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Post by rennyd on Apr 3, 2014 15:17:28 GMT 8
So here's the story behind the building of this Sazabi. 3 fellas got together to talk about a group build, with the Gundam Build Fighter themed, where each of our build will have to have something that's unique only to ours, and the uniqueness must be shown. I.e. one fella intended to pay tribute to Super Robot genre by having a rocket punch, therefore he will need to build it in such that the Rocket Punch is shown. So basically the challenge for this group build would be: - There must be a themed gimmick
- The gimmick has to be shown
So for me, my Sazabi would go for this direction: - Super melee attack unit
- Invincible to all forms of long range attack, be it beam weaponry or ammo type weaponry
- Uses swords as primary weapon
- It must look grand & super
So the concept of the Sazabi that I have in mind would feature big and wide, not too tall, with sharp edges type of shoulders, like how the Ryujin Maru, and it carries a big weapon, and the swords must be bigger than itself. And, it must have a cape. So after certain amount of testing, the initial idea would be as something below. The challenge for me that I'd foreseen would be: - Kit bash - This is the first time I'm doing this kind of extensive modification
- Strike balance - Making sure that the design will not cause any imbalance, i.e. it's not able to stand
- Posing - How to make sure that the gimmick can really be posed and still maintain the balance
- How to make sure that it looks good
Progress So FarTesting by fitting the MG Sinanju arm. Using masking tape to hold the parts together first. MG Sinanju arm is surprisingly to me, fits quite well. The big shoulder is from the MG Sinanju backpack. During the test fitting, one of the issue that I encountered is with the big heavy weapon, which will cause the whole kit to collapse. So, it has to have a strong enough support to hold the whole kit together, hence forth something needs to be done to the bottom part of the body. So, transplanting from MG Sinanju again the required joints. And so the overall work so far: The leg will be modified as well, because I don't intend to use MG Sinanju leg for it will be too long. Hopefully the whole things will work out.
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shah
Newcomer
Posts: 81
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Post by shah on Apr 4, 2014 11:24:17 GMT 8
Ohoho nice one. Perhaps the other two fellas would like to post their works too?
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Post by franciscfs on Apr 5, 2014 21:52:02 GMT 8
Reminds me of Granzon concept...haha
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Post by rennyd on Apr 9, 2014 13:48:02 GMT 8
As a matter of fact, Granzon did cross my mind when I'm searching for reference, but that dude just way too heavy for Gunpla universe Update 2014-04-09Okay, implanting the leg frame, plus shortening it. - Cut out the connecting joint. - Make way to have the parts joined together by slotting the upper part with the lower part. - Required some cutting work, i.e. making the slot just good enough for the upper part to slot in. - [TEST]Fitting the lower ankle with the inner frame. - [TEST]Overall. - [TEST]Overall feel. - [TEST]Overall feel with both leg and using Sinanju inner ankle and feet instead of Sazabi's ankle and feet. Reinforcement of the rejoined shortened frameThe challenge is to ensure that after the frame is joined back together, it will be able to sustain the weight of the whole kit, and able to withstand the necessary force whenever the leg is moved. I've been thinking of ways to do it, and finally I just go with the following method. - Glued a few pla-plates together as guiding block. Slot it into the space as shown in the picture with the desired height of how much the other part should be slotted in. - Drilled holes with 0.8mm drill bit and then slotted in the 0.8mm brass rod to hold the parts in place. - Removed the guiding block, then the whole thing would look thing above. - Test fit the whole kit together. - Did tried with the bending, and it's working as planned. NEXT: Will have to further reinforce it with either polyester putty or epoxy putty or with lots of pla-plate.
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shah
Newcomer
Posts: 81
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Post by shah on Apr 9, 2014 22:42:43 GMT 8
Looking good! *clapclapclap*
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Post by alphaleo14 on Apr 15, 2014 1:10:50 GMT 8
wah, sazabi with sinanju inner frame, so should i call it Sinabi, Sazaju, Sizabi,
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Post by rennyd on Apr 23, 2014 13:39:39 GMT 8
alphaleo, nah, the name would be something greater than that , but that will depend on the outcome, otherwise will just keep it as Sazabi... Update 2014-04-23: Body ModificationOne of the headache for me would be to strengthen the lower body a.k.a. the hip. So here's what I've done. Then, I thought that I'll need to stuff a lot more strengthening material inside, preferably something that could hold the parts together, i.e. putty. First attempt I've tried to use the polyester putty, but that doesn't really work well because of the aftermath of cleaning. Then, I tried instead to pour in the Wave's black instant adhesive, and then using Tamiya epoxy putty as well to stuff it inside, and glued the parts together with the Wave 3G strong type instant adhesive, and then let the whole thing there for one day. The next day, tried to sand down/removed some of the excess that's hindering the joint section of the hip with the leg by using a router. Still need to improve on that part, but at least right now it could withstand the brute force test that I've done to it. So now at least it could stand on one leg without any issue. Hmm... Still something missing, will have to come back to think of the overall proportion with the leg height later. Next, the upper body torso. By only using a sharp needle chisel, in my case the Hasegawa Tri Tool line Scriber (a needle like chisel), the upper body is separated. Then, with some time spent to modify the internal of the body, the end result is something like below. Here's how the mid torso would look like fixed with the Sinanju internal frame. Then, testing to see how the upper torso would look like. Now, in order for the inner frame that connect the hand to the body to fit, the existing joints of the torso has to be cut out (circled in red as shown below). And so, by using blue tac to temporary stick the arm + body arm joint section together, the overall outcome at this stage would be like the following. Difficulties: The very difficult part over here is to make sure that the joint are strong enough to sustain the limbs and also to ensure that the parts can be joint and detached for later stage, i.e. assembly.
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Post by rennyd on May 7, 2014 12:10:26 GMT 8
Update 2014-05-07Bounced into a few hurdles in the progress. Firstly, the upper torso, on how I should put the Sazabi body into it and how to deal with the neck join. Secondly, the overall proportion, on how it supposed to be still a HG instead of an over sized HG. Thirdly, the big shoulder armor, on how it supposed to be constructed. Finally, the cape, how it supposed to look like and how it supposed to be added to the kit. I was too concentrated into the build until I forget to snap pictures of each modified parts, my bad. So, I'll try to snap more later on (hopefully won't break that promise again... esp. after saying wanting to snap the PG OO Raiser...) on each modified parts. Upper TorsoSo right now, in order to fit the HG Sazabi body onto the MG Sinanju frame, this was what I've been doing with the inner frame of MG Sinanju. - Using a router and a router bit, grind off most of the surface in the inner frame. - Grind it off until the HG Sazabi torso was able to at least fit at the right length onto the body. After everything were done, the HG Sazabi upper torso was glued to the inner frame with the Wave Black Adhesive. Of course, the upper torso can still be separated and snap back in later. This was particularly handy especially for airbrushing. Overall ProportionFor the overall proportion, at first I thought that 3cm increase should be alright, but after looking at it and compared it with Zero1st Nu Gundam, it really was too tall. Therefore after much discussion and some skeptical thought on only using super glue or thin cement to stick the parts together, I gave it a major operations. This was the overall proportions without the head. The discussion really help a lot, as it gave me and overall idea on how to give the kit a proper proportion that will not be too exaggerate, but at the same time would give the kit a huge difference (hence the proverbs, different by a few millimeters would make a huge 1000 over meters difference). So here were the things that I've done: 1. Shorten the thigh of the leg inner frame. 2. Shorten the lower part of the leg (between knee and ankle) inner frame. 3. Shorten the waist inner frame. And after the modification, the overall height has been extended from 17cm to 18cm (so it's only 1 cm increment), which I must say that it was a lot better. Overall OutcomeSo after that, I tried to figure out how the shoulder armor should be like. I was thinking on how to construct the shoulder armor in such a way that it will not be too big, and of course the cape, on how it should connect to the body. After some meddling, trial & error, and some R & D, here's the overall outcome that I could come out. I must say that I was indeed and will have fun with this build Next, will start the work on the strengthening of the frame, the armor attachment, the neck join, the cape, then the overall presentation.
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Post by rennyd on Jun 5, 2014 11:47:47 GMT 8
Long Overdue Update - 2014-06-05Shoulder Armour & Jet Funnel (temporary name)The challenge is to come out with this concept of funnel where it not only is detachable from the side shoulder armor, but it must at least blends into the whole design, but can also be identified as an attacking unit of its own. So the journey begin. Firstly, I actually bought 2 HG 1/144 Baqto for the purpose to create the funnel. So the experiment goes on, with the first concept as in the following picture. As can see from above the picture, by using blu-tag to fix the parts together, I immediately thought of how the parts should be connected with each other. Then, also with the design, because it seems that with this design, there are a lot of empty & disjointed places, so this idea is definitely out. So with that in mind, will try to go back to the original plan, which is without that long beam weapon nose coming out from the head. The optic lens will be put there, as a gimmick to show that the funnel can also act as a protector, where the org is the place to generate the I-Field aka Plavsky Force Field . Continuing with this design, after some Chop-To-Mix-And-Match prototyping process, here's how the main body of the funnel would look like. Test fit with the shoulder armor to see how it fits in. The result is good enough to proceed to next step. To my own surprise, it can even hide underneath that big shoulder like this. Might be able to explore some option later one if time permit. As to how it is connected to the shoulder, here how it's done. And continue from there on, this is how it looks like. The whole thing will be separated as shown, for easier painting and assembly (no glue required as to date). Temporarily I'm using drawing paper to act as the wing, as the design of the wing will come after the important hurdles are done. So test fit it with the whole kit, this is how it looks like. Phew...
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Post by rennyd on Jun 5, 2014 12:00:32 GMT 8
Long Overdue Update - 2014-06-05 - Cont'dShoulder Armour & Jet Funnel (temporary name) - Cont'dSo one of the concept of this kit is with it's big shoulder armour, and so happened that MG Sinanju backpack booster armor can be used for that purpose, therefore I've decided to use that instead. I thought that I could just glue and putty the whole thing to one part of the armor. But that would not be good because I thought that it's not really that efficient at all in my case for I'd prefer to use more of it's original part instead. So after some gutsy & risky move, I actually grinded out a lot of plastic from the original parts and then glue them together, and then finally fill up some of the gaps with polyester putty. The end result is shown in the following pictures. So yes, there's going to be a lot of sanding that needs to be done. The parts can actually fit together quite well. Here's how the parts are separated. And here's how the shoulder armour would looks like after put together. Now it looks lest disjointed . Phew... Another hurdle down...
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Post by rennyd on Jun 5, 2014 12:31:07 GMT 8
Long Overdue Update - 2014-06-05 - Cont'dBig Bulky LegSo the leg, this time around I really did quite a lot of chopping both on the internal frame parts and the outer armours of the MG Sinanju just to fit it into the main modified frame. So yes, it's chop-2-mix-and-match (C2MAM). So the initial work on the leg would be as follow. The overall view of the whole thing. Not really satisfy with it. Then again with a lot more C2MAM and taking some risk, the result is as follow. Yet, I still need to work on the knee and the back part of the lower leg. By the way, here's how the MG Sinanju leg has become after the C2MAM process... ==" Oh well, like my partners-in-Build-Fighter-Group has said, let's die-hard together... ^^" Here's how the overall of the whole kit would look like. Posebility?As to how well the articulation is with the newly added MG frame into this HG kit? Well, along the process I did try it out, and at least it could make this final post that I intended for the final display. How Big!??Well, HG 1/144 Sazabi is actually 17cm tall. After the modification that I've done to this kit with the MG Sinanju frame, it has been raised to around 18cm tall. So how big is that compare to a RX-78? Well, here's how it looks like when comparing with the HG 1/144 Forever Gundam, which is also a RX-78 but with armour. David (Gundam) Vs Goliath (Sazabi)... ^^"
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Post by OzanBG on Jun 5, 2014 16:03:09 GMT 8
Good luck on your build...very inspiring..
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Post by rennyd on Jul 8, 2014 15:29:54 GMT 8
Update - 2014-07-08Leg esp. Knee ModificationThis is quite a major headache. One, the knee cannot be too empty when it's bended. Two, the original chained movement for the knee cannot be used. So, really have to think of some way to ensure that the knee movement doesn't look too out of form. At first, the original knee... ... to become... ... but execution wise... still not good enough... So time to dissect the frame and to study it... The challenge here is to ensure while the leg is bending, the joint section cannot be too empty and too disjointed from the overall feel. So after much thought & some advice from my partner-in-crime group build member, the final structure will be as below. The knee part is separated and to be joint to the lower leg. When the knee is bending, it will be something as follow. Well, at least for now that's how it will be... Then the back of the leg, finally able to find a part that can be used, hooray. Structure Finalizing...Received some comments on the design, esp. the wing binder, which rather distracting. Honestly, after looking at it for a while, it rally is distracting if it's too big. After some more trial and error, probably able to find a way to fix that part. Before proceed with that, I actually thought of some of the possible pose for the final presentation. After looking at it, I immediately thought of 2 major issues. One, as pointed out the wing binder is really too big if I'm going for what I've originally intended to do. Secondly, if I'm going for the shield sword concept, the wing binder will definitely be colliding with it because of the narrow gap. So, going back to the drawing board again (which there isn't any, just a cool term to put ), this time I have to scrap that sword shield concept and going for the hand sword instead. Now the hand sword, has to be something broad, big, huge. After much trial and error, here's what I could come out with. It seems to be working quite well, so I've decided to go down this path for the sword. Here's some of the things that I've done with the sword. The red coloured section is to be cut out, so that... It would allow the parts to be glued and hold together more steadily. So after this, will be working on the micro details. Hopefully able to show more of how the internal frames are done.
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Post by rennyd on Aug 4, 2014 13:20:41 GMT 8
Update 2014-08-04Actually have done quite a lot of things after the last update, but was not able to take photo of each step due to the problem with the smartphone camera (oh well, HTC...) So, with one of the hardest part to tackle, will be to have the cut parts to be made as one part. This is especially true to the legs. Leg Inner FrameUsing pla-plate, and then glued with both ABS and super glue, and then some epoxy putty, and then sanding, the overall would be as follow. Of course after this update I actually added more putty to fill in the gap of some of the pla-plates. I'm using Tamiya's Epoxy Putty smooth type, due to its adhesiveness. Leg ArmorsThis is the tricky parts. The outer armors are literally being chopped into a few pieces, so not only that I need to make sure that they're able to be made into one piece again, but also able to withstand the brute force attack from the constant posing. So again, there are a lot of usage of epoxy putty, pla-rod, and pla-plate, together with thin cement and super glue to have everything hold together. Lastly...There are actually a lot of putty and pla-plate reinforcement going around for this kit, and to even fill in some of the wide gaps. Overall it is ready for the next work in the stack - time to fashion it into what I intended it to be. This is going to be tough because I need to deal with the sword and the cape at the same time. Time is really ticking...
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Post by rennyd on Aug 15, 2014 18:36:35 GMT 8
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Post by rennyd on Aug 18, 2014 11:15:00 GMT 8
Update - 2014-08-18After one night of receiving comments and discussions with other fellow modeller in ICW, finally decided to change the pose again. This time however, in order to have a better view on how much space I could use to build the diorama, I taped the table with a 50 * 50 cm 2 of space frame. After realizing there was still space available for the build, I finally decided on the pose to be as follow. - From another angle The space between the Forever Gundam and the Sazabi is good enough to show that the Sazabi's funnel to chase after the Forever Gundam; as the forever Gundam is trying to flee away from the pursuit. The pose of the Forever Gundam and the Sazabi would be as follow. These are here as a record on how they supposed to look like. As for the base, will try to make it as irregular as possible, instead of having it flat. So now will be full force to the detailing work on the Sazabi before continuing on the diorama itself.
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Post by banzai on Aug 26, 2014 6:23:03 GMT 8
My what an interesting idea, fusing the new with the old. I await the completion of the dio. Don't feel bad about sporadic updates btw... I'm absolutely terrible with updates on my WIP's.
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Post by rennyd on Aug 26, 2014 11:13:08 GMT 8
Thanks, banzai. Time is really ticking at the moment, so really feel the pressure now if I can't pull this off. Update 2014-08-26After the last update, all I was doing was to make sure the shape of the outer armors are good enough to proceed with the rest of the detailing work. This was a tough one due to a lot of sanding, cutting, and slicing of putty, which was totally hazard... So the end product at the moment, would be as follow. Along the way I've actually used a lot of epoxy putty to fill up most of the gap in the kit and to provide internal support as well. As a result of that, I've already used up 3 Tamiya epoxy putty (smooth type), and 1 Mori Mori Putty (small tube). Still need to do some putty work as I'm now moving into the micro perspective details of this kit. Hopefully not too over done...
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Post by rennyd on Sept 14, 2014 17:18:33 GMT 8
Update - 2014-09-14Shield Broad Beam SwordAfter managed to get most of the parts gel together, it's about time to work on the cape and the sword. As mentioned in previous update, the original concept has to be scrapped due to the size and movement limitation introduced by the big shield. After some work, tentatively the sword will look something like the following. In someway or another, my intention has been the hand carrying weapon will be a huge physical weapon, and in this case, it's this big sword built with parts from the MG Sinanju shield. It has a shape of a sword but not really a sword; more like a hand carry shield that's to deal physical damage plus to repel incoming attack. Of course, when the beam is formed, then it's a huge sword Cape Maneuver Propulsion SystemNah, just a nick name for the cape. I thought that it will be cool to have a cape as propulsion system instead of just for look. So I need at least a back pack that can be function to attach the cape and position adjustable. So I came up with this idea of using the other part of the MG Sinanju shield to built it. Then the backpack to hold the cape pack is constructed with the MG Sinanju shield-to-hand connector plus HG Sazabi backpack, with some epoxy putty to hold it. Finally fit the whole thing together for strength testing. Sazabi Overall Current ProgressSo overall, the whole thing will look as in the following pictures. I must say that I really enjoy seeing the outcome, despite the fact that it's taking a lot of time to build.
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Post by banzai on Sept 15, 2014 4:11:41 GMT 8
Its been a great build so far. More! MORE! THIS I COMMAND!
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