07.13.04 » The Story...

The smell of oil and ozone fills the air as the support crew of Unit 22 struggle to complete repairs in the dim light of their bunker. Their megalithic charge looms overhead, a MS-06F Zaku II. Most of the repairs have been completed except for the right arm. In the opening artillery barrage, it took several hits, and needs work before the giant can return to battle.

For the past seventy-two hours, their underground base has been under siege, their giant doors, bombarded by artillery fire. Deep within their excavated borrows they've so far been safe. The doors have held, but unless they can get their last remaining Zakus running, they've no hope of disabling the Federation Gun Tanks and their supporting Mobile Suits.

07.13.04 » The Big Build

Okay, I think I'm insane. My next project is going to be a Perfect Grade (1/60 scale) diorama. I'll be using the PG Zaku II MS-06F undergoing maintenance in an underground cave base. Should be a lot of work, but a lot of fun as well.

The Zaku colors will be based off some aircraft camoflauge that I found while doing some research for the Cloud 09. For the main shield decal, I was inspired by a book on fairies, gnomes, goblins and other creatures. The book is great and has TONS of drawings and sketches. I drew this one with a twig axe with a Zaku Heat Hawk inspired blade.

For the record, this won't be an F2 conversion, I just used the lineart since the PG manuals was already colored in and Zakus have basically the same parts anyway.

I'm going to attempt some uber-detail painting on the internals and so some added greebling to the outer armor. Minus molds and maybe a scratch-built gun as well. I'm going to try and light both the Heat Hawk and the Zaku Machine Gun lens. More on that as I figure it out.

For the repair crew, I got a few Hasegawa Figure sets in 1/72 scale. Now you're thinking "Wait, I thought that this was a 1/60 scale Zaku?" Well, putting the 1/72 Hasegawa figs next to the Bandai 1/60 figs made me realize that there isn't much of a difference size-wise. I got these from Best 1 Hobby with some of my winnings from the Dec 2004 Gundam Comp.

The cave will be constructed inside of a wooden box which I have already constructed. The inside size of the box is 12.5 inches wide by 13.5 inches tall. I'll most likely be making the cave structure from celluclay or joint compound or both. The box will have a hinged wood and plexi door on the front and back to keep out dust and allow for viewing from both sides. I'm going to also attemt to mount it on my wall in an empty spot to save myself shelf space.

For girders, walkways and railings, I found a few train accessories cheap at a local hobby store. I got 4 sprues of fencing for about $5-6 and 5 sprues of "box girders" used as railway bridge option parts for around $12.

To light the cave, I'll be constructing several "stadium" style light arrays with white LEDs. The LEDs will be laid out 5x3. Not sure of the power supply yet, but I may have to go with C or D size batteries since I'll be using 34 + LEDs. See below for the array concept drawing.

07.13.04 » Cutting and Sanding

My least favorite part and unfortunately this kit will require a lot of it. I started the cutting of the PG yesterday. For 2 hours of cutting/sanding, I'd say I got pretty far. The head and the shoulder internals are all cut/sanded. So far it seems like it was placed better into the sprues than the Ex-S. A lot of the flash-marks are hidden in one way or another which is great. Plus I haven't had a part with more than 3 sprue attachment points yet. I swear some of the smallest parts on the Ex-S had like 4 parts to sand, all in the most obvious of places.

07.14.04 » Two Arms! Two Arms!

Two arms... so far. Just need to do the shoulders. Next up is the legs.

Also, here's a shot of the 1/60 Zaku Pilot (green) next to the 1/72 Hasegawa Pilot (gray). The Zaku pilot is only slightly bigger so it won't make much of a difference in the dio.

07.17.04 » Freight Boxes

So far on the Zaku, I've gotten to the leg internals. Next is the feet internals, then the leg/feet armor. I was getting a little tired of sanding so I thought I'd take a break and temporarily move onto a scratch-building project. I've been trying to decide where I would put some batteries. With 30+ LEDs I'm going to need a long supply of power, so I decided to use D-cell batteries. To have a place to put the D-cells I made a "freight" box. The type you see on ships crossing the Pacific. I made a smaller freight box to hide the switches under. I'll me making several more of these to place around the repair bay.

Here's some pictures:

07.18.04 » Cranes and Controls

Since this is a maintenance bay for a rather large giant robot, I thought it'd make sense to have a crane to maneuver the large robot pieces into position for repair and installation.

At first I was going to build a series of girders with tracks along them suspended from the ceiling. The track would have a "crane car" that would hang and move about. Well, after some thought I realized that it wouldn't be a very efficient system for moving cargo into anyplace on the floor or above. The long boom style crane however would be perfect since it can swivel 360 degrees AND move its cables up and down the boom enabling it to place parts/cargo anywhere in that 360 space. Here's a pic of what I'm planning:

While nothing on it will actually move and the cables will be static, I still want it to look somewhat realistic. The large box on the back would be for ballast. The cables on top of the "box girders" will be for supporting the crane. The crane will be hooked up to the ceiling where it will be able to rotate 360 degrees.

Now this crane would need a place to be controlled from. I'll be building a small box with a glass windowed front to be the control room. There would be no room on the actual crane for this. The rooom will be built into the cave wall. A set of stairs will lead up to a platform where one could enter this room. The room will be lit and I may use some blue LEDs to simulate the computor monitors. The stairs and platform will have railings, but I didn't put them in the sketch. There will also be a cat-walk suspented from this platform to get to the pilot hatch on the mech. Here's a pic without the catwalk since I'll have to decide what to do with that after I do some measurements.

08.01.04 » Changes both good and bad...

So I've decided the lighting arrays just are not gonna look right. Instead, I'll be going with a "warehouse" style of lighting where I put lights at intervals along the ceiling girders.That should work fine.

I managed to light up the heat hawk EXACTLY how I wanted to so that the light will just light the blade edge. Unfortunately, sometime after I glued and sanded the axe halves together the lights decided to not work anymore. I managed to pop out the blade and check the LEDs and they were fine. Somewhere in my wiring, there must have been a snapped piece. Long story short, I salvaged a few of the yellow LEDs and the blade will no longer be lit. Ah well... better luck next time.

I'm not concerned though as it was a side project and wasn't even going to be lit in the diorama anyway. Here's some pics though of how it looked before the disaster.

I've got the whole Zaku cut and sanded. Now I'm just adding greebles like minus molds and d-rings. Here's a few shots of the shoulder.

I figured out a way to paint many of the beads at once, but still keep them separated. For those that fit on skewers, I separated them with folds of tape. For those too small for the skewers, I used wire to do the same tape trick. This will make painting them much easier and quicker.

I'm still toying with different options for the crane system as well. For now though I'm going to focus on the Zaku internals, then the armor, then I'll move onto the dio.

08.04.04 » Let there be paint!

I've had a cold since Wednesday. Blah! I'm starting to get over it though so I decided to paint. I was putting it off due to not wanting to get my respirator all snotty and infected. While I was waiting, I started building the Hasegawa Aerospace equipment.

Anyway, as usual, I started with the boosters. I made a dull "brick-red" color for those. I got a dual use out of the color since it looked great for my larger freight container. I also painted the tips of all the pistons yellow-orange. I may go back and add black stripes to make them "warning"-ish, or a may leave them orange. Haven't decided yet.

Here's some pics »

08.08.04 » Metallics & More

So to paint my Zakus boosters, I used the same technique that I used on my Cloud 09. First I painted the insides with a red. Next I put sticky-tack inside of the boosters to mask the red from the outside colors. I then painted the boosters with a mixture of Tamiya Coppor and Bronze. Lastly, using a "max" technique I painted the outsides with a mixture of Gunmetal and silver. I sprayed the gunmetal thinner near the edges so that the coppor-bronze would show through a bit. THis gives the metal a "burned" sorta look.

I did the same thing for the gun, only I used straight Gunmetal with no silver mixed in.

For the bullets that will go inside the machine gun cannister, I used Tamiya "Titanium Gold" with nothing added except thinner. It has a nice pale brass color to it and is very shiny. I have also gotten my two primary internal tones painted. One is a medium gray, the other is a darker medium gray + gunmetal + metallic gray. The color is awesome!

Here's some pics »

08.09.04 » Internals

I started detailing the internals today. I'm hand-brushing most of the pipes and rivets, but the pipes on the backpack halves were airbrushed. You can see how the backpack "tanks" are the same rusty red as the boosters and freight box. I think the variety of tones there will look great when the backpack cover is displayed open.

After I am done with the painting, I'll be putting down a coat of Future and then doing a chalk wash for mechanical grime. After that will come a very light drybrushing of silver. I'll be doing a few more weathering techniques as well, but we'll save those for another update.

In the PG Zaku manual, there's a picture of 2 Zakus test-fighting. One has red stripes on its elbows. I love how that looks so I did it to this kit.

Pics »

08.12.04 » Wash Behind Your Gears

Wash time. I have sprayed all of my internal parts witha gloss coat of Future and have let them cure for a few days. Now I'm washing on pastels. It's a mixture of water, ground up black pastels and a drop of dish soap. I brush it onto the part then set it in front of a fan to dry. When dry, I take a not very damp paper towel piece and lightly wipe off the excess. After I finish all of these parts, I'll give them a flat coat of Future.

Here's some pics.

08.15.04 » Drybrushing and Building

After the parts were chalk-washed I gave them a thin coat of flat Future to seal in the grime. Next I used silver Rub-n-Buff to drybrush all the internals to give them a worn metal look. The first image shows the washed part with and without the drybrushing. After that I gave the parts another coat of flat Future and began to build. I've only gotten up to finishing the legs so far.

08.16.04 » Red Eye

So the Zakus internals are finished. I'll be taking good shots of them soon before I start working on the armor, so keep an eye out for them. The Red LED that came with the kit is really really bright. I may add a resistor to dim it a bit. The second shot is with no lights on except the Zakus eye-light. The other two are of the internals of the upper torso.

08.18.04 » Good Internal Pictures!!!

I took good pictures of the internals today. Click Here!

I still need to do the dusy weathering and the rust, but will be waiting till I get the armor to that point so I can do it all at once.

Goto Page 2