Sunday, April 23, 2017

Project References: Italeri 1:72 SU-34 Fullback







I am currently (2017/04/21) working on Italeri's 1:72 SU-34 Fullback (#1379). I have gathered here as many resources and references as I could find that I can use when building the kit.

Some important things to consider when looking for information on this kit is that the base original mold for this kits was a 1995 mold manufactured by Italeri but, according to ScaleMates.com, was actually the mold used by several companies who reboxed the kit; including Revell, Tamiya, Svezda and others. While it widens the search criteria for references it seems that not much has been published on this mold regardless of what brand it's distributed under.

Kit Reviews

I managed to find a few videos, one being a build review where they review the kit by building it. No painting, after-market parts or anything fancing ... just a straight out of the box (OOB) build.

Playlist Home Page: Kit Review: Italeri 1:72 SU-34 Fullback
Number of Videos: 3
Playlist Duration: approx. 25 mins




In addition to videos I discovered some "spru reviews" of the kit as well. These are largely just a reviewer's first impressions of the model based on simply looking at the kit. This can be good for learning what kind of panel lines are provided (recessed vs raised) and the level of detail you will find. This may be considered when making a "purchase or pass" decision.

Online reviews
Modeling Madness : Italeri 1:72 SU-34 Strike Flanker

Inspiration

I frequently reference other builds of the kit as inspiration for paint jobs, levels of details, new techniques to try, etc. Below are links to reference links  and videos and build threads presenting the author's techniques and methods as well as to galleries that just display the final build results of this kit.

Reference videos


I don't usually care for those "music video" type of videos where they are just videos of the plane flying around with some non-copyright infringing soundtrack overdubbed, but in this list you will find a few that go against my better judgment. The reason that they have been included is that they contain a reference to a part of the craft that I found useful and hard to find elsewhere. Primarily the interior of the cockpit, which I have found to be difficult to find still photos or good videos of.

Playlist Home Page: Reference: Sukhoi SU-34 Fullback
Number of Videos: 9
Playlist Duration: approx. 1 hour





Builds

I have managed to put together a playlist of model builds of the SU-34. Since there was, at the time of  this writing only one modeler who had posted an SU-34 build which happens to be a Tamiya re-boxing of this same mold I am including the playlist here as well.

Playlist Home Page: Model Build: SU-34 Fullback
Number of Videos: 6
Playlist Duration: approx. 9.5 hours



Revell 1:72 Suchoi SU-34/32 : Andy Claesens : MilitaryModeling Forum
Here's a build thread following a Military Modeling Forum member through his build of Revell's reboxing of this Italeri mold.

Revell 1:72 Suchoi SU-34/32 : Andy Claesens : MilitaryModeling Forum

Su-34 Fullback (1:72, Italeri + scratch + aftermarket) : "splinter"  : Britmodeller Forums
Build thread on Britmodeller forum by member "splinter". Not for the faint of heart "splinter" goes into tremendous detail with his build, leveraging resin aftermarket pieces but also demonstrates a tremendous acumen for scratch-building details and accuracy. I was not able to find a photo gallery of his completed project but on the 6th page of the thread you will see nearly final photos from his workbench. There is so much to learn from this thread that you may find yourself referencing these techniques for various other models as your skills grow.

2017-11-07: Excited to hear back from someone on my Facebook page with a link to photos of this completed kit! OMG!! Check it out here!

Su-34 Fullback (1:72, Italeri + scratch + aftermarket) : "splinter"  : Britmodeller Forums

Italeri 1:72 SU-34 Fullback : Ken Duffy :  Flankers-site.co.uk
Mr. Duffy presents many of modifications he made to the kit, with particular detail paid to the cockpit. He also goes with a different paint scheme that I really like. While not a lot of explanation and detail the photos really speak volumes. In addition to model photos he also provides a small gallery of real life reference photos which are very helpful.

Italeri 1:72 SU-34 Fullback : Ken Duffy :  Flankers-site.co.uk

Italeri's 1/72 scale Kit #059 Sukhoi SU-34 Strike Aircraft : Jeffhead.com
I am not sure who "Jeff" is but I encourage you to peruse his site, particularly the journal where he document's his fight with cancer. Having lost family members to cancer myself my heart and best wishes are with him during what I sincerely hope is a successful fight.

Fortunately for us however, he has managed to put together a beautiful example of our Italeri model kit. Largely OOB, he does a great job putting together a clean build. As my build will likely not include the fancy trappings of after-market and scratch-built parts I would be pleased to finish with results similar to those that he has achieved.

Italeri's 1/72 scale Kit #059 Sukhoi SU-34 Strike Aircraft : Jeffhead.com




Galleries

 Tamiya 1:72 SU-34 Fullback : by Matt Dwen  : Flickr
16 photos of what this model builder describes as "practice"> Personally I aspire to results such as this and hope that one day I can view this outcome as mere practice. I really love the unusual paint scheme on this.

Tamiya 1:72 SU-34 Fullback : "tomcat tweeker" : Genesis Models Forum
On what appears to be a publicly accessible thread in the Genesis Models forums, this member posted photos of the results of his entry into a Russian Group Build run by the Genesis Models forum community. Sporting a more traditional paint scheme it's perfectly executed. Modeled with wheels up in an "in flight" configuration it looks amazing! This SU-34 is a dazzling example of what can be accomplished with this kit.

Tamiya 1:72 SU-34 Fullback : "tomcat tweeker" : Genesis Models Forum


Color References

There are several camouflage designs that are seen on this aircraft and color call-outs are always difficult as they seem to be largely subjective. Some folks use various paints from various manufacturers straight out of the bottle while others will mix their own to derive colors that they find to be more accurate. I will do my best to document color call-outs and people are using for various camouflage schemes.

There are so many variations to these color schemes that I can't always tell if they are different interpretations of the same scheme or if they are actually different schemes. So for the moment I am just listing the resources I have and will rely on you the reader to decide how best to consider them.


Call-outs
Here are some call-outs I found from various online searches as well as manufacturers which are include in their kits. I cannot vouch for the accuracy of any of them but personally I am not concerned with such a level of accuracy that this makes much difference. But if it matters to you then hopefully you will find this helpful.

Misc. Online




Manufacturer Kit Call-outs

HobbyBoss Russian Su-34 Fullback Fighter Bomber No 81756

????

Italeri Sukhoi Su-34/32 FN No 1379

Italeri Sukhoi Su-34/32 FN No 1379

Paint Sets
Several paint manufacturers organize many of their paints into groups and offer them in thematic sets. Several offer sets geared specifically for SU-34 and similar paint schemes found on other SU Flanker craft.

Hataka
This is actually the set I have. Hataka paints have a so-so reputation but I have not found them to be any more unreasonable than any other I have tried. They have a wide variety of colors though.



AKAN
I believe AKAN is a Russian paint manufacturer (I only say that because of the Cyrillic labeling) but according to this review, they do an excellent job replicating one of the SU-34 color schemes. The set pictured here do not appear to include the colors for the "eggplant" scheme displayed in the photo of the Hataka paints. I do not know if they provide a set for that scheme or not.
AKAN Colors appear to be fairly popular for these Russian aircraft. Seems to make sense, since these seem to be Russian paints!

MiG AMMO
Apparenty MiG AMMO provides a set of Flanker colors as well. MiG, of course, is a well regarded name modelling circles so these paints are probably pretty good, but I cannot speak from personal experience.

The set pictured here also does not appear to include the colors for the "eggplant" scheme displayed in the photo of the Hataka paints. I do not know if they provide a set for that scheme or not.
While specifically labeled "SU-33" these appear to be very similar to those used in one of the SU-34 camo schemes.

Walkarounds

There are several sites that offer detail photos of the SU-34 that were taken while visiting an example of the craft. I have provided links to those that I could find here.




A final stop for comprehensive resource for particular model information has to Cybermodeler.com, where they have also collected tremendous aounts of information on hundreds of plnes and models.

Cybermodeler.com - SU-34 Resources

Conclusion

Well, I hope that you have discovered something useful here. If you know of some resource that you feel would be a helpful addition please forward it along and I will see about adding it.

I have attempted to catalog and categorize many of the image references into some Pinterest boards that I hope you will find helpful.


















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1 comment:

  1. UnknownNovember 7, 2017 at 2:00 PM

    http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/234976283-su-34-fullback-172-italeri-aftermarket-scratch/

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