I felt like I built up some good momentum with the last build, so I decided to keep it going and knock out the last two components shortly after. Once again I tried not to overthink the weathering - whatever happened happened, and I left it at that. Let’s see how it turned out.
Arms
Not much to say here. The shoulder pauldron connects via a polycap, which makes it easy to remove if need be:
Under the surface, each arm has a nice bit of inner framing, which I sadly forgot to take a photo of.
Other than that, they are standard issue Zaku arms - no more, no less.
Rifle
This may be the most complicated rifle I’ve ever assembled for a High Grade. It has lots of tiny little pieces bolted on to it, and a lot of surface details to paint in. I assumed it would take a Herculean effort to get it all done, but I managed to crank it out without much fuss. It helped that I stuck primarily to one color of paint for most of the detailing. That made it easier to knock it out in one night, and in retrospect I think it lead to a nicer, less busy look.
Once it was painted and topcoated, I went to town with almost every single color of my weathering compound at my disposal. I acted before I could think, and in my opinion the end result is quite nice. This is probably the best weathering of anything on the model. It’s noticeable without being overwhelming. I’m particularly proud of the rust effect I got on these wires:
Speaking of which, I love the hodgepodge design of this rifle. Like the backpack, it feels slapped together and just a little bit shoddy. How else does one explain the presence of a slide bolt on a rifle that uses beam energy? Or the fact that it has not one, but two scopes?
Okay, so maybe those things are actually kind of stupid - perhaps they are the product of some misguided attempt to invoke the Rule of Cool?
Conclusion
Sorry for the short post, but there’s nothing else left to build! Let’s have one more post to put the finished model through its paces.
Other Thoughts
- The rifle has no moving parts or other gimmicks, but that’s perfectly fine. It looks so nice that I don’t feel like it needs any other features to compensate.