A mixture of Gunpla, Cooking, SCUBA, Corgis, and Life

Time for a little update on the Gouf Custom Exceed Head conversion kit progress. This has been a fairly productive month, most of the time has been spent making the mold and making casts for all the parts. But time to play some catch up. The last time I left off, I was still working getting the shape of the head correct, or to a point that I found acceptable. After the priming sessions to check for the correctness of the surface, I can get to scribing the final bits of detail for the side of the head. There is a definite order of operations here, since scribing before getting the shape right would just lead to rescribing details that are covered up by more putty used to shape the head. The first thing is to lay down some tamiya masking tape for curves. The tape is a little rubbery and considerably thicker than the standard yellow tamiya masking tape. This allows for the tape to curve and keep a continuous line along the surface. This is perfect for masking curved surfaces and just having curves. I’m not using this to mask, but as scribing tape to help guide some chisels. If I am careful with the chisels, I can scribe in a perfect line. For the purpose of scale, I used a .5mm to scribe in the lines. I started with a .3mm but found they were a little too thin for the scale. 3mm Mad Works carving tape is used as the scribing guides for the detail lines perpendicular to the line that runs along the lower half of the head. I liked using the Mad Works carving tape over dymo tape since it’s clear, which makes alignment very easy; and I can reuse the tape a couple of times in comparison to dymo which is only useful once then the stickiness is completely useless.

More updates and information about the pre-orders for the limited casting run of this project after the jump. (more…)

The old adage that if you don’t use it, you’ll lose it; is very true. I did some 3D designs for the Dom Barrage project but once those pieces were designed and printed and I spent more time with the hands-on side of things to finish the build; the 3D design skills flew out the door. Since the Dom project was fairly intense, I wanted to relax a bit and work on something simple like the Zaku Exceed head. I finished the Gundam Exceed head while in the middle of working on the Dom project as a quick break. But as I started looking at the Zaku heads and thinking more, I realized that I should keep practice on the 3D design. I needed to relearn a few things but it is kind alike riding a bike, once you get used to the balance and everything, it just becomes muscle memory. So my quick and simple project kinda blew up into a full blown custom project….converting the Zaku Exceed head into a Gouf Custom head with a full bust.

I’m getting much more comfortable with the design, but I’m still VERY novice at it so the end result isn’t the greatest in terms of properly designed 3D files. This first set of pictures are the initial build progression via Blender. The basic idea is to block out the design using reference pictures I took from the NeoGrade Gouf Custom Conversion kit I built years ago. Once the blocks are laid out, details and shaping can be done.

Read more about the project after the jump!

(more…)