MOC: Dennis Fire Appliance

[danim]

This is my version of a Dennis Fire Appliance that are being used in the uk at the moment

the front

one side

and the other

the back

the roof with ladder

the storage area for the floodlights

the empty storage area and the interior storage

the two firefighters, one driver, one co driver/rescuer

the storage box that fits into the side locker

the floodlights

and the full thing complete with extended ladder

pic of the engine that it is based on

please tell me what you think

Edited August 14, 2009 by danim

[Ralph_S]

I love fire trucks. I like the various bits of kit you made to go with it, but I think it would look better and more like the real truck if you would redesign the cab. If you look at the picture of the real truck, you'll see that the cab and the aft body of the vehicle are separate parts. The body on your truck looks a bit too much like a van, IMO. It also looks a bit odd that the roof of the cab is narrower than the bottom of it. I understand you probably chose to do this so that you could use the roof piece and window, but they're really too narrow. I'd suggest either making the whole vehicle narrower or making the roof wider. The real truck has an almost vertical wind shield, so building A-pillars out of red 1x1 bricks might solve the issue. If you have some 1x1 plates with clips, you could integrate them into the pillars, making excellent attachment points for rear-view mirrors.

Finally, a completely different comment. Many of your pictures are out of focus. When I just bought a digital camera years ago and started using it to take close-ups of my MOCs I did the same. I'm no photography expert, but if you want better pictures, you should figure out how to switch your camera to 'macro' mode and use something to support your camera when taking the pictures.

Cheers,

Ralph

Edited August 15, 2009 by Ralph_S

[danim]

would it look better if I raised the roof of the cab a plate or two, also I will be redoing the roof and adding in the a-pillars

[Ralph_S]

Rather than raising the roof of the cab, I'd suggest lowering the back of the truck a bit.

Cheers,

Ralph

[Milan]

Danim,

just look at the picture of the real truck you provided, feel its lines, shape and proportion. Imagine that you are walking around it. You need to have imagionation of how the final model will look like.

Unfortunate, your model is not very similar to the real truck.

So start from base: rough shape and color.

Front half of the truck is red and taller than back one. Next it has top part in windows and yellow line, which could be 1 plate high.

Second half is a little bit lower and completely gray, or light bluish gray, if you have that new color. If you are familiar with SNOT I think it would look nice if you could use plates to cover walls of back half of the truck.

Details comes next, but only after rough shape is achieved.

Front half for example has rounded edges, you did it with 1x3 white curved slopes, good, use this approach for other details.

Wheels are different at front and back, When I was building 8 wide trucks, I used to put thiner tires at front an fatter at the back.

Taking photos: try to capture all angles and to be well focused, and the whole truck should be visible. Tke 10 photos of same angle and chose the best, well focused one.

In some other topic of yours I suggested you to take photos of 3/4 view, which is exactyly the view of the photo of the real truck, It is the best because it lets you to have a look at the most of the vehicle. Use it on your model.

All of this is when you want to copy a specific real model.

[black painter]

great try but it needs a four person cab, and the body separate from the cab.