As mentioned previously, after I’d built my first attempt at the chest block part I realized that the plans I used to do it were incomplete – lacking in a couple features that had already been incorporated into the design plans, and a few of the angles had changed somewhat between that design and the […]

A while back I created a paper model of the chest based on my design plans – it was a bit crude but it was very reassuring to see my design as a real 3-D object and feel confident that it was correct. Now I’ve decided to dive in to the process of creating a […]

Pressing onward: I drew out the bottom-view of the head so I could create a styrene template from it and glue it to the bottom of the head work-in-progress. This makes it easier to establish the contour and edge of the bottom of the head and also to create the snout (and to ensure that […]

This is a rendering of the head that I made in order to clean up inconsistencies in previous head designs appearing in orthographic designs for the whole Zaku in preparation for building the actual head part. I had done one of these before, but I decided to make a new one in order to incorporate […]

Earlier this week I created “Head Ortho Rough #2”, another 1:50 scale drawing of the Zaku Kai head, which would actually be the one I’d build from. I drew in 1:50 scale to improve the precision of the drawing: to further improve its precision, I scaled it down and mirror-imaged it on the computer, then […]

This front view is mostly a combination of Ortho Front #1 and Leg v5 redrawn on a light table. This front-view also incorporates various improvements and additions that were made on the computer composites, like the second arm, the shield, etc. I created it in order to have a solid baseline for creating side and […]

In the last update I described work on a three-part hinge that was to start with the use of the drill press to drill a hole through a block of styrene, perpendicular to the bottom face of the block, and use this as the core segment of the hinge. This was the basis of my […]

Version 4 of my leg design looked good to me until I tried it in a composite with the rest of the Zaku body. All such composites that I do have the leg tilted, because I regard this as the Zaku’s “neutral” pose. But it’s much easier to take advantage of the graph paper when […]

Since the last update I’ve abandoned the idea of creating a two-part spherical hinge for the elbow in favor of a three-part hinge. I could explain the design but I find pictures communicate these ideas better, so there’s a mockup photo to see. Just picture the middle part attached to the model’s shoulder, and the […]

While I did get a lot of things done on the GMs before the original Otakon 2004 deadline, one thing I had failed to accomplish was to correct the spud-head. I took some time to try to determine where exactly the kit head went wrong, and in what ways it could be a useful part, […]