The Jin-Roh Patlabor: a kitbash of the MG Gundam Spiegel

[FichtenFoo]

Congrats!

I like #3.

[wingnut]

hey congratulations funaka!!!
lovely baby girl...sigh, i can remember my 10 year old daughter like that once...
welcome to the wondeful world of parenthood...

 

[Chopper Dave]

congats man! Like everyone else I like #5

But as said many times before, focus on your daughter for now!

[oteebzo]

Congrats on the new addition your home. Good luck with a girl> Better buy a shot gun  you may need it someday.     (Just kidding) I am happy for you.

 I like 2 and 5 best so good luck on your plastic.

[Funaka]

Thanks, everyone!

If it makes you all feel better, I haven't managed any work yet (although I did manage to take 15 minutes one day to clean off my bench...). Small steps!  

Just so you guys don't get the wrong idea... I'm only squeezing in work when the baby's happily asleep, moms' feeling OK and there aren't any other pressing concerns around the house. As you can see, that isn't too often!  :o

It's interesting that Fichtenfoo picked #3 and everyone else likes #5. I think #3 is most like what I pictured in my head, and #5 is the best adaptation I could come up with of the colors of the actual Jin-Roh uniforms. We'll see, I'm a LONG way from paint...

[FichtenFoo]

Yeah, I'm always the oddball when picking schemes. I think the reason I didn't like the others is that the color variations were too "random" and not military enough. You'd be more likely to see that piece as a solid color rather than brown here and green there.

[Funaka]

Back to work! Next in line was the skirt armor. To fix the skirt armor, I first ground down the details on the side skirt armor. Then I added a fillet to remove the notch in the armor:


I then sawed the detail off the front skirts, which still left the pegs for the internal parts to fit:
http://home.roadrunner.com/~funaka/images/JRP_Skirt_Shaved.JPG

I then cut out a new front face shape from .020 plastic. Then I cut out pieces for the sides of the skirt and did my best to make them flush with the original parts. When I get to the smoothing out phase I'll probably fill the hollow backs with Magic Sculpt.

http://home.roadrunner.com/~funaka/images/JRP_Skirt_Bottom.JPG

Here's the shape of the new skirts:


Everything I’ve worked on is still really raw. Most of the plastic is scratched up from rough sanding and grinding. I got my order of Mr. Surfacer products (500, 1000, 1200, Leveling Thinner and Retarder), so I’ll be smoothing things out pretty soon so that when my other order of Wave option parts comes in I can add details.

[Funaka]

It's Ba-aaaaaaaaaack!

So after finishing my GP01 Hangar diorama, I was debating what to work on next... It seemed to come down to returning to the JRP, or doing some "simple little project" like an HGUC kit. When I mentioned this to my wife, she rolled her eyes and said "You NEVER do a simple little project!"

Maybe some day...

Finishing the GP01 hangar gave me a lot of confidence, both in my ability to scratch build and my ability to finish a project (albeit slowly) in my new life as a father, so it's back to the JRP!

After some time looking at them, the knees looked too blunt, and stuck out too far forward, so I want to extend them with Magic Sculpt (MS). I made some plastic sheet formers as a guide for the shape when I get to putting on the MS, cuz they're not lying when they say it's ROCK HARD (like my abs, NOT!  ) and I'd rather spend the time getting the shape close the first time than grinding away with the dremel...

Here's the shin piece with the former for the extension:


I cut away some parts of the feet then made formers for them so I could make a rounded boot shape like in the line art:

http://home.roadrunner.com/~funaka/images/JRP_Feet1.JPG

http://home.roadrunner.com/~funaka/images/JRP_Feet2.JPG

Also, when I was nearly done with the GP01 Hangar Dio, I picked up these kits at a couple LHS's, because now I've got the diorama bug...





I LOVE how ugly the Quad Gun Tractor is. And it's shape looks like it could have a remote control cockpit in the back, plus it was pretty cheap at $15. It's the trifecta! I've been clipping out the parts when I've had enough for the night with the JRP. So now I have a Support Vehicle and a Wolf Brigade.

Let's see if I can finish this and still have time to enter the KKKKK. Also, fair warning, I give pretty good odds I'll put this project on hold again before I'm done. But for now I'm hot on this project and I hope to be back over the weekend with final(ish) shapes on the feet and knees. :)

[Chopper Dave]

All right! Its good to see this project back on track! Can't wait to see the final product!

[Funaka]

Okay, the formers were finished:



And filled in with Magic Sculpt:



I'm very happy with the new knees and shins. The feet still have a gap to fill, but I like the shape of the feet a lot, they're just kinda BIG... You know what they say about robots with big feet???

Right now he's kinda bottom-heavy, but taken alone I really like the legs. When the top is filled out better I'll decide if I have to take the dremel to the feet and make them smaller.

[FichtenFoo]

That's looking good. Nice mods so far. Nice use of the GP01 calves on the shoulders.

[Artic Fox]

what are you going to use for the chest? the chest of the Jin-Roh soldier reminds me of the chest from the HEavyarms gundam....

[Chopper Dave]

Those legs look brilliant! This is really looking good!  

Although those feet look quite a bit bigger then the Jin-Roh soldier...>.>

[Funaka]

ArcticFox- You nailed it on the chest. I've looked at that shape 100 times and thought it was familiar. Unfortuately I had that kit built (badly) but threw it out. Although looking at some pics of the kit, it's probably too blocky anyway.

The torso will probably be my next trick. I plan to use the belly vent frm my old Nataku, but the chest will be scratch and it's a pretty complex 3D shape. I've got a front plate cut out and I'll probably glue what I've got together and add formers and Magic Sculpt like I did on the legs and hope for the best. Another problem is that the Spiegel's torso is very small to begin with. Most of the Spiegel's upper body bulk is in the HUGE shoulder armor, which was the first thing I got rid of. My mods are making the torso appear even smaller as the bottom half of the model gets bigger.

I may decide to add length to the torso by extending the ball joint at the bottom, and by widening the whole torso. I figure that square shaped hole for the Core Lander could be the key. If I cut the whole thing apart I could make a magic sculpt block of any size I want and glue it all back together around it... We'll see how brave I feel once I actually start to work on it...

By the way-

Anybody know where I could get really tiny metal tube for gun barrels? My LHS only has as small as 1/16, but in 1/35 scale that's about 2.50 caliber (or about 64mm)!!! To put it in perspective, modern tank-killing aircraft like the A-10 and AH-64 carry 30mm cannons. The Bradley fighting vehicle carries a 25 mm gun. Considering that the JRP will likely only take on guerillas in the middle of a city, Gundam-sized artillery is totally inappropriate.

What would be perfect is Fulcy's 1mm straight tube, but it's only 1mm long....

[Funaka]

Lots of miscellaneous work since the last update:

I filled in the missing part on the feet, but they still require final shaping to make them smaller. You can see the contour line I drew to follow once I get around to it:

http://home.roadrunner.com/~funaka/images/JRP_Feet4.JPG

I also did some research on weapons (mostly WWII-era German weapons) to decide on a weapon loadout for the JRP.

I got to work on the torso. I wasn’t happy with any of the easy solutions I could come up with to make the new chest. They were all too small, and as I mentioned before, the torso id too small to begin with. So, I took a big leap for me and cut it all apart and began to put it back together…

Top and bottom half of the torso separated:


Internals cut into working parts: neck joint, shoulder joints, bottom of box and ball joint that connects to waist:
http://home.roadrunner.com/~funaka/images/JRP_Torso2.JPG

The internals were re-assembled around a core of semi-hardened Magic Sculpt. The ball joint was added back on below a piece of 5/32 inch tube to make the torso taller:



The top half of the outer torso was cut in half to allow it to be widened by ¼ inch. The gap will be filled in with plastic sheet once the Magic Sculpt in the internals dry enough to take them out. In this picture you can see on the left the front hald of the upper toros where I added some MS to make the chest larger.

Later in the day I got to work on several other small changes while the MS was curing. I had to replace the wrist joint with a more standard polycap ball. This way I could replace the Spiegel’s lame rubbery hands with the leftover hands from my Kampfer. Unfortunately, the polycap doesn’t want to stick, despite using epoxy glue, the strongest stuff in my bag of tools.



I also started chopping up my NT-1’s assault-rifle style gun (it’s in the picture, taped to the paper with it’s funny handle thing already cut off) to turn it into something that resembles the WWII-era German MP44 (or StG44), the gun that inspired the AK-47. I plan to lower the barrel and add the characteristic second tube above it and pointy front sight. I’ll also saw off the stock and modify it into a better shape. It might be as simple as shortening it and turning it upside down!




Hopefully my next post will have some final versions of these things and I’ll have some more “Ooh Ahh” kinds of pictures…

[Chopper Dave]

Looking good! Although I just thouht I would mention that the STG44 did not inspire the Kalashnekov (AK-47) even though the guns look similar the Kalashnekov is an independent design.

[Komataguri]

Its a brilliant idea and looks awesome.

But with the legs so thin..are you worried that it might appear top heavy?  I'm not criticizing in the least, just asking :)

[Major Blah]

Later in the day I got to work on several other small changes while the MS was curing. I had to replace the wrist joint with a more standard polycap ball. This way I could replace the Spiegel’s lame rubbery hands with the leftover hands from my Kampfer. Unfortunately, the polycap doesn’t want to stick, despite using epoxy glue, the strongest stuff in my bag of tools.

Try to mix super glue with talcum (or baby) powder, if you rough the polycap a bit on the outside it would stick. :wink:

[Funaka]

Major Blah-

Thanks for the idea, I'll try it next time one of them pops off.

Komataguri-

I'm actually trying to make the torso bigger because I think it's too bottom heavy. :o

Here's a picture of a trial fit of the new torso. The gaps haven't been filled on the armor yet because I want to make sure I'm happy with the proportions first. It made the JRP look longer and leaner overall. I think the proportions are more, uh, proportional, meaning the sizes of the arms, body and legs are a good match for eachother. However, now the JRP looks a little skinny and maybe less menacing. Looks like a wide receiver. :shock:

The Kampfer hands may be too big, or it may just be the long wrist rod between the hand and the ball, which I may shorten. Or I might go with Zaku hands.

[Chopper Dave]

I think whats making it look less menacing is the lower waist. Its kind of small, plus theres that gap there. I think once you start finishing that area up it will look better. And yea I think the Kampher hands might be a bit big oO