1:6 (6.5 Ft. Long) Paper Model of T-90 Russian Tank (Indian Army) - #PaperMajestic1

atamjeet

Member
It's been more than 6 years since I have posted anything on Zealot. I am BACK with a BIG BANG story of a giant paper model for you all that I am sure you all shall love.
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Year 1995ish, it was a bright sunny day of winters and I was traveling to Amritsar (Punjab, India) via a train with my uncle and I was sitting next to the window enjoying the view. We were just a few kms away from Amritsar and we couldn't wait to reach home after the long tiring journey. The train made an unscheduled stop somewhere outside the Jalandhar Army Cantonment and everybody on the train went bonkers!

Everyone was irritated but not me! I couldn't stop myself from thanking the "Godly" train driver to have stopped us at a dream location that I could only have dreamt of. For the first time in my life, I saw my dream machines - Army Tanks, running & roaring wildly and that was THE BEST MOMENT of my life. And suddenly there was a sense of silence in the train because who the hell doesn't like to watch Tanks anyways? I just didn't want the train to move and luckily for me, I could enjoy that view for more than 15 min and all my tiredness was gone and I felt on the top of the world.
That sight gave birth to a new distant dream. I now wanted to ride a tank and go inside it to see how it works and may be bring it home and install it at my terrace at my home in Amritsar.

Year 1999 - I was 14 years old when daddy bought our first personal computer, a Compaq Presario and along with it came a CD of a game and guess what? It was 'Recoil' (a game where you own a BFT - Battle Force Tank, YES, you read that correctly, and you are given multiple missions to fight even sexier war machines) and when I inserted the CD in the CD Drive & put my head phones on, the background music track of the game made me re-live that train-wala moment and this time I went completely bonkers hahaha!
I completed that game after playing it for almost everyday for 4 months (that too without cheat codes mind you) and I still remember the moment the game ended, I was wondering if I shall continue to live (I'm sure almost every gamer could resonate with this awful feeling when an awesome game is finished).

Year 2016, I met Mr. Arunabh Kumar, CEO of the biggest video creators of India - 'TVF Qtiyapa' in Gurgaon (India) and discussed an amazing and exciting possibly of a project that we could do together. That gave birth to that awesome video of the '1:30 Paper Model of T90 Tank' that most of you might already have seen (Paper Model Designed by Julius Perdana, Paper-Replika (Indonesia)):


and we released this video on 15th Aug 2016 (Indian Independence Day) as a dedication to the 'Indian Army'. And magic finally happened!

In Sep 2016, I got a call from a person of a very senior rank of the Indian Army and he asked me to visit one of their army installations and discuss a possible Paper Modeling project.
I went there and guess what! That distant dream that I saw in the train in 1995 was no longer distant for I was now sitting INSIDE a T90 'Bhishma' Tank of the Indian Army and was on cloud 9 really. Only if they had allowed me to install that tank at my home on my terrace hahaha
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:)

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Year 2017, Jan 19, I finally got the dream-project to create an ultra detailed 1:6 (6.5 feet long) Paper Model of the T90 Bhishma Tank that was to be installed at one of the Indian Army bases in India! And after 3 months and 450+ man hours of effort, my master piece was ready and it successfully got installed at it's designated location on 23-Apr-2017 with a small ceremony and chilled beer afterwards :)

Watch this amazing video that I got made to document the making of this giant PAPER MODEL (P.S. this video is going viral on Facebook with more than 230K views and counting)


Enjoy the below pictures of the completed model. The designer of this amazing paper model is JULIUS PERDANA from (Paper-Replika, Indonesia).

Templates can be purchased at my ETSY Shop
Check out my Facebook Page for stories around this Paper Model

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I shall post the 'Making of' pictures of this Paper Model here in the next few days :)
Looking forward to hear from you all. Good Day!

Love,
Atamjeet Singh Bawa (a.k.a. Paper Model Guru)
 
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zathros

*****SENIOR ADMINISTRATOR*****
Staff member
Administrator
Moderator
The TANK of TANKS!! I look forward to you postings. SUperb job too. It's really a beauty. I bet any military museum would love to have it. ;)
 

Tonino

Well-Known Member
GREAT! Literally!
What is the limit between a scale model and a real thing? This goes very close to it.

Well, if you was able to realize such a BIG tank we can hope, one day, to also give a complete body to UHU02's Falcon cockpit after all! ;)

I'm really looking forward to your building chronicle...
 

atamjeet

Member
The TANK of TANKS!! I look forward to you postings. SUperb job too. It's really a beauty. I bet any military museum would love to have it. ;)
Thanks :) - Yes, I would love to make something to be kept in a museum, if you can put me in touch with anyone who owns, manages a war museum, it would be of a great help :)
 

atamjeet

Member
GREAT! Literally!
What is the limit between a scale model and a real thing? This goes very close to it.

Well, if you was able to realize such a BIG tank we can hope, one day, to also give a complete body to UHU02's Falcon cockpit after all! ;)

I'm really looking forward to your building chronicle...
Thank You for inspiring me to post this on Zealot man... I think I will continue to post about all my projects here for really MISSED this amazing forum in the last few years of exile.
 

Rhaven Blaack

!!!THE MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN!!!
Staff member
Administrator
Moderator
I am glad that you are posting a build thread of this! I am looking forward to seeing how it was made.
 

atamjeet

Member
I am glad that you are posting a build thread of this! I am looking forward to seeing how it was made.
Oh yes, I will post all the making pictures here, a few pics each day... I documented all the tiny little details that went into making this paper model on my facebook page, a lot of LIVE videos I did to engage with people who had little knowledge about paper modeling. My aim has always been to create awareness about this beautiful hobby and the many benefits that come along.

P.S. I used to be a very regular member of Zealot, I used to admire all the craftsmen here but one unfortunate day I was banned (I'll tell you more on that in a private message) without even letting me to explain the misunderstandings... I pledged that I shall never ever post here after that but recently I had an interaction with @Tonino and that changed my mind, for good!
 

Tonino

Well-Known Member
I'm happy to be the conduit who guided you back here.
It would have been a shame not having this monster model and its build thread here at Zealot.

So welcome back PMG!!! :)
 

atamjeet

Member
---TRACKS---

The way this model came up was that the designing and building was being done parallely. My designer (Julius Perdana) would design a section and give me the files and I would parallely build the model.

When the designing started, the scale that I wanted for the tank was 1:5.5 and a some of the designing (including the tracks) was done on 1:5.5 scale. After reviewing the 3D designs in blender, I decided to switch this project to 1:6 because the tank was coming up very big and I asked Julius to re-scale the design to 1:6. BUT, he forgot to re-scale the tracks and gave me the track files of 1:5.5 and I spent 40+ hours (10 hours cutting & scoring and 30 hours building) (17 A3 paper sheets and 600 paper parts) and made all the tracks.

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Check this VIDEO on my facebook page (unable to embed the video here though) that I created to show the number of parts just to make the tracks

And after 2 months when the time came to assemble the tracks onto the wheels, this mistake was found and I felt like crying because I didn't want to re-do all the tracks. After discussing with Julius, I came up with an idea. I cut about 6mm section from one side of each track to make it short and re-printed caps to cover the opening end. This way I saved myself a lot of time without compromising on the finishing.

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Also, to make sure that the entire weight of the tank could be put on the tracks, I inserted coffee straw inside each section to reinforce it (but eventually when the tank was completed, it weighed about 4 KGs so I decided to get a wooden base created and rest the hull of the tank on that wooden base so that the tracks are lifted from the base by 2mm - it looked as if the tank was indeed resting on it's tacks, the wooden base was not visible). This increased the shelf life of my paper model by a number of years too :)

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Just to add here that to save time and effort, I made the running length of the track chain just enough to cover where it was visibile and I didn't make the chain endless. Here the red line depicts the length of each chain that I finally created:

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Cybergrinder

Member Extraordinaire
@atamjeet , this is absolutely amazing! It's always great when you build something that you're passionate about. I remember feeling the same way building a plastic HMS Victory.

If only I could find a good (think UHU level of detail ;)) paper one... <sigh>
 

atamjeet

Member
--SPROCKET--

Sprockets were the second most complicated parts to handle after the tracks. But I liked the way these were designed. As mentioned in my past post above, the sprockets were also initially designed in a bigger scale and when I decided to reduce the scale, by that time I had already built some parts of the sprocket so this was also some re-work for me.

Enjoy these pictures and stay tuned for the next updates.:
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zathros

*****SENIOR ADMINISTRATOR*****
Staff member
Administrator
Moderator
Oh yes, I will post all the making pictures here, a few pics each day... I documented all the tiny little details that went into making this paper model on my facebook page, a lot of LIVE videos I did to engage with people who had little knowledge about paper modeling. My aim has always been to create awareness about this beautiful hobby and the many benefits that come along.

P.S. I used to be a very regular member of Zealot, I used to admire all the craftsmen here but one unfortunate day I was banned (I'll tell you more on that in a private message) without even letting me to explain the misunderstandings... I pledged that I shall never ever post here after that but recently I had an interaction with @Tonino and that changed my mind, for good!


Those must have the dark days of Mordoor. I kicked all those people out of here, right up to the Administrator!! :)
 

atamjeet

Member
This is me making one side of the main hull while being recorded by a local video production house 'CineScope Talkies'.
It was not my client's requirement to get the video made so i spent my own money to get this made because I knew that this video shall become my asset and rightly so, it was able to attract more than 230K views on Facebook (organically) which is an amazing figure according to me.


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