I love kits like this. I'm usually torn between wanting it to look like it does on TV versus what it would look like in real life, metal colored etc.

Nice job.

That's so cool Real G!!! Great to see you back to working on something. The previous model looks good, so what are the improvements you're making on this one??? 

Gamera,

The game plan is as follows:

- Add clear parts to visor and sensors

- Add a proper neck and cut out in body to accomodate the head

- Redo hip joints to allow leg rotation and maybe add ab crunch

- Rework wrist and elbow joints to enhance posing

- Rework knee and ankle joints to enhance posing

- Correct the contour of the foot armor

- Paint on all markings.  No sucky Bandai stickers, bleah!

And that, Ripley, is the plan.  Not to open box/close box.  Not to just sit around and study.  But to finish this thing in 2 months.

BTW I dove into the kit last night and began modifications.  I had originally wanted to build a lifter unit for the Gelf, but will have to defer it due to the time constraint.  But I did mod the backpack guns with polycaps so that the lifter unit can be added later on.

Pics to follow!

Rob Gronovius

I love kits like this. I'm usually torn between wanting it to look like it does on TV versus what it would look like in real life, metal colored etc.

 

Nice job.

 

Rob,

There are several ways to finish these types of models, but I think the old classical "anime color" style has fallen out of favor.  The armor guys brought their brand of weathering to anime kits and transformed their look.  Other guys do the candy coat metallics which can look astonishgly good, but are fiendishly difficult to execute.  And then there is the "cel shaded" style, where the models are painted to look like 2-D images that leapt out of the TV.  It's all about the paint these days!

Some progress pics:

A quick test fit to have a look at the overall model, and to identify areas that will need work.

Dragonar kits were kind of made on the cheap.  I guess to be fair, they WERE cheap to buy.  Anyway, it was common to have moveable parts without the benefit of polycaps, but the main guns on the Gelf HAD to have polycap action:

No need for Model Viagra!

The mod was also to accomodate a possible lifter unit in the future.  It was always my intent to make wings for this guy, but under the time constraints of the contest, they will have to wait.

Next up was separation of the skirt armor from the body.  I saw this neat trick on Youtube, where the guy scribed lines where he wanted to cut parts away then carefully applied Mr Color Thinner.  He then initiated a small cut to start the separation. The Bandai plastic, notorious for cracking from thinner, neatly parted!

And it worked!

Now to clean up the cut area and extend the skirts up.

Reworking of the hip joint and neck area to follow.

Thanks for the info G! Nice work, he's coming along well! 

Wow that Falguen with your scratch built lifter unit is kick a**!

The Gelf looks like a perfect entry for the contest and you can't go wrong with heavy weapons!

That's a neat trick with the thinner to create a clean break where the plastic has been scored.  The separation was so clean that one would be hard pressed to say it wasn't designed that way.

I'm rooting for you on the contest.

Okay guys, reinforcements have arrived.

I am trying out some different polycaps, which will hopefully prove more useful than the ones I already have.

The Gelf's waist armor has been cut apart, so no going back now!  I need to get serious and start the high precision part of the build.

Real G

 

 

Rob Gronovius

I love kits like this. I'm usually torn between wanting it to look like it does on TV versus what it would look like in real life, metal colored etc.

 

Nice job.

 

 

 

 

Rob,

There are several ways to finish these types of models, but I think the old classical "anime color" style has fallen out of favor.  The armor guys brought their brand of weathering to anime kits and transformed their look.  Other guys do the candy coat metallics which can look astonishgly good, but are fiendishly difficult to execute.  And then there is the "cel shaded" style, where the models are painted to look like 2-D images that leapt out of the TV.  It's all about the paint these days!

 

I agree that armor modelers' methods have taken over many sci-fi model maker's genre. Once they started making military style kits like the Gundam HC series kits in 1/35 scale, they got a whole new group of modelers interested and they brought their own techniques.

But I still like the cartoon colors on many of the kits.

Real G

Okay guys, reinforcements have arrived.

I am trying out some different polycaps, which will hopefully prove more useful than the ones I already have.

The Gelf's waist armor has been cut apart, so no going back now!  I need to get serious and start the high precision part of the build.

 

Cool, looking forward to seeing how the additions go. 

Gaaaah, getting onto the forum has been so slow!  Those burito eating, toilet clogging spambots are maddening.

Things have been kinda hectic over here; I had to go for a biopsy this week, my first time having a procedure that required anesthetic.  But things went smoothly and my lab test came up negative.  2 hours of prep, being wheeled into the OR, staring up at the ceiling wondering if the AC diffusers were backed with HEPA filters, then *boop*, then waking up in post recovery.  Now I know what many others have gone through.

But I have not been idle and the clock continues to tick.  Since Flickr made it impossible to post photos from my phone, I'll do an update Monday.  The arm mods will have been completed and the leg mods will be underway.

Hurry Star Force, there are only 4 weeks left...

Oh, and the new aftermarket joints are proving to be less useful than hoped.  No school like the old school, when you got to get something done right.

Well, Well, Well!

 Just when I thought those things were Boring ,you come along and maybe change my mind. Note: I said Maybe!

Ha ha TB!  Thanks for checking in!  It's less boring for me because of the time limit.  I'm lousy at keeping to a schedule, but once I get in the groove I should be able to push it through.

So far so good though.  I have to finish all construction in about two weeks to have enough time to paint.

See!

   What I  said, and now you've got me looking for MachinenKreiger again!

Tanker-Builder

See!

   What I  said, and now you've got me looking for MachinenKreiger again!

 

Heh-heh.  I'm the Modeling devil.  It's what I do.  

OK some updates on the state of play:

Modifications are primarily to improve posing of the model.  The visor and sensors will have clear covers with detail inserts.

More to follow.

Coming along well G! 

Thanks Gamera!

Here's an old hack that was commonly used back in the 1980-1990 era.

By adding a pull-out secondary joint at the knee, the legs no longer interfere with one another when bent.  I'm not going to make the Gelf do squats or anything like that, but the modification will allow for better posing.

And we all know that anime-pose is what robot kits are about!  

Cool, I wanna see the Mech Ballet now G!!! 

What?  O~hhhhhh.

Yeah... you got me.  Ballet plie (plee-ay).  I don't know why I didn't see that in the photos that I took.  But no ballet for the Gelf!   It's a manly-man metal armor!  It's a super masculine... robot model kit from a 1987 children's TV show.  

But seriously, the knee bend is kinda overkill but will be useful for heroic flying poses.  I guess I DO play with my models after they are finished.  But I do not make "pew-pew" laser beam noises while running around the living room with my towel cape and Star Patrol helmet...

Argh, busted again.

Knee and hip surgery are done.  Time to work on the waist joint and figure out how to hinge the side skirts to preserve the improved flexibility of the legs.

Sorry for the "rip & clip" from another forum:

I added a small detail part to the front of the neck.

And then the final major work to join the hips to the upper torso.

The waist joint combines a bunch of features like hip twist and skirt movement. The large ball joint in the torso serves more to allow slight adjustments of the upper body to allow the other parts to move.

Getting the side skirts to move proved tricky. They have to kind of slide up and into the torso. I used some small ball joints to assist in fine positioning.

That looks great G! How close are you to paint? 

Gamera

That looks great G! How close are you to paint? 

 

Hopefully one week away.  It's all I have if I want to have enough time to paint.

Cool! Glad to hear it. 

Another lazy 'rip-n-clip':

Hookay, the modeling mood has returned, and I am regularly working on the Gelf.  Actually, I'm running out of time, which acts like a hot poker stick on the backside of my donkey-butt!

The crotch armor flap hinge has been repaired and now functions as intended.  Rather than placing the hinge high up on the flap, it was located lower and away from the flap to provide a tilting action to avoid fouling the upper torso.

Gelf-41 by N.T. Izumi, on Flickr

Gelf-42 by N.T. Izumi, on Flickr

Gelf-43 by N.T. Izumi, on Flickr

I found that the thighs fouled the crotch, so some aftermarket rocket bells were cut down into rings and glued to the crotch to act as spacers.  Plus the anime line art of the Gelf had this feature - bonus.

Gelf-45 by N.T. Izumi, on Flickr

Gelf-46 by N.T. Izumi, on Flickr

The grenade launchers have been added to the forearms.  Oops, digital photography is a cruel mistress - the spare magazines need some light sanding.


Hurry, Star force, there are only two weeks left!

I worked on the Gelf on my day off.  I made a detail insert for the left shoulder sensor.  A clear red tinted window will be added later.





The hands are pretty crummy, with shallow detail and poorly molded fingers (a recurring problem with most of Bandai's smaller mech kits).  So the fingers were removed and the spare kits provided replacement digits.  It was WAY easier to shape and sand the fingers when not attached to the hands.



The right gun hand was similarly rebuilt, but the fingers were given a locator tab to permit reattachment after painting.



The neck details have been completed.  A confession: I cribbed the cable detail from some guy's on-line build of the Gelf.





I'm going to see if I can use Bandai's cable accessory set to replace the kit's poorly molded part.  It does not require articulation, so no concerns for making it flexible.

Traffic sure is way down on the forum these days.

I am currently at the seam filling & sanding stage, so nothing much to show in that regard.  I like to use stretched sprue from the kit as my first line (pun intended!) of attack, since the plastic is the same hardness and color.  It also eliminates those annoying "ghost seams", which never seem to go away, or reappear after the model is done.

But while I was doing this, I had a thought regarding the molded power cable that hangs off the Gelf's left shoulder armor.  Since the cable is made from hard plastic, limitations in the injection molding process causes some of the segment dividing lines to be skewed.  I really hate this, but what can you do aside from replacing the cable with something else?  Something else...

As Gru would say "Light Bulb!"

So I tried soaking the stretched sprue for a few seconds in liquid cement then draping it into the wonky recessed lines.



Incredibly, it only took one or two tries to get the "system" down.  It was possible to wrap the softened sprue completely around the cable in one shot, making the work go quickly.  I really needed a third hand though, as the cable was small and hard to hold on to without dropping.



I should have been doing this work at my desk, where the lighting is way better - I made an "oops" cut because I just couldn't see what I was doing.  Argh!  But patching the mistake was easy using more stretched sprue.  The excess sprue is sanded down, the new segment lines are penciled on, a first cut is made using a knife, and then the lines are widened using a razor saw.

I think this solution is to my liking, as it will look better than a spring or blocky aftermarket conduit segments.  I have another Falguen kit in the stash, so I am considering using it to rebuild the existing one to the same standards as the Gelf.

Gaaaah, only a little more than a week remains - hurry Star Force!

Looks really good Real G! The cable came out great! I'd think maybe a small vice would be useful there, to hold the part so you could apply the sprue with one hand and cement with the other. 

Crossing my fingers you make it to the finish line in time!