Spent the last few days working on the hands, head and implant back thingy. At this point I just have a few little things to clean up on the new additions then it’s off to another session in the oven. Once that’s done I’ll make the two pistons for the back, cut off the hands and head for the casting, and prime, buff, prime some more.

It’s baked! There’s been a lot of work since the last update. Mostly spent cleaning up the muscle tone. Once that was done I decided to make the naked Eva a little more “ripped” and added some raided veins and arteries. This adds a nice additional layer of detail and keeps it from being too flat. Once the vessels were applied I scribed and blended in the lines marking the Eva’s color pattern and threw it in the oven. Thankfully using the tips in the Smellybug tutorial baking went uneventfully and no cracks appeared. Now I need to make the hands, several heads, and the back implant pilot tube thingy.

Since the last update I’ve refined a lot of the muscles and redid the lower legs… twice. (don’t be afraid to start over!) I think they’re finally where I want them, but the upper legs need a little bulk for the “saddlebags” aka outsides of the upper legs. The faint lines you see are from a paintbrush loaded with odorless turpenoid which is used to smooth and blend the Sculpey. Without that stuff it wouldn’t be nearly as nice as it’s turning out to be. Later I’ll smooth out those lines with more turpenoid and add the scribed lines marking color changes on the body as seen in the previous post’s illustration. I also need to clean up some muscle recesses as they haven’t blended right and finish detailing the feet.

I still haven’t started the heads or hands. Yes I said heads… plural. I think I’m going to make the standard naked head twice. One normal and one showing teeth. I may also make Unit 2’s naked head but need to find better reference. I only have a screen shot of it after being ripped to shreds by the mass-produced Evas. I’ll also need to start sculpting the mechanical portion of the upper spine.

Anyway, here’s the rest of the pics:

Let’s file this project under “back from the dead”. It’s been a little over 2 years since I’ve last touched this project due to a lack of braided black tubing I wanted to use to cover the internal body instead of the rubber. This fall a friend of mine’s kid was playing with something that seemed like the answer to my problem and rekindled my interest in this project. More on that discovery later…

First though I was not too happy with the internal make-up of the PG Eva and figured I could just sculpt a naked Eva and cover it with heavily modified PG armor as well as my secret solution. It’s turned out to be quite an interesting endeavor. I have a couple illustrations I found on 4chan of what the Evas look like under their armor. The drawings look great, but unfortunately are too “human” in their proportions as I’ve come to learn. I also learned thanks to /m/ that Eva’s have no sex organs as they are genetically engineered creatures. Although reports of this are conflicting. I think it’s interesting as the Evas have HUGE crotch armor, but nothing to protect. LOL!

I started out with a wire armature which was made using my standing PG as size and pose reference. Immediately you notice that the Eva’s shoulders are VERY wide-set and the chest is very wide as well.  While doing the initial muscle placement I also was surprised at just how skinny and lanky these things are. The result so far is a very skinny, but muscular humanoid. With the lack of reproductive parts it reminds me of an alien Ken doll. At least my little girls aren’t asking difficult questions when looking at my sculpture. Whew!

Anyway, it’s progressing nicely. I think the armor is going to fit with just a few modifications to it. It’s definitely a balance though between adding the armor and making the creature look “natural” muscle-wise. If it turns out well enough I may have some resin copies cast of this so I can make the armored and unarmored versions. who knows though… it might turn out to be best covered by layers of black and purple and never seen again.

To see the last update make in September of 2007, click here.

As soon as I was done with the Sinanju I started on this kit. The MG Exia as it turns out is a huge improvement over the already awesome 1/100 Exia kits. The way the parts are broken down makes for very little work as far as seams go.

I wanted to do something to take the Exia ‘over the top’ in a way and to add a “particle accelerator” ring around the GN drive. A modeler at my forum, Shin0bu, had made some for his 1/144 00 and they looked great. With his permission I used that concept for this piece. The addition of really huge GN blades mounted to the GN condensors gives it a winged appearance. Almost Wing Gundam or Seed like actually. Not intended but not a bad look for this.

I designed the Accelerator ring in Illustrator and had a friend lathe the shape for me from Ren foam. The foam is kinda pourus so I had to give it 3-4 coats of Filler primer to smooth it out, but the end result looks nice and smooth. After that I scribed some panel lines into it and added the notches and bead-holes.

The GN Drive for the “Maelstrom Unit” (going with the “avalanche” naming theme for that) was a leftover from my 1/100 Astraea combined with the drive hole cover that came with the MG. Using that cover as the back of the other GN drive made a REALLY stable mounting point for this backpack. Once the latches lock it in place it’s as secure as can be.

The swords were made from styrene sheet and shapes. To make the beveled edge of the blades easier to create I used Plastruct triangular styrene strip glued along the edge. That saved me the enormous headache of filing the edges to be evenly sharp.The hilt was made from extra 1/100 Exia leg and sword parts.

The GN condenser boxes were based on those on the rear of the Dynames. They were made from various styrene sheets and shapes. The small yellow wings are actually better-looking covers than the hooks they conceal beneath that hold the swords in place. Unfortunately the swords are way to big to allow me to pose them nicely with the model. I like them looking like wings better anyway.

I wanted the paint scheme to denote the Rollout stage of the Exia during which it was probably put through its paces in various tests. The orange is Mr. Color Flourescent Orange mixed with a little Flourescent and Character Red. The blades are Alclad II chrome, the internals ar Mr. Color Iron, and the rest is mixes of Tamiya Acrylics. The base color isn’t white, but instead a very light gray. That photographs better and looks less vibrant and glaring in person.

For the clear parts I was stuck with green. No big deal, but I’d rather have had the option of making them bluish-green. THis I found out though can be achieved as I managed to get a great color-shift effect on some of the clear parts, most notably the GN-Drive and the eyes/forehead sensor. If you paint them with clear-green first then spray them with a Future Floor Acrylic + Blue pearl powder mix it looks very cool. When the light hits it it looks blue. This only works though is the pearl powders are not behind the clear green, but are instead in front. After painting I dipped the clear parts in Future which gives them a super shiny gloss.

Enough chatter… here’s the rest of the pics: