Poseable, Therefore Valid (day 42)

I had struggled for a while to figure out how to add a polycap joint to allow the chest block to move relative to the midriff, but finally I found a solution: Have two polycaps, one on either side of the cockpit, so the joints wouldn’t prevent me from having a hatch-open cockpit part as an option, and put the joints at the bottom of the chest block, rather than the top of the midriff, so I wouldn’t see them poking out the front sides of the midriff. It was a slow process to add the polycap to the torso, and I’ve only done one side so far, but it looks promising.


I do think it’s worth noting that making models poseable is a particular hang-up of Gundam modelers, and anime mecha modelers more generally. There’s no reason, for instance, that different midriff poses couldn’t be done with part swaps, or why all the parts of the robot couldn’t be connected by armature wire instead of moving polycap joints… Except that for Gundam modelers, myself included to some extent, that’s often not good enough. I criticize Bandai for focusing too much on such features, but I guess I do it too.
The main issue that comes from having the polycap joint above the top of the midriff part instead of level with it is that this means the top of the midriff part swings forward a bit when the joint bends. This means there needs to be a little bit more clearance in front, a bit of a gap between the bottom of the chest block and the midriff part.

I haven’t got the fit quite right on this joint yet, and because I’ve only put one polycap in, and the joint isn’t yet really secure, it gets pushed off-center very easily. I’ll have to fix that up another day, though.
I also did a bit of work on the backpack: I added some plates to the inner surfaces of the thruster wells to make the part a little bit more substantial when it’s recast, and make it look more substantial in the finished model as well. I’ve started work to figure out how to mount the connection point for the waist cables, but I haven’t got all the details down yet.