A little Saz progress, Valley Con 2014, and SCUBA Diving oh my!

It has been a while since my last update. Being social is starting to interfere with the Saz progression. I’ve also slacked off a bit on the pictures as well since the current progression was highlighted in the previous post and I’ve just been applying the same techniques as I did for the upper torso and head to the arms, lower torso, and skirts.

Last week, my friend Brian came out from his snow covered land of Mary toting his dive gear and fairly new dry suit that he picked up on his visit when I got married – almost 1 and a half years ago. Granted he did test his dry suit out locally in a pool, but hasn’t truly tested it with a real dive.

This past weekend was the annual Valley Con presented by the Pasadena Modeler’s Society. I like this show as they’re always changing things and not strict to the ideals and practices of the typical IPMS show; it is a nice little change of pace. Angel, Mike, and I planned on going representing TGG with some flyers. One of the venders at the event stood out to me as they sold LED packets for model lighting. Yes, this runs right up my alley. I figured they’d be a really good addition to SCGMC in November. We do have room for an additional vendor, and this won’t tread on the current vendor’s competition.

Details on diving as well as some videos and a little more discussions on Valley Con after the jump.

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Sazabi Painting and 3D Printing!

Since this is the actual body paint posting, I’m including a few pictures from the previous post so there is some better continuity. Weeks ago, I grabbed some plastic spoons to do paint tests. I used different base metallic paints and different clear reds from various brands before settling in on the three colors I have below. The process arduous, and I went through 10 different combinations before settling down. Below are the three colors to match up with the color scheme on the instructions. The lighter tone uses a mixture of clear pink, a small amount of clear orange, and clear red for tonal changes, sprayed over alclad super bright silver. The red is just Finisher’s clear red over alclad super bright silver. The deep red areas are finisher’s clear red over alclad polished brass.

Also in this post, 3D printing!

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Ver Ka Sazabi Fuel Tanks and KITT

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.

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Ver Ka Saz Lighting

Time for another Ver Ka Sazabi update. Today’s update will cover the process of making LED embedded resin thruster parts. The why of it all, well, we’ll get into that later. Going back to when the kit was sanded and dismantled; the thruster pieces were singled out and I started to plan out the process for adding some lighting mods. I had lit the HGUC Sazabi, so I figured this much larger scale shouldn’t be much of an issue. My experience from working with lighting the 1/144 scaled Sazabi helped make my decision on the direction.

Seven thruster parts are identified. Granted, I’m ignoring the square thruster pieces all over the body, as well as the round one at the back skirt – there’s something to be said about going overboard with lights. And these seven, effectively 14 thruster pieces should be enough for the effect.

With these seven thruster parts picked out, the LED count for just the bells is 32. Lets do this!

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