11.30.03 » Poorly Placed Seams on Legs and Arms

First, I gotta give Bandai credit for making a kit with minimal seams. Unfortunately though, the few seams that need glued and puttied are in very obvious places and require some modifications to deal with.

Right on the front of the Griffons calves is a big seam. Worse yet, you're supposed to build the internals and then snap on the two halves afterwards. What made this easy to deal with was the fact that the front armor only had to hook onto 4 pegs. I cut down the pegs and the glued together calf armor slid snugly on. Honestly, I'm not sure why this part couldn't have been connected via a polycap or two, but at least it was easy to fix.

The inner forearms were the same way, but I could glue them and sand them easily since I didn't have to worry about painting the internals due to their vinyl covers.

11.30.03 » Vinyl Joint Covers (for both Ingram and Griffon)

What I like about the joint covers:

• Less painting of internals since they cover them completely
• Neat-O concept and looks somewhat cool

What I hate about the joint covers:

• They hinder joint movement
• They have nasty seams that required the use of a solder iron to remove
• I need to buy a special flexible paint to paint them
• Can't sand vinylish material

No images yet, but I'll get some eventually.

11.30.03 » Candy Coat

I had a brainstorm this morning. Normally I use Tamiya chrome silver and cover it with Tamiya Clear Red for a candy coat. You know... that sports car look... red with metal underneath. I used this technique on my God Gundam.

Anyway, I was wondering what it would look like if I used Tamiya Copper instead of Chrome Silver. The only difference that I see is that the color is a little warmer, there's more of a fleckie metal look and if you use a flash, you get this cool effect where you see the copper underneath. It looks like fire! I'm not sure if I'll be doing this or not. I want to try the silver again and a semi-gloss clearcoat. I don't like the uber-gloss that it has now.

« with flash

« without flash

11.30.03 » Damaged Hatch

I want the Ingram to go "old-school" on the Griffon with a blunt object. However, I want to be able to display the Mechs without the diorama since shelf space is at a premium. So I'm not displaying a beat-up sports car mech, I made another front hatch. The original I'll keep for displaying the mech alone.

Okay, follow along because this is weird and painful. (Yes painful... I gashed my thumb open with a wayward exacto) I saw in a magazine scan how someone had scratchbuilt parts by laying warm sheet styrene over a sculpted part to get a plastic version of that part. I emulated that somewhat.

Luckily the hatch is supposed to be beat on so it doesn't matter if it looks perfect. I'll be gashing it up later anyway.

The first thing I did was to make a mold of the inside of the hatch with some sculpy. Afterward, I trimmed off the excess and baked the sculpy.

Next I cut holes into two scrap pieces of wood and screwed them together. This is my sheet styrene holder. It has two functions. 1: keeps fingers from being burnt. 2: holds plastic on all sides. I also put the baked sculpy piece in a big screw and into my vice to hold it in place.

I put the sheet of styrene into the holder and moved it over a candle to get it melty. You'll see the plastic begin to droop when it is ready to be put over the mold. When it was ready, I pulled the hot plastic over the sculpy mold. When cool, I removed it. I didn't need any release material such as petroleum jelly which was nice. The plastic came right off.

Next up I have puttied the hatch with Tamiya Basic Putty to fill in the little panel lines. I'll scribe new ones after I smooth it out.

« ouch!

12.09.03 » Hub Caps

With the Griffon internals (at least the visible ones) I used a mix of gray and silver parts to give is that customized look. One example is on the feet where you can see the discs on the sides. I gave them a hub cap look by painting them silver.

01.12.04 » Final Update

Well, the Griffon is basically done. I'm just waiting for a good day to take pictures outside. Pittsburgh winters aren't too forgiving. I'm also still building a base for the kit. This is almost a necessity as the kit is too back-heavy to stand nicely on its own.

« not done yet...

The base is a finished wood plaque with baking soda/corn starch clay making the sand dunes. The dunes were painted with a custom mixed dark-sand color then sand-colored ballast cement was applied to give it a lightening and a sandy texture. The fense was made from balsa wood stained with acrylic paint and thread. I'm in the process of adding tall grass to the dunes.

The figure turned out pretty cool considering this is the last I'll see of it once the hatches are closed. This gave me a good opportunity to experiment with white ink though. I used white ink on the lines of the suit.

Here is the scratch-built damaged hatch that I'll be using for the final diorama.

I loved the shape of the torso on its own so snapped a few pics.

Here's a final teaser shot before I take the final photography for it. The styrofoan blocks are keeping if from touching/rubbing the shelf. Als to keep it from rolling off accidentily. I LOVE those wings!!!