you like the photos and videos, I have added some miniatures to give the scene more real effect.

And now that you have seen how I have done it ... I WANT TO SEE HOW YOU DO IT !!!