Admittedly, the TMNT 'Cowabunga Carl' Van is a double edged sword, at least in my opinion. On one hand, it's a fantastic 6 inch scale vehicle with a lot of cool features. On the other, it's van design kind of limits it and repainting the whole thing, inside and out, can be a pain. With that in mind, and having one sitting around, I wanted to do something fun but fairly simple with it. The result was another apocalypse style vehicle, but with a different kind of theme in mind.

My previous vehicles were more of a 'Mad Max' kind of theme-more weapons, more brutal. Very end of the world but with all the threats coming from other humans. For this one, I wanted more of Zombie apocalypse kind of look. Less weapons and chaotic weapons of violence. I wanted a more practical, re-enforced look to it. In short, I wanted it to look more like a real vehicle that had been procured as transport.

I liked the idea of it having been some kind of party van/mascot/some sort of entertainment/vehicle with a gimmick. So I left the Cowabunga Carl head on (although I superglued it on, added a crown and a little bit of 'creative' graffiti to it to make it look more personal).

Other mods to the car were the bars on the back windows, the reinforced side bars, the 'metal' plate on the front, rack on the roof and then the barrel and case on top. The barrel itself was glued down, as were the ends of the chains, but they were left loose enough to still move a little and 'feel real'. Likewise, the case is screwed down, however, it DOES still open and allows the owner to store weapons in it!

The biggest change, and my favorite part, was all the paint mods. Numerous dry brushes and washes and then different coats of spray paint gave this one it's dirty, worn look, from top to bottom.

Finally, EVERYTHING was hit with a LOT of sealer (seriously, I used like half a can to make sure I got everything real, real good).