Couldn’t make much progress today, unfortunately, and the Expo is coming up in less than a week. Crunch time.
My colleague had to arrive a bit later today due to a prior engagement, and I’m not of much use on my own. We usually start at around 9AM in the morning and crank until 6PMish, but today my comrade was only able to arrive at 1PM, though we went two extra hours until 8PM. Still not enough time though.
We basically tried to get the legs done today and start glomping on the white that would be used for like, all of the remaining armor. The RX-78-2 has the most color on its torso bloc where everything else is pretty much blank.
So before my colleague arrived at 1PM this afternoon, I went ahead and used the morning time to go out and grab extra supplies.
Upon a stop at Home Depot, I knew we’d need some inner-frame gray for the backpack and beam rifle we have planned, as well as another quart of white for the tremendous amount of plain armor.
As a meek high-schooler with no real paying job though, my wallet was fairly dry, and I didn’t want to shell out too much for materials, since for the time being this would be coming directly out of my own pocket.
As a result, upon hitting the Home Depot, I immediately scouted the clearance paints, which were like $1.00 for any obscure sample bottle there, and $2.00 for a quart.
With incredible luck, I managed to scout out a shade of gray that was rather similar to inner-frame gray, though not exact. Still, for what we needed and the budget we’re on, beggars can’t be choosers. We managed to procure our quart of blue paint in the same fashion, as mentioned in Phase 4.
This bloody gray paint was stupidly messy right from the shelf though. I guess there was a reason it was on sale. Upon putting it in my bag and leaving Home Depot, the lid popped a little and made a messy scene.
Here’s the quart of white. I had a choice between regular Interior Flat and Interior Flat Enamel, and not knowing the difference, I asked a Home Depot employee for details. Apparently this Flat Enamel is slightly shiner and has more durability than the other stuff. More durability is good for a cosplay that’s supposed to last 3 days at a convention.
Using the white we had left from our first quart, my colleague really went to town on those pieces. Needless to say it got really messy…
First coats never look that beautiful, especially if you’re not completely drowning the pieces in paint, but it would suffice for now until we add more layers.
Also stopped by JoAnn’s and picked up even more Velcro. Our project’s riding on these…
The torso bloc is pretty much held together on my comrade’s body by velcro.
So while my companion laid the first coat of white down on all the finished pieces we had so far, I was in charge of finishing up the lower leg sections.
Upon doing so, I realized that the circular piece we put on the lower legs around the knee area were just a flat circle.
Upon taking another look at the actual RX-78-2 we were basing this off of, I realized that the circular pieces on the knees are like, legit 3D circles, with a slice in the middle to make it look kinda like a screw.
So I took the backbreaking effort and did just that. No matter how deceptively simple these look, it actually took quite a bit of time to make a good set, especially with only cardboard and duct tape available.
Upon attaching them to the legs themselves, I have to say, it makes a world of a difference. Honestly it looks so much cooler with those pieces attached, I can’t even explain.
Finished adjusting and taping on the calf pieces, and here we go. Lower legs are all but finished, and I gotta say, through all the rage and frustration, it was worth it.
These honestly look really nice, given that they just looked like boxes before. The constant trial and error, on these pieces specifically, finally paid off.
I swear, we end up with the most randomly shaped scrap pieces.
The scrap v-fin that legitimately came out like that from a spare edge that we were cutting. My colleague insisted on painting it yellow for the luls even though RX-78-2’s v-fin is white.
The usual brushes used to commit the crimes.
And then we have the feet; these were always a bit tricky to work out, but my comrade managed to do it. Had to make them proportional to his feet while trying to make them look somewhat like the RX-78-2’s giant clown shoes.
We designed them basically to slip your foot in (with shoe on, of course) and there will be velcro straps running across the front section on the inside that will secure one’s shoes to it. Seems to work relatively well.
Here we got one of the knee armors attached to the lower leg. Can’t help but think we’ll run into clearance issues with the thigh armor attached as well, but we’ll have to fit it all together to be sure.
Honestly the knee armor looks kind of off to me, but iunno…could just be me personally tripping some crazy acid. They seem to jut out a little too much…
Attached the soon-to-be yellow boxes onto the front and back skirts as well. Would be fancy if they could open up at the top and we’d stick a sandwich in each, and smuggle food into AX like that.
As for skirt connection, we decided long ago that Velcro would be useful in being a sort of fastener belt to keep the skirt dangling from my comrade’s belt. This gives it a little bit of play, as we can adjust the lengths accordingly, and also makes the skirts and waist area easily removable, to allow for bathroom breaks and being able to sit down and all.
At the end of the day we always end up with a whole mess of scrap cardboard that can still be reused the next time we work, so it all goes into a handy little Dollar Tree bag. The pieces are usually botched attempts at actual parts (see the collar section and knee armor bits in there) but can be recycled for second attempts.
All in all, gotta say today wasn’t too bad, despite the cramped schedule and little remaining work time we have left.
The Expo is only 6 days away, so there will likely be one final Phase, where everything comes together for real. When all the paint is applied, when all the Velcro is used, and the Gundam will stand tall.
Read on the rest of the build:
