Brocken Labor WIP to completion

I hadn't been doing much modeling for a while, and that had to change.

I dug out an old Patlabor kit that I picked up cheap at a Convention years ago. I didn't want to instantly burn myself out slaving away at an L-Gaim or FSS kit, so I went for something simple.

I didn't do any modifications other than weighting the feet with birdshot - no flying poses will ever be done with this guy.

Mostly I didn't even bother to chop registration pins as I was putting this together. I glued the facing edges of parts that would form seamlines as I snapped the kit together and that worked pretty well for later smoothing those lines.

I really had fun with airbrushing this kit. I made my first significant attempt at shading, and layered multiple shades to get what I think is a very nice depth to the finish.

Here are 4 videos of the process:









Here are a couple of finished images



If you'd like to see more, you can look here.

why weight?

10 Pounds of Lead Shot Will Mash Your Packing Peanuts!

(cross-posted from "pajkossy" (another blog of mine)


I bought this bag of #12 (believe me when I say, that's the tiniest pellet size you can get) lead bird shot. This stuff is definitely not to be used in the course of hunting for food - unless you like breaking your teeth on the way to getting lead poisoning. It's like very small Christmas cookie sprinkles, only made of shiny black metal.

Why did I search for hours on the internet for this stuff?

Only love or anime could make me do something so odd. To be more precise: building injection-molded plastic mecha (robot) models.

I still haven't gotten around to watching Zeta Gundam - the show from which the model I'm currently working on came, but this Hyaku Shiki (that's "type 100" in Japanese) has some DAMN heavy feet now.

Prior to filling them with the lead shot, which settes in very nicely thanks to it's small size, each foot weighed about 1/4 ounce.

I'll update later with their new weight, as well as the weight of the rest of the kit. For now I'll venture a guess that the feet will weigh almost as much the entire remaining structure.

Pix here when I finish it.

UPDATE:
Each foot now weighs about 1.25 oz, so together they weigh 2.5 oz. This is about how much the whole body from the hips up weighs. This should make the center of gravity low enough for more dynamic poses that an unweighted model could maintain.