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Model In-Progress / 1/48 Gundam The Origin Bust.
« on: July 27, 2012, 02:44:49 PM »
I suppose I'm getting a little out of hand, this being the third WIP I'm posting without actually finishing (or making much progress!) on the others, but I'll take the plunge anyway.
I picked this up a while ago during my time in Japan. It was a pack in for the Gundam Ace magazine late last year.
It's a really easy build, except it's all just one colour plastic, so there's some paintwork ahead.
Bonus was that when you picked up Gundam Ace the month after, it came with a beamsaber pen that would actually fit on the back of this
That was all fine and dandy, until I put it together.
Something seemed off. . .

(FYI, the Beamsaber pen is in there, the pen part is just hanging off the table so you can't see it)
Have you ever seen the Gundam with it's beamsaber sticking straight up out of the back?

Yeah, me neither.
And with that one thought I've already accepted the challenge haven't I?
So basically, I'm setting out to redo parts of the back on this bust. When I decided to get to work on that, I didn't really feel like destroying the perfectly fine beamsaber pen just so I could use the handle.
So I got a bunch of different sized styrene tubes and started on a new handle:


Being relatively new to scribing, getting the panel on the front of the tube to look correct, took a lot of work. I've had to redo it about three times, but I'm not at a point where I'm pretty happy with it.
I've still got a little bit of work to do on the handle, but I'll be pulling out the epoxy putty for that (just to smooth some of the edges). Overall I'm pretty happy with it.
Since I was scribing, I moved on to the head for a bit. I've glued the 'helmet' together and puttied up whatever seamline there was left after that. The back of the head is nicely paneled, but for some reason the panel is cut off abruptly on the side of the head.
Came up with a design I was happy with, and finished up the panels (mirrored on the other side, of course). I'm quite happy with how they turned out:

The head was engineered to basically be one piece entirely. The inside of the head included the vulcans and 'sideburn vents'. I ended up cutting all of those off so that after I glued the helmet, I could slide the face in from the bottom. I glued the vulcans into the holes where they belong, and the vents have handy pegs on each side that I can just click them into. That'll make painting them a lot less of a hassle as well I hope.
I've cut off circles on the back that would fit the beamsaber, and covered up the hole with styrene. I'll still add something interesting to the empty space, probably some rods and panels. I've also started some work on the sheath for the beamsaber, which you can see here (this is after I cut off the round sheath pegs, but before I covered them up):

Already looking much better, no?
Now you might be asking yourself why I'm not making two beam handles and sheaths at the same time. Well, there's an explanation for this. . .
This particular bust is of the Gundam RX-78-02 from the Gundam The Origin manga, the re-imagination of the original Gundam. In my research of this particular version of the Gundam, there was one glaring detail that kept popping up, that most definitely set it apart from the original version.
That being this:


(Images courtesy of whatever website watermark they have)
(These particular shots are of the Metal Build RX-78-02 which is also the Gundam The Origin version)
In this re-imagined story the Gundam is often seen sporting a swank shoulder cannon. As this little (big?) detail is what sets this version of the Gundam apart from practically all other versions I know, the decision to give this bust the very same shoulder cannon was quickly made.
Now I haven't started on the cannon yet at all, but I'm sure it'll be an interesting challenge!
I picked this up a while ago during my time in Japan. It was a pack in for the Gundam Ace magazine late last year.
It's a really easy build, except it's all just one colour plastic, so there's some paintwork ahead.
Bonus was that when you picked up Gundam Ace the month after, it came with a beamsaber pen that would actually fit on the back of this
That was all fine and dandy, until I put it together.
Something seemed off. . .

(FYI, the Beamsaber pen is in there, the pen part is just hanging off the table so you can't see it)
Have you ever seen the Gundam with it's beamsaber sticking straight up out of the back?

Yeah, me neither.
And with that one thought I've already accepted the challenge haven't I?
So basically, I'm setting out to redo parts of the back on this bust. When I decided to get to work on that, I didn't really feel like destroying the perfectly fine beamsaber pen just so I could use the handle.
So I got a bunch of different sized styrene tubes and started on a new handle:


Being relatively new to scribing, getting the panel on the front of the tube to look correct, took a lot of work. I've had to redo it about three times, but I'm not at a point where I'm pretty happy with it.
I've still got a little bit of work to do on the handle, but I'll be pulling out the epoxy putty for that (just to smooth some of the edges). Overall I'm pretty happy with it.
Since I was scribing, I moved on to the head for a bit. I've glued the 'helmet' together and puttied up whatever seamline there was left after that. The back of the head is nicely paneled, but for some reason the panel is cut off abruptly on the side of the head.
Came up with a design I was happy with, and finished up the panels (mirrored on the other side, of course). I'm quite happy with how they turned out:

The head was engineered to basically be one piece entirely. The inside of the head included the vulcans and 'sideburn vents'. I ended up cutting all of those off so that after I glued the helmet, I could slide the face in from the bottom. I glued the vulcans into the holes where they belong, and the vents have handy pegs on each side that I can just click them into. That'll make painting them a lot less of a hassle as well I hope.
I've cut off circles on the back that would fit the beamsaber, and covered up the hole with styrene. I'll still add something interesting to the empty space, probably some rods and panels. I've also started some work on the sheath for the beamsaber, which you can see here (this is after I cut off the round sheath pegs, but before I covered them up):

Already looking much better, no?
Now you might be asking yourself why I'm not making two beam handles and sheaths at the same time. Well, there's an explanation for this. . .
This particular bust is of the Gundam RX-78-02 from the Gundam The Origin manga, the re-imagination of the original Gundam. In my research of this particular version of the Gundam, there was one glaring detail that kept popping up, that most definitely set it apart from the original version.
That being this:


(Images courtesy of whatever website watermark they have)
(These particular shots are of the Metal Build RX-78-02 which is also the Gundam The Origin version)
In this re-imagined story the Gundam is often seen sporting a swank shoulder cannon. As this little (big?) detail is what sets this version of the Gundam apart from practically all other versions I know, the decision to give this bust the very same shoulder cannon was quickly made.
Now I haven't started on the cannon yet at all, but I'm sure it'll be an interesting challenge!