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.