I've always loved Gundams, and since I needed a break from sculpture building for a while, I decided to work on a mech. Some history on the Z Gundam story where the Titans Mk.II comes from (paraphrased from Samhein's Gundam Domain):

Following Operation Stardust (see Gundam 0083), The AEUG ("Anti-Earth Union Group"), a paramilitary force composed of both renegade Federal Forces members and former Zeon soldiers, dedicates itself to opposing the oppression of the Titans. Thanks to the backing of powerful corporations, in particular the moon-based Anaheim Electronics, this resistance group is able to amass a small but well-equipped force. In UC 0087, the AEUG makes its first move, entering the Titans' stronghold at Side 7 to investigate reports that a new Gundam project is under way...

I like the Titans version of the Gundam better (the blue is much cooler than the standard white with red and blue highlights in the AEUG version), but this actually started out as an armature from Gla Gla. However, I found that once I had an understanding of how to make the joints work, this became a Gundam. The Gundam only has some minor features from the armature, as I found it really flexible, but unable to support much weight.

The mech is fully posable. Ball joints connect the neck, the shoulders, the hips, and the ankles. The 90 joints (elbows and knees) are connected with hinge plates. This makes a decent elbow and knee joint for my purposes.

The torso went through a few rebuilds in the structure before getting it right. I had to widen the shoulders a bit so the Gundam looked right proportionally. Also, when I had originally built the torso, I made the legs. After making the arms, the legs were too short and they needed to be rebuilt.

Another fun discovery I made during this process is trying to place two ball joints right next to each other doesn't make very strong legs at the hip joint. From the Brickshelf folder, you can see that in some of the pictures. I rebuilt the legs so they only connected with one ball joint, making the model stronger and still fairly posable.

The hand design comes directly from Sun Yun, as I find it a strong and functional hand, even though not as realistic as the ones in the armature. Take a look at Sun's pages to get a good feel on how to make a strong but possible mecha.

The head design is heavily influenced by Gla Gla's Z-plus Gundam. However, the head designs for the Mk-II's are relatively different than the Z-plus, but I really like the way Gla Gla does head designs.

Rocket packs and rifles are pretty standard with Gundams. Part of the reason I like the Mk-II so much is it's a fairly simple Gundam (no core fighter, which the RX-78-2 and other Gundams had).

This is the second mech I've built. The first one, the LT-100 Hurricane Trooper, was built on a throwbot frame. I'm really happy I didn't even try to do that for this one.

Thanks to Gla Gla and Sun Yun for the inspiration, to Dave Johann for coming over and giving me feedback on the double ball joints, and to my husband Russ for his feedback and patience while I build :-).

Some stats: about 1 foot tall, posable, and probably 200 or so pieces (didn't count).

The build process is documented in my Brickshelf folder.

Posted by stripes at 8:17 PM | Permalink