09.10.04 » The Zaku is Done!

I took good pictures of the finished Zaku today. Click here for the full-sized images!

Now I have to finish the work on the diorama.

09.17.04 » Cabinet

The cabinet that will hold the dio cave is almost done. I just need to find some nice hinges for the 2 doors and make the front door knob. The doorknob will be a 1/144 Heat Hawk axe made to look metallic. Here's a pic of the box so far. The blue is the clear film that protects the plexiglass.

09.23.04 » Pavement

Tonight I got a chance to start work on the floor of the repair bay. I'm using a techinque I found on the Testors website for making "tarmak". I used the same technique for the pavement in my SWAT Ingram project. You first put down a coat of acryllic matt medium, then while it's still wet, add baking soda on tap. When dry, you sand it down and carve in the lines. Instead of matt medium, I used polyacryllic finish. When it's all dry, I'll do the sanding.

09.24.04 » More Pavement

Okay, so the polycrylic + baking soda dried. Next I brushed off the excess and put it back into my baking soda jar for future use. Then I lightly sanded the floor. Next I masked off more of the box and sprayed it with a dark gray primer. When that dried, I sprayed down light gray primer. Finally, I used a t-square and triangle and my scriber and scored the breaks and cracks in the concrete.

Next, I need to weather and paint lines/numbers on the pavement. I'm going to wait till the rock walls are done though.

09.25.04 » The Vault

I mixed up some celluclay this afternoon and created my cave/vault walls. Basically these repair vaults were excavated as part of the larger underground complex using large mining machines. Their floors were then smoothed out and filled with concrete to smooth them out for vehicle and foot traffic. In many Gundam series there are hollowed out asteroids and such used as bases so the technology exists in the GUndam universe for this sort of thing. In the real world however, I don't know if one could excavate a vault this large.

The first pic is of the PG Zaku standing inside of the box. I did this so I knew how high to add the control room. The blue box in pic 2 is where the windowed control room will be. I'll pop that box out later when things dry.

Having learned a few things from my last celluclay experience, I first added "anchors" to hold the celluclay in place as it dries. I used a crappy staple-gun which never puts the staple completely in the wood and added staples all over the inside of the box. These will serve to hold everything in place. Hopefully.

The celluclay was applied very thin. Nowhere is more than 1 cm thick. This will allow it to dry faster and give me the needed room for the dio. After the clay was added, I took several clay tools and added the grooves to simulate where the machines dug out the cave.

The final pic is of the box drying in front of my dehumidifier. The warm air blowing out the front has already done a good bit of drying in the past 4 hours.

09.27.04 » Rock On!

The celluclay dried incredibly fast. Probably due to how thin I applied it. Yesterday I was able to spray the dried clay black and then later drybrush the rock face with acrylics. Now that that's done, I can start scratch-building the crane and other dio accessories. You can see in the pic where the control room will go once it is built. After all of my accessories are built, I'll weather the floor and rock walls some more with rust, oil, and water seeping through the bedrock.

09.27.04 » Control Room

I started the control room this evening. This will eventually be glued into the empty box in the rock wall. First though, it needs constructed, painted and lit-up. The floor is a cut piece of a Home Depot paint stirrer. Various pieces of sheet styrene will make up the walls. I'll use a clear piece to do the window. Below the window will be a control panel with a few lit monitors.

The big ancient computer-looking thing along the side wall is a radio from a Tamiya M-8 Greyhound which a buddy gave me many parts of to use as greebles. The chairs are also parts from that M-8. I don't know what they were supposed to be, but they were screaming to be chairs. I used rod styrene and a couple minus molds for the chair support. I used my pin-vise to drill little holes in the "computer" for light to shine through.

I still need to construct the ceiling, back and other wall (which will both have doors) and control panel. I need to purchase some grooved styrene sheet to make the outer walls of the room look "paneled".

09.28.04 » Bridge Crane

I've been having trouble deciding how best to build the bridge crane. It needs to fit with a 1.5 inch clearance yet look strong enough to hold parts of the Zaku. Having searched Yahoo Images for bridge crane pics and thinking about what I can use styrene-wise to make construction easier, and keeping in mind what I already have, I came up with the following illustration. I'll add more info as I build it, but it's made from I beams, H beams and box girders. It'll also use various extra parts I have and other styrene for details.

09.29.04 » Side Supports

I went to the hobby store today and bought all the styrene I'll need to finish this project. Later, I started working on the side supports for the crane. I started with a 14" long Plastruct I-beam (gray) which was 1/4" wide and 1/2" tall. I used my razor saw to cut the angles. The white support pieces inside the "I" are 1/8 inch wide half-round strip styrene. On top of the "I" is 1/4" square tubing and on top of that is a 1/4" wide channel piece.

Next I'll close up the ends and add the panels to the sides. I may add holes for lighting as well.

10.03.04 » Finished Side Supports/In-Prog Control Room

I finished the side supports for the crane today. Since my last progress report, I added the styrene to the sides of the supports, sanded, primed, added the panels to the sides of the supports, drilled holes for red LEDs, added brass pins, and drilled holes into cave walls to hold support pins. It was a pain, but using a t-square, pen-sized level, tape, and thread, I was able to get the supports very level and even.

I finished making the major part of the control booth. I'll be leaving the roof un-attached until everything is complete so that I can easily access the interior of the booth for painting and setting up of the figures/equipment. I used a "metal siding" sheet of styrene which comes pre-grooved like you see. Much easier/cleaner than adding strips of styrene to a plain sheet like I did for the freight containers.

Next I need to make the doors for the booth, prime the side supports and booth, and build the bridge part of the crane.

10.05.04 » Crane 'Trolley' and Catwalk Supports

First off, I finished the major work on the crane. Al that's left to do is trim the bridge a bit more, paint and glue it all together. The "trolley" is made from sheet styrene and various scrap. I wrapped thread around the large spool and will be painting it the cable color later. In the bridge, you can see the trolley on its runners. I didn't bother adding wheels since they'd not be seen ever anyway.

The platform for the catwalks is made from sheet styrene and various HO (i think) train accessories (Stairs, girders, and railings) I still need to construct the catwalks and add the railings. The supports for the platforms are styrene H-columns.

10.06.04 » Propaganda

I had this idea last night to make small Zeon propaganda posters and have them hanging in the control room and in the bay area. These will only be about 1/2 inch tall when done. Here's what I came up with:

10.06.04 » Riding the Rails

I got a chance to start the railings and finish the main catwalk this evening. I had the perfect pin-vice bit size to make placing the railings on easier. Now the posts pop into the pin-vice holes so I will not need a lot of glue.

I need to adjust the main catwalk a bit because the left side is a little high.

Here's some pics of it all together so far.

Click here for a larger image of the second picture.

10.11.04 » Big update full of small things...

I haven't updated in a little bit and as usual, as a result, I have a lot of pics to post.

First off, my HO scale stairs set also came with many ladders. There are 7 ladders in that pic which means I from the 4 sprues, there are 28 ladders total. I won't be using all of those, but it's nice to know I have the option. Also in the first pic you can see the conduits running up the side of the wall. They're not really bent, but I think my camer lens did that.

The next pic is the hook I made for the crane. Nevermind the angled edges, this piece is only about 3/16" tall. When looking at it not zoomed in upon, you don't notice those.

The next two images show how my ceiling light fixtures will look. Obviously they'll need some paint.

The final 6 images are of the 1/72 scale Hasegawa figure/equipment sets I purchased. I got a weapons loading set this weekend which has a nifty little tractor to pull the other equipment around with. The flat cart in the pic will be converted into a scissor-lift (accordian lift) in the down position. I haven't added the wheels to any of the pieces yet since adding them after will make painting easier.

10.17.04 » Figures and Such

Everything that needs buildin' is built. Yay! This weekend I primed everything including the figures and began painting the figs as well. I though that painting 20 figs would take a while, but it's going very quickly.

First I primed them all with Dark Gray Duplicolor Primer. Next I handbrushed the blue or green clothes. After that I painted the various flesh tones and did the washes to bring out the details. And the last thing I've done is paint the hair (5-6 hair colors), white shirts, and a few miscelaneous things. I have more things to paint on the figs such as belts and undershirts then I'll give those parts a wash to bring out the highlights.

10.20.04 » Go for the Gold!

I'm almost done painting everything. I only need to airbrush the ladders and do some hand-painted detail work here and there. Here's a few shots of painted parts awaiting their Future, weathering and decals.

10.27.04 » Painting done, now onto finishing

Everything's painted and ready to be assembled. What I'm doing now is the final weathering and wiring. Meanwhile, I'm begining to fix parts of the dio into position permanently. Here's some pics.

10.28.04 » Wiring it up

I worked on the wiring last night and again this evening. It turned out great and everything lit up without a hitch. I haven't added the light covers yet, so you're seeing raw white LEDs. You can see the lights on the wall unit in the control booth and the final pic was taken in complete darkness with all the lights turned off. My camera must had did some compensation for the low light because while the lighting is bright enough in person, it's not nearly as bright as it looks in that pic.

10.29.04 » Details Details...

Whew! I didn't think it'f take this long to put all the fugs and such in place, but it's coming along. I'm taking extra time because once they're glued into position, that's it. I also have to make sure that I don't put anything in the way of the Zaku since it'll have to be removed when I transport it. Anyway, here's a shot from earlier when I was temporarily positioning things. Since then, I've moved a lot around, but it's progressing.

By the way, I love this first shot even though it's a bit blurry. I'll have to take a final shot like this. The light and shadow on the head rocks!

10.31.04 » Preview!

I'm excited and psyched, so I thought I'd share. Here's the test images I took about 1/2 hour ago. Basically, I turned off every light in the basement and turned on the dio's lights. The only lighting in these images come from the dio themselves and the pics have not been adjusted in any way except for resizing and the watermark.

For the final shots, I'll be putting black paper over the back door so that it does not show up. I won't be able to take them till tomorrow noght however as I need to cut the paper, find my tri-pod (the camera (with timer set) was sitting on stacked boxes for these shots) and iron a rather large piece of black material I forgot I had, but found when decorating for Halloween for a backdrop.

Click the images for larger views! Real pics are coming soon!