We are 6 days and counting until SCGMC 2016! And I just finished this little bugger! Not the best work, but it was fun to get a fairly quick build done. Last time I updated was right before a business trip to Toronto; so I’ve just been focused on getting the damn thing done. This would have been done a little bit sooner, but we recently added another corgi to the army. But his cuteness and all that happy jazz will slip in here and there so that the girls reading this over their guy’s monitors can all scream kawaii!!!! So there will be little corg interruption throughout the rest of this post.
There was quite a bit of work on the Saz since the last update. I’ve been doing more pictorial updates from the potato camera posted up on our TGG FB page so the little corgi addition is really at fault for the lack of a proper intermediate update. But here it is finally, and it’s also done! SCGMC, here we come!
Now this handsome fellow is Bob the Corgi. The site is basically a skeleton for the little bugger as we watch him grow and annoy the shit out of Hugo and Ken. He was born September 1st and we picked him up on Oct 27; which coincidentally is Hugo’s birthday. I don’t think he was overly happy with his 13th year birthday present.
Back to our regularly scheduled update post. Last I left off, I was in the middle of the paint mask paint mask loop for the upper torso. Once done with the prime-sand-putty loop; I sprayed some Finisher’s hot gold, masked that, then sprayed on the reds. Other than the striping, I’m using the color scheme from the Ver Ka MG Saz. I liked the color separation and I didn’t want to do anything fancy; as there is already enough masking involved in this damn kit. The various painted bits are also being glued together. The resin kit is designed for a fixed pose as most joint areas are molded for one fit. There is a little bit of wiggle room, but not much. I’m altogether too lazy to resculpt and mod things for a different pose. Hell, I didn’t even test fit – which kind of comes back to bite me in the ass later.
Since most of the base painting for the upper torso is done; I put the parts together for a quick photo. This also serves as a reminder that progress is happening and keeps the motivation to keep building. The skirts still need to be painted, but there’s the extra step of the thruster and the undersides that prolonged things. And I needed to rebuild part of the thruster when I sanded off the rather thin piece of resin there. A quick fix with light curing putty, but it still put it out of sync with the rest of the upper torso.
Gratuitous Bob the corgi butt to butt(Hugo’s butt) shot just to keep the cuteness factor on this post up. The little bastard (bob) has HUGE paws for his size, so this guy isn’t going to stay small for long. It just adorable to see the size of his 8 week old butt against the cranky old 13 year old butt.
Fuel tanks, they came in two parts, so those needed to be glued and straightened. The fun thing about working with resin is the clipping and sanding of excess flash. And so this sanding process invariably creates gaps when the two parts are fit together. And there’s the issue of aligning the two parts so that are straight when assembled. The issue is further compounded by the actual fit. The guide holes align almost correctly; so those were scrapped and I just drilled in a pin got it aligned the best I could, then glued it together with some epoxy glue for tensile strength. Once the glue set, I slapped on some light curing putty; and did a few sand/prime/putty/sand loops to get it done.
The fuel tanks were not THAT bad. I’ve yet to show the funnel pod. Below is the before and after picture; both primed so that the issue at hand is much easier to see. There’s a frigging dent in the damn the funnel pod! This happens with resin. Sometimes, this happens with your overengineered bandai plastic. There’s stress, uncured plastic, etc. The resin was probably not fully cured when this part was handled, so there’s a damn dent. But it got fixed because it is a pretty obvious issue.
The first step is to just slap down some putty. I’m using light curing putty for speed. A small layer is applied, cured, then sanded. Another small layer is applied, cured, and sanded. Once it starts to look half way decent; it’s primed. The primed part will show additional mistakes. The panel lines are re-scribed since the dent ran across that detail. But after a few loops of putty, prime, sand; the dent is filled, panel lines scribed in and done.
At this point, I still have a little less than half the kit in bare resin. The legs, the gun, and the shield. Earlier I mentioned getting bit in the ass. Well, while fitting the legs together, I found some issues; it wasn’t standing quite right and looked positionally odd. I also discover much later, after I’ve gotten the legs painted and such, that I had the wrong legs on the wrong sides. Looking at the pictures below; those familiar with the Saz will see the wrongness in the legs. But that got resolved later. The thing to take from this is that you should ALWAYS test fit and not just jump into building the damn kit. I was all excited about my section by section build, that I completely skipped this step.
But it’s nice to see that I have half my kit painted and half bare resin. Time to remedy that.
A return call to the prime/sand/putty/sand loop. And after breaking out of that recursion, some actual metallic painting for the internals. Which brings up an interesting question. Why bother detailing the inner legs, under skirts, and all the thrusters if no one is going to be able to see them when the kit is finally built and standing on a table. The answer: a mirrored upskirt shot! But more on that later.
Now, for another Bob interruption. I can never get tired of watching corgi puppies running around. This is from his first actual day at the house. He’s 8 weeks old, and has discovered how to climb stairs. Yeah, this guy is showing signs of decent intelligence. We’re going to be in for some trouble. Enjoy the video!
Back to the build progression. The legs are being painted and curing so time to focus on the weapons. The gun is in several parts, so this is what happens when you get overzealous with the sanding… you need to fill. TO fix some fit issues and make sure the damn gun is aligned, I glued in some styrene spacers. The styrene is a base structure to build additional layers of putty. The top part of the gun is left off to make it easier to sand and fill the main gun piece.
There was some warping in the shield as well. I have a oven that I used to heat up the shield so that I could flatten out the warped areas. However, this didn’t fix the warped alignment areas to the top part of the shield. When put together, the lower half doesn’t quite line up. More heat would cause other areas to warp, so the fix was to create a temporary brace to hold the part while I applied CA glue. I cut a piece of plastic tubing that fit the area and clamped it down to the shield with a paper clip. Once this was in place, I just applied a thick CA glue and let it set. Once set up, the brace is removed and the two shield pieces are aligned.
Once the warping issues are fixed and the two shield pieces are set; I can get to filling and sanding. Back to the recursive surface prep function to get the shield ready for paint.
Bob is currently about 7 and a half lbs. In this picture, it’s 5.9 lbs. Almost a pound and a half growth in a week. With Hugo, I didn’t have the foresight to spam take pictures of him; so I don’t have many puppy pictures of him. Hugo is kind of significant here too because Bob’s breeder was the same breeder I got Hugo from all 13 years ago. There should be no relation with Hugo and Bob, if anything, they’d be fairly distant relatives – which would probably be a cool thing to research on a slow day at work. The breeder was actually surprised that he’s still kicking and quite healthy. Seeing Hugo probably put her mind at ease that Bob’s in good hands.
Returning to the feet, we’ve reached the next while loop; paint, mask, paint, mask repeat. The below picture begs the question, why detail the bottom of the feet at all if it’s standing on a table and would require someone to pick up the damn kit to even see those details. A mirrored base was mentioned earlier, but it still doesn’t solve the problem if the feet are standing on a mirrored base.
Speaking of feet, Bob apparently has a fascination with them. Hugo’s gonna be annoyed for a while.
The rest of the leg parts are coming along with paint, mask, paint. The main leg parts have a massive gap/seam where the two halves of the leg meet. I already painted and masked off the inner areas of the legs, then painted the medium red color on the detail on the back of the legs following the Ver Ka’s scheme. That red is masked so I can get to work on gluing the legs together and filling in the seam/gap between the two leg parts.
All this work was done a few weeks ago. The clear gloss was sprayed on the parts; but progress hit a brick wall because Bob join the family. The level of build detail drops from this point because the focus was to get what I needed done on the kit, then deal with keeping Bob from chewing up, pissing, pooping, the workshop room.
The wife took care of Bob for an evening while I got the decal work on the kit done. Once the decals are set, the following day, a clear gloss is sprayed to sandwich the decals. Then the panel line wash. All unseen as I didn’t even have time to do a quick snap. Puppies are damn cute, but a ton of work.
Now to answer the question that I’ve been alluding to earlier about upskirting the kit for display. I created a simple display base using a $2. Riba frame from Ikea, a sheet of clear acrylic, and a sheet of mirrored acrylic; along with some metallic red standoffs. The elevated clear base allows us to upskirt the kit and even see the bottom of the foot details without having to stick a rod up it’s ass end and try to make the static pose look normal up in the air. The final clear flat is sprayed. I used Alclad’s clear flat this time around and once that cured for a day, the glues came out and the kit was pieced together this past weekend.
Its resin and its designed for a specific pose, so out comes the kragle… well actually epoxy glue for the load bearing areas and “kragle” for the smaller bits. At this point, the kit proper is completed. I was still working on the details for the rifle. I used Alclad’s light sheen on the rifle, so there’s a slight difference in finish with the gun in comparison to the main suit.
Once the gun’s clear cured for half a day, it’s added to the hand (magnets are used to hold it – magnets are used in the shield as well); and with that, she’s done.
Cool model, but my girlfriend is absolutely obsessed with your corgis! I know you posted this a while ago, but thanks for your contribution to the world!