Front
The original G.I.Joe tank was a compact motorized tank ("MOtorized BAttle Tank"), with a spot for just a single figure in the Commander's cuppola, but its molded details suggested at least one hatch for additional crew in the hull. I didn't grow up with a MOBAT, and if I had it might loom more significantly in my mind. Instead, I look at the original toy and it seems frustratingly small and lacking - certainly a generation behind the much cooler looking Mauler.
The original MOBAT has a mid-Cold War look to it, like a sort of awkward representation of an MBT70 mixed with with a little M60. I wanted to make it look a lot less old fashioned, but similar enough to the original that it would be recognizable. So I kept some of the unusual aesthetic features of the original - like the tracks not quite running the full length of the hull, the cupola in the very middle of the turret, and the super wide base of the gun barrel. As another nod to the old-school roots of the MOBAT, I worked in some old dark gray, a sorely missed color, that Lego has phased out many years ago, that I don't get to use nearly as often as I'd like to.
The idea to make it modular came about when I was trying to think of other words to replace the redundant "motorized" in the original vehicle's name. And of course once it occurred to me, imagining it as a modular combat system was a whole lot of fun.
Of course I considered designing my MOBAT as a realistic (and much larger) MBT with a full interior for three or even four crew. In the end, I embraced the original toy concept of a decidedly small tank, and I've brought into into the 21st Century and explained its small size by making it unmanned.
I usually pride myself on fitting figs inside my vehicles, but building a tank without a crewed interior is much easier, and doing so allowed me to build my MOBAT to scale with some of my other early era Joe armor (it is smaller than the Mauler, but bigger than the Wolverine). I also was able to fit in a nifty roadwheel suspension system that I'm really pleased with that simply wouldn't have fit if I had insisted on fitting in a driver and a manned turret basket. An actual MBT with a full crew is something I've wanted to do for a while for my Joes, but they'll have to wait a while.
Front
The original G.I.Joe tank was a compact motorized tank ("MOtorized BAttle Tank"), with a spot for just a single figure in the Commander's cuppola, but its molded details suggested at least one hatch for additional crew in the hull. I didn't grow up with a MOBAT, and if I had it might loom more significantly in my mind. Instead, I look at the original toy and it seems frustratingly small and lacking - certainly a generation behind the much cooler looking Mauler.
The original MOBAT has a mid-Cold War look to it, like a sort of awkward representation of an MBT70 mixed with with a little M60. I wanted to make it look a lot less old fashioned, but similar enough to the original that it would be recognizable. So I kept some of the unusual aesthetic features of the original - like the tracks not quite running the full length of the hull, the cupola in the very middle of the turret, and the super wide base of the gun barrel. As another nod to the old-school roots of the MOBAT, I worked in some old dark gray, a sorely missed color, that Lego has phased out many years ago, that I don't get to use nearly as often as I'd like to.
The idea to make it modular came about when I was trying to think of other words to replace the redundant "motorized" in the original vehicle's name. And of course once it occurred to me, imagining it as a modular combat system was a whole lot of fun.
Of course I considered designing my MOBAT as a realistic (and much larger) MBT with a full interior for three or even four crew. In the end, I embraced the original toy concept of a decidedly small tank, and I've brought into into the 21st Century and explained its small size by making it unmanned.
I usually pride myself on fitting figs inside my vehicles, but building a tank without a crewed interior is much easier, and doing so allowed me to build my MOBAT to scale with some of my other early era Joe armor (it is smaller than the Mauler, but bigger than the Wolverine). I also was able to fit in a nifty roadwheel suspension system that I'm really pleased with that simply wouldn't have fit if I had insisted on fitting in a driver and a manned turret basket. An actual MBT with a full crew is something I've wanted to do for a while for my Joes, but they'll have to wait a while.