08.30.2005 » Concepts and Initial Build Info

Blub blub blub... time for a quick 'mental health' kit while I work on the Gerbera Tetra. I try to stop in the middle of large projects to do quick little ones just to keep from getting burned out.

Anyway, this mental health kit is the 'Round Buckler' or 'RB' from the anime 'The Mars Daybreak'. I've never seen it and don't know a whole lot about it aside from what I read on the manual, (it was in English for a change! Score!) but the robot was too cool to pass up. Plus I dig almost anything having to do with Mars.

The premise is that there's oceans on Mars (probably after some terraforming effort) and people apparently live in city ships. There's some war or something and Mars ends up a haven for criminals and other such outcasts. Enter the typical plot of boy stealing giant robot and for whatever reason is great at piloting it and there you go.

Whatever... it's a cool underwater robot and that's all that really matters. What I like most about it is that it has a Rahxephon/Zone of the Enders feel to the design. Same mechanical designer? Beats me!

The kit is in 1/48 scale and only has about 40-50+ parts. When I prdered it and saw the box I expected a small kit, but to my surprise this kit's actually quite large. It's a little bigger than your average Master Grade kit. It's got a lot of nice detail, however the joints kinda suck. They've got those crappy rubber joint covers that don't do much since they still leave gaps that leave the ball joint pegs visible when you try to pose the RB. Because of that I am making the kit fixed-pose and sculpting new joint covers from Magic Sculpt.

Everything comes in halfs and there will be a lot of masking required to paint it like the box art (or any scheme). Some of the seams can become very difficult to reach since you'll need to build the arms and legs before painting to fix the seams. Speaking of seams, you can't beat Bandai when it comes to easy-to-fix seams. The parts go together so well that you merely need to run some Tamiya Extra Thin Cement down the gaps and give a slight squeeze. Sand the flash when the glue is dry and you're pretty much ready to prime. The problem is getting into crevases to sand. Those areas will requite extra effort.

I started this kit on Sunday and within a few hours had it all glued together. Later I sanded half the seams. Today I started making the joint covers and the display base. It comes with a nice, but boring display stand, but I'm making my own with an underwater scene. Sand, coral, star fish and a shark. It's looking pretty good so far.

As for what color I'll paint it, I'm still undecided. I might go with a variation of the stock scheme. Below you can see the built kit (and it's crap joint covers), the new ones I am in the process of sculpting, and the base. The shark is in the process of being scratch-build from styrene and MS as were the shells and starfish.