In Progress » Strike Gundam – Pack Test Unit

07.29.2005 » Concepts

So I’m in the mood to do another gundam kit so I
started on my Master Grade Strike Gundam from
Gundam Seed. I got this kit well over a year ago
at the Pittsburgh Comicon and it’s sat on my shelf
while I thought about what to do with it. For
this kit I’m making a test unit for new Striker
Packs. Basically the Strike can be equiped with
various packs to server different roles in battle.
In Seed we saw the Aile, Launcher, and Sword packs.
I’ll be making the Aile pack that comes with the
kit, but also creating my own custom test-pack.
The Strike has a lot of modification potential
due to the pack system.

My pack will be called the Shinobi
pack. It’s roll would be for light armor infiltration
and reconissance. I’ll be making a backpack with
a sensor jammer. For armament the Strike will
have a forearm mounted sword for certain and possible
a chain weapon and beam saber. Plus it will have
the standard Armor Schneiders located in the hip
skirt armors.

Color-wise, the Strike will be mostly
light warm buff-gray and a splash of test orange.
Decals will aslo depict this as a test unit.

07.29.2005 » Cutting,
Sanding and Pre-building

I’m almost done cutting and sanding
this kit. All I have left is the weapons and Aile
Pack. I also need to make the Shinobi Pack for
it. I decided to pre-build and pose the kit to
see how the pack would fit. Here’s a few pics
of one of my intended final poses. I plan on photographing
several poses. The sword is made from sharpened
styrene srtip and various leftover gun and MG
parts. The hand is not the final hand. It’s the
sniper rifle holding hand from my GM Ground Type.
I plan on modifying one of my b-club hands to
be bent back like that.

08.10.2005 » Sheath
Progress

Here’s my progress so far on the
forearm mounted sheath. I didn’t take pics of
the mount part off the arm for whatever reason,
but I’m pleased with how it’s turning out. The
small holes within holes will contain the cut-off
heads of metal pins after it’s painted so that
they retain their metal finish. The sheath is
hinged under the box in the back in 2 spots. The
box hides the hinges, keeps the pins in place
and best of all blocks the door from opening too
far. I’ll be adding some more in front of that
box to make it look less “open”. I still
have a lot of clean-up to do but wanted to post
the little bit of progress I made before I get
busy with freelance work again.

08.11.2005 » Sheath
Progress Part 2

Due to some requests from the forum
I decided to take some more pics of the sheath.
Below are pics of the arm mount portion, the double
hinges and the hinges I bought and modified from
the RC department at HobbyTownUSA.

08.18.2005 » Not as
much progress as it seems..

Due to a few freelance projects
going on at once, I haven’t had much time to work
on the Strike, but here’s where I’m at so far…

I’m almost done with the scratch-building
and just need to add finishing details before
I can prime and paint. Yay! The backpack is almost
done as you can see below. I originally was going
to just have a 2-3cm disk as a raddar jammer,
but after finding some misc junk in my plumbing
extras, I got the idea to go bigger and have a
halo as a radar/sensor jammer. (It’s Seed.. gotta
have a uselessly huge backpack!) I looked for
large thin washers and the like, but nothing as
large as I wanted was in any other material then
rubber at home depot. Instead I bought a 59 cent
PVC test plug and used my razor saw to remove
the lip. That lip is now my halo. I had to do
a lot of cleaning up to the lip, but my big (5″)
wood sander made short work of that. The two armatures
are from modified my ReGZ’s BWS that I’m using
for scrap. I attacehed the halo with leftover
MG screws and those screws will be covered with
minus molds.

Here’s the pics:

08.21.2005 » Painting
has begun…

I primed everything today with my
Duplicolor Dark Gray sandable primer. Then a little
bit ago I used Alclad II for the first time using
my old Badger 150 dual action AB that I used when
I started until it broke. I’ve had it since 1993
and recently fixed it with some parts from another
that my brother found cleaning out some property
owned by an inlaw. So it’s my “beater”
airbrush now so I don’t mess up my good one with
Lacquers and primers.

Anyawy, I used Steel and I LOVE
it. I still can’t wrap my mind around it being
dry and ready for masking in 10 minutes. How strange.
The main reason I used it was so that I could
avoid scratching up the internals like I normally
do when posing. Hopefully the Lacquer holds up
better than Tamiya. The finish is beautiful and
the color works great for internals. Darker than
silver, but not gunmetal dark. I might have to
get some more colors now since I bought it on
a lark in March at the IPMS show.

I also finally bought a pressure
regulator since my compressor doesn’t have one.
Since the Alclad recommends 12-15 psi and my aztec
hobby compressor sprays much higher than that
I figured it was a good idea to get one. Got it
at walmart for $14 too which wasn’t bad.

It’s funny, I think I’m getting
great results then I buy an airbrugh upgrade and
some new paint and I’m getting even better results.
Can’t wait to try some camo with the lower pressure.
The higher pressure made freehanding camo difficult
due to excessive overspray.

Pics later…

08.22.2005 » Painting
has just about been completed…

Yeah, everything is painted and
Futured. Well, except for the eyes, but I do those
last anyway. Next up is inking, more Future, then
Decals. Here’s a shot of all the colors except
the Steel Alclad which I neglected to photograph.
The sword is silver rub’n buff buffed on over
gloss black.

08.23.2005 » Addition

Here’s those Alclad parts I forgot
to photograph yesterday. It’s Alclad 2 Steel over
Dark Gray Duplicolor Primer. Very nice color for
internals. Not quite gunmetal. It’s about the
same shade as Tamiya Metallic Gray but all metallic
and not flecky. You’ll notince a little sprue
nub unsanded on the second pic, but my philosophy
is if you can’t see it, don’t sand it. That part
will be covered up by the torso armor.