Friday, June 19, 2009

Gunpla Worklog: 1/100 Gundam Astraea FA Kai - Update 1

Now that I've finished pre-building the 1/100 Gundam Astraea Type-F. I checked for any gaps that needs to be fix with putty & sanding. But to my suprise, most of the gaps that needed to be puttied were hidden. Bandai really did a great job with this design, and this actually would save me some time. Again I don't think I will do much modding for this kit, since I pretty much like how it look as is. I will just be making little mods here and there...

SHOULDERS
So right off the bat, I think the shoulders are too small for my taste, I like the shoulders to be a little bit broader.


So I am going to applied some milliput epxoy putty (the yellow-grey stuff) on part of the shoulder where I want more body. Usually it will take around 3 hours for it to completely dry. But since I am going back home to my parents house to eat tonight, I will leave it alone until probably tommorrow, before I start to doing any sculpting / filing / sanding.

I also just applied a little bit more epoxy putty than needed, so that I can always have a buffer for errors during sculpting/filing. More update on this part later.
TORSO
Next item on the list is the articulation of the kit. Now I must admit the quality of the kit is quite nice, but I cannot say the same for the kit's articulation. Generally though, non-grade 1/100 kits usually are pretty stiff and has limited torso & arm movements.

As you can see below, the way the torso is design. it only allows the torso to turn and thats it. It does not allow any leaning backward nor forward. So I want to fix that.

Trying to be resourceful (cuz I was too impatient to order any kotobukiya parts to do this). I will be using the same part seen here to do the simple mod that that would allow the torso to be able to lean back and forth. (this image below is before modding)

So on this side, I modded the torso joint so that it allows forward/backward movement.

And then on the other side, I will add a plastic nub so that when the torso leans, the movement will feel more solid when the moving joint make contact with this nub. This is to prevent the upper torso from becoming wiggly.

And after I've completed this simple mod, you can see that the torso is now able to lean forward & backward. Very satisfied.


SHOULDER JOINT / ARMS CONNECTOR
The Inner shoulder joint (which the arm will attach to) is very very limited in movement. I can probably move it back/forth by a couple of centimeters max. LOL This need to be modded as well, because I like my arms to be able to do some nice poses.



To accomplish this, I will need to make a new joint that allows more movement. So I cut out two pieces of pla-plates (from a hobby plastic retangular tube). One piece for each joint.

I use a hobby drill and make a hole as a joint connector.

Test fitted them onto both the should joint pieces. Looking good.

Attached the new joints to the upper torso.

And after the mods, the shoulder joints now allows much wider movement for the arms. The arms are now much more articulate than before.

Here I am trying out some poses to see the fruit of my mods.

With the arms being able to close into the chest area, poses are more natural.

Here is a pose that utilized the full potential of my mods. More updates soon....I hope.

6 comments:

  1. awesome mods, I'm waiting for a package from HLJ with my Type F, this worklog will be very usefull when it comes :D

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  2. Mods look great! I need to try them out sometime. How do you find working with the milliput? I picked up some Mori Mori putty and will be trying that out but I was wondering if milliput is the way to go.

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  3. Thanks for the comments guys.

    @Gaijin: I like milliput a lot. I used to use magic sculp, but I'd found it much harder to sculpt/file, the material is also a bit more coarse, not to mention is also a bit weighty.

    But with milliput. the texture nice & is really easy to sculpt/file... it is also much lighter. You should try it. (However, I don't know much about Mori Mori Putty).

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  4. aw i missed this post somehow. milliput. ive never used it myself but i gather its similar to the stuff i use.

    http://img442.imageshack.us/img442/3471/46031031ej8.jpg

    tamiya epoxy quick type on the far right. green box. its white and light green putty mixed together. i used it in my g04 wip

    http://plamo.outthere.info/forum/showthread.php?tid=3648&page=1

    but i use the basic type (in the rectangle) for filling in gaps.

    i LOVE the mods you did for the extra articulation. simple, cheap and most of all effective. nice job. i'm going to put this technique into my arsenal.

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  5. hey do you know where to buy a kotobukiya parts.

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  6. @Anon: Where do you live? Both these sites has it:

    http://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10102504

    or

    http://www.hlj.com/

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