As early as my second night of building, I made a change of plans. I decided to build the three separate animal forms. Once I stared at the instruction book long enough, it actually became pretty obvious how each section of the build corresponded to a specific animal form.
I started off with what I thought was the easiest one - the Riku Tryon, which according to the Internet is a Liger (despite being painted yellow). The Riku’s body turns into the Tryon-3’s backpack, and it’s head turns into the chest plate. Pretty straightforward if you ask me.
And indeed the body of the Riku was straightforward, on account of the fact that it isn’t made of many pieces. The trickiest part are the feet; you have to use the right piece on the right side of the body, otherwise the paws won’t be level.
Then there was the head. Remember how I complained about the lack of decals in an earlier post? Karma decided to get back at me for that one. Most of those decals are applied to the Riku’s head, and they did everything they could to kick my ass.
First, there is a grey decal that is applied in the far back of the liger’s mouth (I guess it’s for effect?). I discovered this after I had built the thing, and rather than risk breaking it during dissassembly, I thought I would get clever. I opened the jaw up wide and tried to surgically insert the decal into the mouth. It took a very, very long time to get it in there, and by the time I did, the decal was wrinkled, bent, and nasty looking.
So then I had another idea. I opened up the jaw wide, and tried to surgically insert a grey Sharpie marker to fill in the parts of the decal that were bent and torn. You probably see a pattern here, but thankfully I didn’t screw this part up. The decal ended up looking much better thanks to the Sharpie.
The Riku Tryon currently holds the record for weirdest use of a decal I’ve ever seen in a kit. See how the teeth are initially yellow?
And now see how they turn white?
Those are stickers my friend. They’re very strangely shaped, but if you apply it just right, and carefully wrap it around the tooth, you get a good seal and a nice clean look. I’m really quite impressed with the idea, and so far I haven’t seen any sign of them falling off or coming apart.
So here’s the finished Riku Tryon.
I’ll admit, the first time I saw it, it reminded me of a Happy Meal toy. It’s mostly thanks to the body, which is incredibly blocky and simple. But once I got it panel lined and painted up, it started to look a lot better. I’m quite impressed with the kit’s balance; I was able to fairly easily get it to stand up on its hind legs. The feet actually have quite a bit of articulation, meaning you can come up with some cool, Liger-y poses if you wanted to.
That’s it for this post. Next stop is the Umi Tryon, AKA “the one that looks like a stingray”.