This week’s update finally gets some real painting for the Sazabi. The main body parts are got some primer and the base coat. And I actually finished one of the parts for the damn thing, the fuel tanks, complete with decals and final clear coats!
More details after the jump.
Granted this latest Sazabi kit is pretty damn nice right out of the box, but there are a few things that bugged me or things that I wanted to do, so starting off, I decided to beef up the chest. As a starting point, I used a strip of styrene, and just glued down the center line of the chest. I just eye ball this. For you engineers out there, grab the ruler, some masking tape, and a pencil; then make the correct measurements and draw in the area where the strip should go. I for one, am usually too lazy to do that and I just eyeball it. The paper clips are used to keep the styrene in place. The styrene is the base structure for the mod here. I also added an additional piece of plastic rod down the center line of the chest piece.
Ok, so the title would have worked better with the Nu, but the joke’s there. Happy new year all! I’ve finally gotten off my ass and away from that bloody Gundam Battle Operation. Been stuck in a vortex of that game for a while and finally quelling the addiction with something else just as addictive, but much more productive as I actually have a tangible end result. And it has been a while since I posted anything. Again, blaming the GBO addition. But on to the purpose of this post, that new Ver. Ka Sazabi. The original design for this suit was penned by Yukata Izubuchi, the same guy also designed the Dogas, Nu, Hygogg, etc. Most of my favorite mecha designs were originally done by him. I favor a more simplistic design in comparison to most of Katoki’s style; but I do appreciate the application of Katoki themes to the original Izubuchi designs. There are several resin variants for the Nu and Saz that just go way beyond anything I enjoy with levels of panel lines, greeblies, tubes and wiring. I can appreciate it, but my personal taste leans towards a more simplicity. There’s a balance between the two extremes and I fall somewhere slightly short of the middle – so, I’m not a complete fence sitter.
I’ve built the original MG Saz, a kit that even Izubuchi didn’t admit to liking very much. I’ve rebuilt that same kit twice over, the final version a Core-Works conversion. That said, I’m fairly familiar with the kit’s design. So I picked up this kit from the local distributor a couple of days prior to the official release. Friends with benefits I guess. I’m never in a rush, but the novelty of having this before the majority of the world was kinda cool, granted I wasn’t allowed to post up pictures – but as part of the TGG gang, we actually got real hands on look at the entire kit a full week before it’s release at our monthly build gathering. So the novelty of actually snapping pictures of my own kit when I got it was gone.
It feels damn good be be so organized and prepared for this year’s SCGMC event. We spent a little more money than we did last year, but it is definitely money well spent on items that will see future use at many more SCGMC events to come. We’ve been generating some good publicity through the TGG Facebook page; posting up some last minute progress pictures of kits we’ve been working on, posting up pictures of an early collection of raffle prizes, and within the past several hours, posting up pictures of our trophies we have for this year.
Time to post up some of those pictures here too, check it out after the jump!