After creating version 2 of the rough design for the leg, I created a third and fourth version attempting to correct the main flaws in the earlier design: the low knee, a few inconsistencies between the front and side views, and so on. The third version was an improvement, and gave a nice, hefty look […]

The diorama project has been in the works since last spring, and I’ve included a lot of diverse work under its project heading: the GM work, Z’Gok work, experimental diorama building, and work to create the electronics for the diorama… But for now I’m gonna talk GMs. I’m still working on the GMs, but a […]

After creating my first orthographic front view of the Zaku Kai, it became clear that I needed to refine the leg design. The first attempt was based on the drawing from the Zaku Kai front view drawing. It improved upon that work, but it was still a very rough attempt. The second version was a […]

All the best material I’ve read on scratchbuilding emphasizes the creation of detailed plans as a first step. If a plan is good enough to give you the contour and measurements of any section of a part, then there is no reason why a detailed replica cannot be sculpted. In other modeling genres, creating the […]

The Otakon deadline has come and gone, of course, and Patcon is coming up, most likely to zoom by me before I can finish this project. I’ve decided that I’m not entirely happy with the original elbow joints that I made (though I think they were nice work, and it’s great to see how simply […]

After an emergency trip to the art supply store in Cambridge to get more mold rubber, I recast the cuff part for the upper arm and rigged up a simple test-shot of how the assembled arm will look, and comparing it to the original parts. Hopefully the results speak for themselves. In addition to being […]

Creating a pair of spherical hinges took about two hours work. They’re just slightly misaligned, which is unfortunate, but I don’t think it’ll be a big deal for this first Sumo. I also took another four hours to create a new uper arm cuff which I’ll recast to create upper arm and forearm parts. In […]

As I’ve progressed through the painting of this project all kinds of stupid problems have cropped up. Masks lifting up and getting painted under, paint chipping, all kinds of bad surface scratches cropping up, etc. Really, some parts of this model are a real mess. But whatcha gonna do? Put another 100 hours into fixing […]

I decided that the previous attempt at a shield back-face wasn’t good enough. I feel like there were little sloppy areas here and there, and the mystery of what happened to require me to rearrange everything still bothers me. So I decided this time to make the detail by cutting it out of multiple thin […]

Most of the parts are painted now and just awaiting clear coating. The rifle had been painted navy blue – in past projects I’ve had a tendency to paint rifles and such in a single (usually metallic or grayish) color – for this project I decided I wanted to put a little more into it, […]