THE TROUBLE WITH TRUCKS

Most of the environment work that I've done has been natural or science-fiction based, so making a realistically detailed, 1/18 scale downtown poses several challenges of scale. The first thing to tackle are the vehicles. There are 3 or 4 abandoned vehicles and several functioning atv's needed for the diorama, and they need to be both realistic and sized properly.

I found that I could buy cheap plastic vehicles and accessories from several different lines of adventure and military toys. I thought that some key modifications and a bit of paint might be enough. I also found that I could buy expensive die-cast metal vehicles. The realistic styling was there, but these things start about $40 each.

I'll try one of each please.

And so, armed with two blue trucks, I began my scale comparisons.

The plastic one definitely falls into the "monster truck" category, and the metal one is a street truck.

The plastic truck has opening doors and tailgate only, and looks very simple compared to the highly detailed die-cast. The die-cast has opening doors, tailgate and hood, revealing a detailed engine. It also has turning wheels and real rubber tires. The die-cast wins in the detail, but how about the actual size of each truck?

Wow, Blondie can't even see over the dashboard! I'd say that scale is too far "off" to work...

I took a picture of Blondie climbing into the die-cast, but it turned out really bad, so I'll just tell you that the interior of the die-cast is about half of an inch too short and needs about another inch of leg room for a figure to fit inside.

It's really no contest. I thought the die-cast were a little bit small at first, but I did some real-world measurement conversion to verify and the things are actually really close to accurate. (That, and I found a dirty little hobby shop and scored what I needed for $15 or so each!)

Next up I'll have pics of Zombies wave 2!