Archive for the ‘Mecha’ Category
In Armored Troopers: VOTOMS (Vertical One-man Tank for Offensive Maneuvers), Fyana is the early show antagonist and mysterious Phantom Lady, who pilots the powerful Brutishdog custom machine. The Brutishdog is a fearsome design, armed with its massive rotary cannon and brutal shearing claw, with an upgraded roller dash system for enhanced speed and maneuverability.
I finished this kit about a year ago and somehow never got around to photographing it (and a companion piece to come later). I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with the excellent Bandai 1/20 VOTOMS plamo kits. On one hand, they are the most detailed and best articulated VOTOMS kits ever produced, but at the same time, they have a dearth of moving parts and are a bit delicate when painted up without care. I have broken a couple of the armor flaps after handling this kit for a year, but it is still one of my favorite models, and the kit really is solid, even if there is a large amount of stuff on the kit that got painted and will never be seen again on the interior and structural skeleton.
The regular pink and off-white Brutishdog has always seemed a bit boring to me, so I wanted to spice up the design with this kit. I added a two-tone pink disruptive scheme to add some interest, along with a large number of decals and some really controlled weathering to depict Fyana in her element, blowing up machines and roller-dashing rings around her enemies. If I ever get around to detailing up my Yamato 1/12 Brutishdog, I will finish it the exact same way.
Just messing around with some new acquisitions… Takara’s 1/72 dual-model Dougram figures. Die-cast skeletons with plastic armor parts and fantastic articulation and detail make for a win in my book.
Snapped some shots messing with some 1/6 toys tonight… I’ve finally been bitten by the 3A Ashley Wood toy bug, so expect lots of and lots of 1/12 Bramble pics when mine comes in.
Wombat Toys’ Junker V figures in a loving embrace… the blue is the standard release Garuban tribute, and the white is the San Diego Comic Con exclusive Paul Kaiju-painted Medik release. One of my favorite sculpts!
My latest package from Japan showed up, filling in some big holes in my collection, including a MIB Metalhawk, Dezaras, and Micromaster Rabbicrater, the figure that was exclusively packed in with the original Zone OVA VHS!
This big guy is a recast of an older WonderFest kit (I think!) of the Zentraedi Glaug officer’s battlepod from Super Dimensional Fortress: Macross. The Glaug is a tough design to render due to the spindly arms, and I had to use alot of pins on the parts to keep it stable. I actually finished this kit a year ago, but only finally took it back off the shelf to re-fix the arms the other day, and figured it was time to finally photograph it all finished. The decals were made by me in Photoshop, using a scan of the decal sheet from a 1/72 Glaug plastic kit (either an Arii kit or Imai I assume), printed on clear decal stock. This was the first time I made my own decals, and I’m pretty happy with how they came out… I think the clear backing worked really well with the gunship greys of the machine, and gave it a bit more subdued look, instead of totally bright stand out colors all over the mech. I replaced the antenna on the side of the cockpit with a piece cut from thin Plasticard. Painted with a couple of random Tamiya and Testor’s rattle cans I had on hand, and then detailed with acrylics and a brush. I did all those yellow stencils on the legs by hand, and it took a long time to get them to where I was happy with them. An oil wash and weathering pigments rounded out the package, along with clear red on silver for all the sensor lights.
I’ll start this off by saying that in addition to hosting my models as I finish them, I think I’m going to start using this for some more ‘bloggy’ purposes on whatever I’m thinking, most likely thoughts on toys as I’m posting them to other sites, or any other related things that come to mind. It won’t become a stream of conscious blather, but it is going to expand a bit.
For those who do not know, Shogun Warriors was a line of toys released in the States by Mattel using a number of Popy super robot toys, including some of the early Chogokins and early Jumbo Machinders, two foot tall polyethylene giants with various child-disabling launching mechanisms. Gaiking is among the SW Jumbo Machinder line, but when Mattel brought Gaiking over from the Popy line, they made some significant changes… the entire torso is an original sculpt, simplifying the multipart dragon face of the original, as well as making the Counter Cross weapons part of the shin mold instead of removable weapons. Like some of the other Mattel Jumbo Machinders, a shooting fist was added, adding a jointed elbow and asymmetry of the arms as well. The addition of the jointed elbow and firing fist (the fists are ENORMOUS for a firing projectile) are awesome, but the asymmetry and other lost features make the toy goofy looking. I found this oddball Gaiking on ebay by change, listed as a rare variant from Latin America, but more likely just a hack job done from parts by a collector that had two fists (and therfore two jointed elbows): I was sold… even with the goofy simplified torso, the two launching fists and jointed elbows make the a normally static looking figure into a fun dynamic behemoth. This is my first Jumbo Machinder, and I couldn’t be happier… I’ll definitely get more JMs in the future, but unfortunately have significantly more love for the later blockier design JMs, which are substantially more expensive, and therefore long-term goals.
This is more of a ‘blog’ post than a display post, but I figured I’d throw it up here for people to see. I am a through and through TF fan and remember watching G2 on the TV. Fast forward 10 or 15 years, and now I’m into the hard stuff- Japanese G1. I got hooked up with a guy who helped me grab many of the easy to find stuff like Star Saber, Vic Leo, and Overlord for decent prices, and even found a Dai Atlas for cheap, and then overpaid for a boxed Sonic Bomber, but there was one sneaky bastard that eluded me: Roadfire C-349. On the TF wiki page, the caption under the picture of Roadfire reads “You’ll never own me”, and I took that as a challenge. RF’s not necessarily the most expensive G1 TF by a long shot, but damned if he’s not just about the rarest. Right when I was getting into the good stuff, I lost a loose incomplete broken RF for a whole bunch of money on ebay, and then did not see another one for almost a full year. Cut to about two weeks ago, and after a big binge of older super robot stuff on YHJ, I thought to myself ‘I should check ebay again for Roadfire…’ and there it was: boxed complete with unapplied stickers and some moderate yellowing. I had to have it… fortunately for me, the same seller was unloading a metric ton of good looking G1 stuff including other Japanese items, and it seemed to distract the competition, because I won RF for significantly less than my max bid with little competition in the critical last 5 minutes. The bugger showed up the other day, and I was in heaven… Reprolabels are in the air, and I’m going to look into the hydrogen peroxide method for the yellowing… here’s some love shots of the Zone base all setup (missing Sonic Bomber’s Micromaster… one more elusive piece of the set) and a shot of the three Powered Masters together, and a box pic of my JP G1 stuff so far.
In the Universal Century tradition of Mobile Suit Gundam, ace Zeon pilot Char Aznable must have a special custom version ready of each and any mobile suit there is even a slim chance of that he might pilot. They must all be red as well, or Char won’t pilot them (Hyaku-Shiki does not count, as he was in disguise).
The Z’Gok is a Zeon aquatic mobile suit with formidable claws and hand-mounted beam cannons. The production model Z’Gok is stocky but not fat, with segmented flexible arms and legs like many of the other Zeon aquatic machines. This upgraded custom Z’Gok for Char’s use is a G-System resin conversion for the Bandai MG Z’Gok kit. The conversion is really designed for the Char’s use MG Z’Gok, as there are some slight differences in the joint-work of the arms and legs, but with a little extra putty work I was able to use the parts from a regular production Z’Gok MG kit without too much hassle. The casting was flawless, and the kit was well designed.
Thanks to the design of the Z’Gok and the kit, I was able to keep the model in well-thought out sub-assemblies for the painting process. I used my new Games Workshop Spray Gun to paint all the base colors, and tried Valeijo’s Model Air line of paints, which went on smooth, and has fantastic metallics. Weathering was done with acrylics and an oil wash… I did not do any dot-filtering, as I wanted to keep the weathering light, since the aquatic Mobile Suits were only used for a span of like five episodes in the show (if that). This was a first-issue of the conversion kit, so it included photo-etched metal parts for all the propeller covers. These went on easily and really added some scale to the machine, but I accidentally broke off two of the vanes on one of the front cover, which had to be bent into position, so I added a little battle damage around that area, and now you can see the weathering job I did to the propeller blades, painting them brass-colors and adding a patina like on real naval ships.
Ok, had a nice sunny day and was able to redo the photos for this guy. Mechabot: A Hero Reforged is a project by Go Hero, and is designed to capture all of the zaniness and classic funk of 70’s Super Robot shows, and Mechabot is the titular hero machine. Mechabot is equipped with the usual gamut of Super Robot equipment, including Super X1 Alloy Plating, Nova Ray Emitters, and the prominent Wing Blade. Mechabot is designed to combat a growing Sea Monster thread, so a lot of his design elements, like the shark-esque hands and wingblade fin draw from nautical inspiration, giving Mechabot a unique flair among similarly designed Super Robots. The Mechabot toy is a vinyl release with fantastic articulation for a vinyl toy, including cleverly cut hip, ankle, and elbow swivels that allow Mechabot to do a variety of action poses!
On to the custom… out of the bag, Mechabot is smooth sleek silver, with matte black and gloss metallic blue. I wanted my Mechabot to look a bit more ‘used’, and set to the task of adding variation and interest to this sleek design. When dealing with Super Robots, there aren’t a lot of panel lines, hard edges, or greeblie details to work with, so I decided to use color variation instead to add interest, much like when doing solid-colored tank models. The first thing I did was add a great deal of chipping and paint wear, using greys for the blue and black parts, and GW Boltgun Metal for the silver. I broke out the oil paints and started adding localized color filters of yellow ochre, multiple browns, black, white, and blue to all the silver surfaces, to get the worn metal weathering effect I was after. Acrylic paints were used to add rust spots, and oil paints were used to add rust streaking from the larger dings (I don’t really know if Super X1 Alloy rusts, but oh well). The oil and grease streaking were done with Tamiya and Valeijo Smokes… Tamiya’s is more black, and Valeijo’s is more brown. The Mechabot logo written in the Kanji (I think?) from the packaging was done with a super-fine brush and acrylics. From there I went to applying sealer, starting with a coat of Future first, so that I would have a nice neutral acrylic barrier between anything harsher and the vinyl underneath. From there I used clear finishes to add more interest to the different surfaces on Mechabot. The black parts were coated with dead flat artists’ matte varnish, and the silver metal bits were finished with Valeijo Satin. I left the blue bits Future shiny to make the metallic finish pop. I then went in and repainted many of the chips and dings in the blue bits and the rust spots I added to the silver with the matte varnish to add contrast to them.
Prometheus Rising Studios 