I decided to keep bulldozing forward with this build. Weathering effects look great, but I just don’t have a fun doing them, at least not to this extent. It’s not a matter of impatience - after all, I can easily spend several days painting smaller details onto a weapon.
No, the problem is more that I overthink weathering, and exactly how I want to do it. It leaves me feeling stressed and/or unhappy with what I come up with. It’s just not a good headspace for me to be in.
That’s why I’m going to keep it simple from here on out. Whatever weathering I come up with is what I come up with, for better or worse. With that being said, let us begin.
Backpack
This is by far my favorite part of the kit. It was the most fun to build, and I think it is the most visually interesting component.
First off, this thing uses more pieces than you might think:
It layers these pieces to create some nice depth and detail.
This was a lot of fun to paint. I know I tend to go overboard with metallic colors, but I think they all work well here. You have the copper sections looking like heatsinks, and the gold sections looking like capacitors.
One thing I regret is that I went overboard with the gloss coat. Thankfully, a few layers of weathering compound took away lot of the shine once I put it all together:
Now, this is where we finally get to use that piece of wire:
For those who aren’t familiar, sometimes a Gunpla will come with a stiff piece of wire, in cases where the mobile suit has some sort of wire/cable/tubing/whatever. In most (but not all cases), the wire will also come with a fabric sheath that goes over it. Unfortunately, these sheaths don’t fit very tightly around the wire, which becomes a problem when you then have to plug them both in to what is usually a very tiny hole. If you don’t find a way to crimp the sheath around the end of the wire, and/or if you aren’t careful, you can cause the fabric to fray. Do this enough, and you can ruin it entirely.
I will admit that I caused a bit of fraying, but when I finally plugged it in, I made sure that a nice layer of super glue went along for the ride. I am now hoping that both ends of the wire are snug and in place:
The “top” end of the wire can unplug from the backpack, to be plugged into the sniper rifle. I like, however, that you can plug it in here when not in use.
Let’s strap this sucker on!
It certainly looks big and bulky, but it doesn’t look quite as a big as I thought it would (for comparison, it isn’t quite as big as the backpack on the Gundam Ground Type). That’s fine by me - if it was too big, it would make the mobile suit look too awkward and unwieldy.
Let’s talk about the visual design some more. I absolutely love it. It looks like a hodgepodge of parts slapped together by desperate Zeon engineers at the end of the war. It is asymmetric and uneven, and it feels sloppy. That is exactly the look that it should have.
Additionally, I love how it has thrusters tacked on to the bottom. You have to imagine that not a lot of the internal space is dedicated to housing thruster fuel, and you also have to imagine that with all the added weight from the backpack, a pair of standard thrusters aren’t going to provide this Zaku with a lot of lift.
Head
This is most certainly a Zaku head, but it also has a number of unique features, including:
- Yead mounted Vulcan cannons (which Zeon engineers must have ripped off the Federation near the end of the war).
- Monoeye is a different color.
- Monoeye has little targeting reticule marks along the edges.
- Monoeye kind of looks like it doubles as a telescoping lens.
- Not a unique feature, but being a Zaku I means there is no tubing running along the bottom.
- An antenna on the side of the head.
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There’s a gap in the armor right above the eye that allows it to swivel upward:
All in all, the head strikes the right balance between being instantly recognizable yet also uniquely differentiated. All of its changes are practical and sensible given this unit’s purpose.
The only thing I am unsure about is the eye. Sometimes I think that it sticks out a bit too much, as if the eye is bulging out. Other times it looks like a spec ops unit equipped with a special goggle. I’ll probably fully warm up to it over time.
I didn’t go as heavy on the weathering here, and as a result, the head looks like a much lighter shade of tan than the rest of the body:
However, as I said earlier, I’m going to leave the weathering as-is.
Next Up
With that complete, all that is left to do is finish the arms and the rifle. I’ll see you then.