I’ve finally gotten back to work on my Armored Core “Hakuheisen”, hoping to finish it for Otakon. I think this is basically a reasonable goal at this point: most of the parts are paint-ready, the only hold-up is wiring for the LEDs that are being installed.

I’m not going to have the microcontroller board or its software ready for Otakon – and I don’t know if I’ll be lighting the thruster LEDs when it’s on display at the con – but I also don’t want my rush to finish the model for Otakon to compromise my goals for the model, so basically the lighting work is proceeding as planned, the only difference is that for any parts of the process I think might put my deadline in peril, I’m finding ways to work around those things such that I can return to the project later and complete things the way I intend.

So for the most part things like the microcontroller board are on hold: however, I was in Chicago for the last several days, so while there (and on the train rides to/from the city) it was impossible to do actual model work – so instead I revisited my “Raven” PCB design to try to improve it.

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I dullcoated the old Zaku and put some pigment powders on it… Really haven’t got the hang of powdering models yet, but I’m OK with screwing things up a little on this project… After the first round of powdering I dullcoated it – and unfortunately didn’t mix the flat base into the future adequately, and got a bunch of nasty white spots on the model – I sanded most of those off, then did another round of powdering, some spot-painting on the bullet holes and near the thrusters, and another flat coat.

I think once I put lenses on the weapon scopes I’ll call it done, move on to other things for the Otakon model contest.

It’s been a while since I’ve posted an update to my Zaku Kai project: much of that time has been spent on other pursuits, but there’s also been a fair bit of work done that I simply haven’t found time to document fully. Most recently I’ve been working on the shoulder joints and the arm parts.

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Since I missed the MMC deadline I’ve been working on the Zaku when I could – at this point the decal work is done, and I’ve given it one coat of flat and an overall dark brown wash. I still need to handle a few bits of detail painting (like the bullet-holes I added to the shield and torso) and I’d like to go a bit farther with the weathering effects – possibly add caked mud to the feet and ankles, among other things, but overall it’s very nearly done. I am starting to consolidate assemblies to reduce the number of parts – things like the knee armor, now attached to the knee, the backpack, now attached to the back, and the snout power cables now attached to the snout…

In the photos the Zaku is mostly assembled – it’s really too soon for that still, but I wanted to take some pictures of how the thing will look when it’s done.

Things have been progressing with the Zaku – most of the final colors are on at this point – most of what’s left is decals, detail paint, finishing coats and weathering. I have some decals on already, as well, so I’m rockin’ the “Real Type” style”.

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I finally got my EEE 901 today… After using it for a bit, my feelings about the pre-installed Linux system are somewhat mixed. The automatic update system tends to bog down the computer if you happen to be doing something else with the machine at the time (easy enough to disable auto update, fortunately) and their “add/remove software” thing is all “add” and no “remove”. I was excited to see multi-language input selection but then immediately disappointed again to see the only option apart from English, apparently, was Chinese.

Then there’s the large volume of junk installed on the system, and the lack of the stuff I really use. I don’t want “Learn Chinese” (though it seemed like a decent package, maybe) – nor TuxPaint (which seemed pretty crappy) nor TuxMath – don’t need a DVD player app with no DVD drive, and so on. But I do need xemacs, vlc, blender, and gimp.

So first step was to try using APT to get some new packages on there, and some of the old ones off. This worked alright for a bit, but after one of the updates I did (I think it was when I removed tuxmath…) the home screen stopped working… I thought maybe I’d accidentally removed the package that provides the home screen, so I tried to get it reinstalled – with the result that the drive filled up. I couldn’t remove packages because the installed packages weren’t configued, and I couldn’t configure packages ’cause there was no disk space. (I suppose I could have gotten around all that somehow… too late now, though.)

Now, to add insult to injury – I figure, drive filled up? OK, let’s delete something. “rm /usr/games/tuxmath”. The damn machine told me that it can’t remove the file because the drive is full. Please feel free to marvel at the idiocy of that all on your own. I have no idea how that happened – some weird combination of exotic or layered mounts, maybe? After that, the machine would reboot but I haven’t even been able to call up a terminal window. Seems I’m stuck for the moment.

It’s too bad, ’cause I kind of liked the home screen – I just wanted it a bit less cluttered. I suppose it’s just as well, though – I was planning to go to a different Linux distribution on the thing anyway. Now that’ll just have to happen now instead of later.

My quest continues to execute a quality build and the best “I take giant cartoon robots too seriously” paintjob on this, the very first Zaku kit…
(edit): Actually I don’t know for sure when the various early Gundam kits were released – I had thought the 1:100 Zaku came before the 1:144… but according to this, the 1:144 Zaku came out before the 1:100 version. Makes sense, I guess…

At this point I’m most of the way through the basic painting stage. All the basic colors are on, the only coloring left to do is weathering. Since I was going for “Real Type” with this build the plan was to do a paint chipping effect. I couldn’t find the hairspray I needed, however, so I went for a salt-based effect instead. This was my first try at that and I think it could have gone better. Also, I didn’t want the Zaku to be all rusted up, and nor did I want bare metal showing all over… So for this build what shows through in the “paint chipped” areas is another coat of green. I guess the Zeons painted the Zaku in something along the lines of the classic color scheme, then decided to go for a more low-visibility look and painted over, but it got all chipped up somehow. <shrug> I’m not entirely happy with how the whole thing went down, for a dozen different reasons – but I’ve decided to go with it instead of repainting the parts. Hopefully it’ll look a bit more natural when I’ve got the markings on.
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I’ve been working on this project for a while: it is to be my entry in the Old Kits Contest on MMC…

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One thing about wiring a model – these wires always seem to have a way of breaking. It’s really annoying.

Anyway, after I set up the LED for the monoeye… Gee, didn’t I already do this post? Oh, yeah, that’s right, I had to wire the monoeye again because I broke one of the wires…
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Late last year Kotobukiya announced they were releasing new, injection-molded static-pose hands for robot kits… I’m almost never happy with the stock hands that come with Gundam kits and the like so to me this is great news: finally a cheap, reliable source for good-looking hands for robot kits. I missed out on the first issue of the 1:144 version but I recently received the 1:100 scale version and tried ’em out.

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