Thursday, May 8, 2008

Head

The head of the Gaplant is surrounded by the shoulder and the backpack. The spacing is very tight around the head. When the model is in MA mode, the backpack actually move in on the head about 4mm, making the space even tighter. The overall look of the original head was decent. The separable visor and the mouth piece were inviting me to modify it.

I first trim down the pointy mouth piece and modify it into a chin. 0.25mm plaplate is used to build up a nose and outline the chin and the eye area.

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Plaplate are used to build around the visor to turn it into a housing for optics. I have no idea why I added the details to the optic tube. Most of the surface is not visible. I just want to see if thin plastic strips can simulate the wiring details. The optic tube is insert into the housing and a SP eye lense from Mecha Skunk will be glued on during the assembly.

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During the moving to my new home, the piece for the back of the head was lost. I had to scratchbuild a new one. This allows me to add a few mm of length to the head. I like to imagine it as processing unit for the optics. Basically it is built from stacking vertical plaplate together. Once the plaplate piece is built, it still leaves some gaps when attach to the head. I painted vaseline on the head, then stick a glob of epoxy putty to the processing unit and jam it into the head. Excess epoxy be squeezed out through the gaps between the head and the processing unit. The processing unit with epoxy can be pried off the head because I painted the head with Vaseline. Trimming off the excess leave me the unit with the gaps filled.

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I cut a plastic tube to make the connectors for two snake chains that will connect the processing unit to the body. This is what it look like when everything is put together.

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It reminds me of Cima's pilot helmet. Maybe I will post a screen capture for comparison.

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