![]() ![]() ![]() As much as we try some packages are not going to arrive perfectly knowing that we offer a 30 day return policy. If I did the same project today I think the whites would be brighter, the blues would be bolder, and maybe I’d think about simulated paint chipping instead of making the colors themselves look all dusty.Return Policy Sadly not all purchases are going to be perfect. I laid a ton of dull coat on top of already muted colors… I wanted the thing to look muted but I think I went too far with that and it actually wound up kind of muddled and dull. Looking back at this thing five years after completion, I can’t say I’m entirely pleased with the paint job. □ I also prefer the more anime-accurate design of this kit’s wings over the more elaborate but inaccurate wings of the MG and PG versions. I’d never scratch-built mecha feathers before. I certainly could have just paid more to get the MG version and saved myself most of that work: though the MG wouldn’t fit as nicely on my display base, and all of this stuff I did was a great learning exercise. I made this model a short time after the MG version came out. He’s got a giant goofy acronym printed on his leg, and a few intentionally incorrect kanji (as well as various bad transliterations) of “rei shiki” – meaning “type zero”. The markings are largely a joke: every part of the robot is marked as “such-and-such type zero”, like “leg unit type 0” or “foot unit type zero”. I oversprayed the decals with white paint to cut the contrast a bit. I printed my own decals on a laser printer: unfortunately this means the markings are all black, instead of red or gray. The paint job was meant to give the thing a bit of a worn look. I did replace the elbow joints with Wave T-Shaft parts – that gives the elbows more mobility but I mostly did it for looks. For instance, the pointed toes, the folded-up part of the separated buster rifles, or the rotated upper arms. I wasn’t interested in turning this thing into a better action figure so I focused on setting it into a good pose mostly by cutting and re-joining parts. The original kit was reasonably poseably but it had exposed polycap elbow joints and was missing a few bits of articulation that should be present on a Wing Zero Custom kit. The resulting V-fin has a very refined look, but it’s strong enough that I could probably drop the thing on its head and it’d be OK. The original scratch-built part was very fragile, so I made a mold and recast the part in resin over a core of piano wire. I scratch-built a replacement from sheet styrene, a Kotobukiya rectangular vernier part, and polyester putty. The kit-supplied forehead antenna was pretty hopeless: way too thick with soft detail all over. I recast the wings in resin, then made new feathers from styrene and polyester putty, recast them to create the duplicates. The wings themselves were pretty nicely shaped, but the feathers were thick and slab-like. Probably the most significant modification was the wings: the original, kit-supplied wings were made of a rubbery soft plastic. Back then I actually kept logs of the time I spent on different projects – I spent around a hundred hours on this thing over a period of three months. (It’s kind of hard to believe now, that there was a time when they sold Gundam kits and action figures in retail stores in the US!) It turned into a fairly massive project. Originally I bought the kit as an impulse buy at the local Target. ![]() This is a project I did several years ago: the 1:144 High Grade Wing Zero from Endless Waltz. Subject: Wing Gundam Zero (Endless Waltz version) ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |