GP4: 1996 Minardi M195B walkaround part 1

You can read a bit more about Minardi's season in the model review I did of this same car. https://fongugp4.blogspot.com/2019/03/143-model-review-1996-minardi-m195b-ford.html

I was learning a lot about modelling, and I still am, constantly trying to improve my skills and my 3D models. Having been a big part of bringing updated cars to the 1995 mod, and wanting to focus more on retro mods than modern day cars at the time, I decided to start on the 1996 grid. Because I knew that I would continue to improve my modding skills, I decided if I started at the rear of the grid, the ones nearer the front will be the best cars of the mod, that was the theory anyway.

The Minardi M195B was actually the second car that I did for 1996. The real car being an updated version of the M195, the 1995 version of the car was where I started for proportions, though no part of the 1995 car made it onto the 1996 model.

1995 Minardi M195

By the time that the 1996 cars were mapped and painted, I had departed from GP4, so I wasn't able to communicate effectively about some of the details I had put into the shape and how I envisioned they would be painted. This one was painted by Celinho.

At the time, I wasn't confident enough to create my own suspension, so the brakes and suspension on this car are taken (with permission) from Nick Ovey's 1995 Jordan. It also contains the generic engine and gearbox from the 1995 mod too. That's partly because there are not that many photos around of the insides of this car, and at the time, I was more concerned about the main body of the car.
I suppose I was using the Haas approach to F1, taking parts from existing cars and focusing on the aero surfaces.

I also find the rear ends of cars difficult to model, because most of the photos from race weekends are under shadow, so you can't see what you are to model. These days, if the cars are still around at demos or being displayed, you get some better high resolution pictures, but back when I was making some of these lower end cars, I had to use a bit of artistic license.

Overall, I'm pretty happy with this car. When you put effort into the details, its easy to lose the perspective of the overall proportions of the car, I feel I managed to add detail whilst maintaining a good basic shape. The 1995 mod for example had different authors, so each author produced cars to their own perceived scales, so simple things like the heights of the rear wings (which by regulations is a constant) varied a lot in the GP4 mod. So I wanted to make sure that there was a consistency in the cars that I created for the 1996 mod.

To stop this post from being too long, I will drill into the detail of this car in the next post.

In the meantime, you can see a conversion of this in rfactor 2 in the video below:

You can download this car along with season specific liveries in the GP4 1996 mod.
1996 GP4 Mod Download Part 1
1996 GP4 Mod Download Part 2

Or you can download the car individually here: 1996 GP4 Minardi M195B Download