After seeing the tau-chikoma over at Musings of a Metal Mind I just knew I had to make at least one of my own. So instead of painting last Tuesday like I planned, I built a tau-chikoma. And I'm not sure why it's taken me so long to get it posted here >.> Sadly it's not because I've been doing other miniatures related things. ;.;
The assembly is actually a lot more straight forward then I thought at first. Though I neglected to take pictures of the stages. Initially I was trying to attach the 'front' torso to the back torso first. This was horribly hard. So I gave up on that and attached the back legs first. They should be attached so the curvy part (usually toward the crotch of the suit) goes forward with the armour on top. I played with the legs a bit in both arrangements and found that the space forward gives the better range of motion.
After the back legs are on the front torso slides right into place with little trouble. One thing I do suggest is to cut off the stock shoulder ball joints before gluing the torsos together. I also drilled into the spaces the joints were so the front legs sunk in a little and looked better. On the next one I'll probably drill/carve them out more.
After attaching the front legs, I made my big oops. Wanting to make it so I could swap out the nose weapon on the model and to reinforce the torso to torso joint (which for me wasn't as sturdy as I'd have liked), I decided it was a good idea to fill in the space in the torsos with resin. This in and of itself was a fine idea... however, I neglected to take the proper precautions so the model wouldn't fall over while the resin was curing, so I made a bit of a mess. Luckily I was able to peel/scrape off most of the spilled resin, so the model doesn't look like a blob. I did loose a lot of the detail on one of the rear legs, but it's in a mostly hidden place, so I'm not too worried.
The final piece was the head/face. It'd made from a trimmed thinner Stealth suit optics and a piece of standard house power wire that I had sitting around.
I think next time I'm going to trim the overhangs of the front torso a bit so it can sit lower on the model. This second image is actually the first I took, but as is normal for the white resin, I couldn't pick out details and took it before I found the housing wire, so I gave it a quick green brushing (which isn't done too well, but eh), which is the first image of the blog.
Nice work!
ReplyDeleteSorry, I should've mentioned in my post that there was a bit of shaving involved to get the two torso pieces to fit together properly. Also, I used half a shield generator bit for the front "faceplate", (eliminating the "rumpled") look of the top of the squared torso and making the front weapon a bit more recessed. If you're into magnets (I know I am) there's a little room at the bottom to recess one in the underside of the torso, so's you can make the weapons switchable.
Did you cast the Tau bits out of resin? Man, you're on a whole other level...
I had tried a couple different things for the 'face' and ended up with the stealth head, and I'd just assumed you'd trimmed down some of the weapons to fit better. The plasma gun in the pictures is technically in line to be painted for the 'normal' suits, and is magnetized. I love magnets, so useful. :p I should probably green stuff or something some more bulk to the head, though I do like it having the more Fuchikoma style head vs the Tachikoma orb eyes, though my optics should probably be larger. Hmm, maybe a hammerhead/skyray sensor pod piece...
ReplyDeleteThe only trimming I did to the weapons were some of the little wires and bits at the the very ends, but mostly I just made sure they nestled in there nice and snug, with the front barrel (or barrels) braced up against the neck ring where I could. If you're looking for cool variants, the PS1 video game has an evil boss Fuchikoma that has this enormous arm and centerline rifles, along with a burlier pod. I thought about basing the broadside ones on that, but stuck with the "hero" design Fuchis as a base.
ReplyDeleteI used orb eyes (which are half ball-joints) b/c they're large and more expressive; there are so many optics pieces out there it would've taken forever for me to get/try them all.
I can understand that ^.^ I have to look into the PS1 game then, I only have a PS2 GitS game, and I'm not sure it has any in it.
ReplyDeleteThe PS1 game is entirely Fuchikoma-based and a lot of fun. The animation style for the cutscenes is closer to the manga, as well. You could probably still find copies on eBay going for a song, and it's well worth it.
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