MS-06 ZakuII R1N Cerebus Testbed for Newtype (Commission)

smeagol the vile wrote:

Cant wait to see more.  I must say though, that bazooka looks wrong, isnt that one of the ZZ beamcannons?

 It's the beam bazooka from Char's Rick Dom. I need to mod it a good deal more. The Cerebus is supposed to have a big honkin mega particle beam cannon, and that's the starting point.

Little update, still working on the head.

 When I woke up, the visor was melty and rippled in the middle. The fix? More putty! I added wedges to the back of the visor, and things are looking good. Once everything is set up hard I'll go over it once more and probably call it done, hit it with Tamiya Surface Primer and give it a cast texture, which should conceal my hackery.

Lil update for my color test. Hacked this out in GIMP last night and today.

and finished the head sculpt!

Tiny update, more soon.

Zaku demands knuckle spikes. Zaku will not be denied.

I found a chunk of sprue, I'm not even sure what from, chocked it into the dremel stylus there and buzzed it down to 6 little cones. Speed 2 worked just fine! Next I'm gonna lop those off carefully to attach them to the Zaku's knuckle plates. 

Today, I got the parts textured I want to get textured.

 Used Tamiya surface primer, applied with the pictured trimmed Testors junk brush.

Then each piece got a going over with junk sanding films. I got all this old testors stuff out of the clearance box at the FLHS for pennies.

Knucklespikes added, some surface primer to blend them in, and ready for re-priming. I had to make about 10 spikes to get 6 good ones.. then I dropped one...  had to make 4 more before getting one that matched.

So here's the finished, textured head, and knuckle armor. I'm almost declaring the texture too much, it's not exactly scale, *but* it looks good in an exaggerated way, which is probably a good idea when working in 1/100. 

And a couple of other pieces, shoulder and rear skirt armor, to show off the texture on some larger pieces. The shield for the other shoulder is rolled/welded, so doesn't get the texture.

Now I can start painting!

while out of scale the texturing isnt bad.  What I do is stick squadrin putty into alittle container full of laquer thinner.  It turns it into like.. a paint instead of putty

I dab it on then sand it almost smooth.  works great

it does definatly look good.

Wana know a trick I use?  I give it a base coat of steel or metalic whatever for the metal, then texture it.  So I can mar it with sand paper to get a realistic chipping effect

I don't know whether the silver paint made it brittle, or if I just dumbassed it, but I broke off all three of the tabs that go between the fingers in to the assembled hand. Attempts to repair this have not been very successful as its a rather high-stress area and the tolerances are close.

I could try and repair using wire, would need to cut channels in the part and all, but this would be the most durable solution. Also likely to be rather ugly.

of course if someone is doing something silly like swapping out the left hand of a ZakuII for a Gouf's gun-hand, a replacement part wouldn't be missed. For that matter, does the gouf use the same runner and maybe have a normal left hand in addition to its gun-hand? If this is the case I can get a replacement from a gouf box owned by the commissioner here no problem.

If it comes down to it I can probably get a replacement from gundamstoreandmore, but the timeframe on that is rather uncertain.

Anyone have better ideas?

Also, I got my mechaskunk order.

*EDIT*
Turns out the gouf DOES have the spare left hand, but the friend with it dislikes gun-hand and is going to use the spare.

Anyone else here building a gouf 2.0, and doesn't need the non-shooty left hand?

Primary painting is done! Got main tone and first pass post-shading.

It's actually a bit darker in person.

Sian wrote:

*EDIT* Turns out the gouf DOES have the spare left hand, but the friend with it dislikes gun-hand and is going to use the spare. Anyone else here building a gouf 2.0, and doesn't need the non-shooty left hand?

I often use these for replacement hands:

http://www.hlj.com/product/KBYMB-28

http://www.hlj.com/product/KBYMB-29

They had a set in 1/144 scale, but they seem to be out.

The model is looking good. The eye in particular looks very sinister.

After giving the clear plenty of time to cure, today I went and masked the parts that are getting the camo pattern, and sprayed with model master RLM64 Lt Blue (german aircraft colors just work so well for zeon mobile suits!) did a bit of subtle post-shading on it

Carefully removed the mask and:

the edges buffed down nicely with a cotton t-shirt.

Parts got another layer of Future+20% flat, and now I'll let this cure 24-48hrs before adding the German Gray portion of the splinter camo pattern. yay!

Primary painting is done. yay!

Yes I know the thigh armor is on backwards, It's fixed now.

I still have a lot of weathering to do, as the commissioner requested a heavily (Appropriate for space use) weathered suit.

I'm getting yet more parts breakage, has anyone else experienced Tamiya Silver Leaf spray making parts brittle? This is through primer even, and very worrisome. so far I've had one hand made useless, the hips have gone loose, one of the feet and the arm for the shield. This is getting ridiculous. I know I'm never using this stuff again on any part that is going to be stressed.

Well decided to work on the hands a bit. I have all these spare resistors left over from the Vic Viper lighting project, and it turns out the leads from those make great repair parts. Drilled out the hand and super-glued em in.

Some careful bending and fine tuning and I have a functional hand again! I need to putty and the silver paint is officially wrecked, but it's good enough.

complication after complication due to that tamiya silver leaf spray making everything brittle. Argh! Anyway, I got the cables done with minimal fuss and installed. It really helps fill out the look of the head at any rate.

That's no puny Zaku heat-hawk, boy!

Work continues.

Had to take a break, get my mind back together and everything.

Work started on modifying the beam bazooka. Bits and cables, and it's going to attach to the backpack, I'll wedgy up some sort of polycap attachment for this.

 I still want to add more cabling and wires and chunky bits to make it look more like a powerful prototype beam launcher, but it's coming along.

Okay, I need a little help here, I'm getting down to where I need to scratchbuild/kitbash the two gun drones, and I'm a bit stuck.

requirements:

wired gun bit with
fairly obvious thrusters,
roughly same size as zaku head
nose mounted particle beam gun
mounted somehow to backpack
removable/poseable on stiff, thin wire
A shape that I can put a shark-mouth onto the front of

Generally they should be similar to the Braw Bro or Elmeth bits. This is late OYW tech, so no elegant compact little funnels here. I like the flat ribbon wire of the evolve version braw bro, so I'll probably steal that, with the bonus of making the wire easier to run.

I'm just at a loss for what to make these things out of. =P

Bandai got back to me and are sending me new parts for the hand and hip. yay! I hope they get here before I have to move in early november, or I'll just have to do without.

I'd suggest going in the style of the Zeong or brabro kind of thing.  Make an attachment point on the backpack with wire, If you didnt build the backpack yet I'd suggest like putting alittle spool with some of that stiff pipe cleaner type wire so it can be stored inside and pulled out, if you udnerstand.  One on each side.  Make the gun itself like the brabro's a simple box With two cannons on the front.  That can simply be manufactured by like... taking the old spikes from a Zaku's shoulder, cutting the very tip off, and sticking maybe... mechasunk straight tube beads.

something like this

_____________

|                   |

|____________|

    V         V

have the wire coming from the rear.

little picture update.

Thrusters are done. Clear red inside, along with model-up foot verniers, because the feet on the stock zaku2.0 suck bad.

Tube beads tube beads tube beads! 1mm and 2mm from mechaskunk.

smeagol the vile wrote:

Dude, I gota call scratch building bull**** on this one.  You SO used the pegs from battleship and legos to scratch parts of that.

Kinda looks that way, doesn't it? I may need to add a bit to the gun barrels, looking at it again.

Got a bit of my motivation back, we'll see if it holds! I managed to lose the remains of the PC tree with the small leg cables. Dammit. I guess I'll fab new cables out of the smaller snake chain, so it's all good I think.

 I swapped out the bit gun barrels for ones cut off some spare 08 MS Team beam rifles. This was a good move.

Cut aluminum tube for the gun barrels of the triple-triple 45mm gatling. Dremel burr to crown the barrels. they'll look better after paint!

Bits blu-tacked into place. I still need to build their racks and control wire spool.

ta till next time!

well unless you change the scale or modify it, there is no cannon.  Anyone could paint their mech a certain color, they just show certain Aces in the field thats why we know their colors.

This build here isn't canon either.  I hope you do build one Kugai.

 Also, those new barrels for the bits look great

smeagol the vile wrote:

Also, those new barrels for the bits look great

Yeah at least they don't look like I nicked them from the Battleship! box.