1/100 Nataku Ver. H-Bird; Improvement of the old HG

Hello Dear readers ....

This is the hummingbird... PRESENTING his 2nd finsihed Gunpla kit.... It was a been a long 9months;.. but finally, i have finished it... and I have learned alot from this build...

FYI, I didn't put in panel line because i hate weird black lines going all around..... 

My thanks to all my friends and fans who supported me throught happy times, and hectic times.... I am very very greatful.. to all of you.. without your supports, i might have just give up.. Thank you

I will make a full credit list later on...

Before & After-


My most favourite pose -


General View-




Some poses -





Show down with the WZC



And here is a little video I made of this kit... nothing special, just tweaking around on a website.. LOL but I enjoyed it.. :P 

If you want to see more or read the discussion, feel free to jump over to the thread at MAC 
If you want to see more - just jump over to my photobucket album, here 
Thank you all for your support..... really really appreciate you guys' supports..Stay Tuned for more

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Improving the HG 1/100 Nataku - Part8

I do not think i can live up to your expectation this time.... trouble is, i was having too much stress about ABing that i actually went through and use my hands.. although, i had a chance to spray the whites on the arms and legs.. which turns out absolutely horrible... i could never get it right when spraying tamiya gloss white.... grrr..

anyhow,, this is what i got ...


I will show you guys a close up pic of the skirts and -
- you will see that there are , how should i say, dots dots dots appearing all over the front skirts..

and when you look at the back skirts -

- you can see a somewhat smooth ( if not for my noobish hands, i could have made it better by smoothing the parts pretty well,, but... )... surface...I don't exactly know what happened... but I know that has something to do with the primer... i could feel the rough dotted surface after i primed it... i though it would be ok when i paint it.. but apparently, it is not that ok...

ok.. moving on... i scribed some panel lines on the calves following of my friends suggestion ( i think, it was phantompain)... and i scribed it somewhat similar to the original panel lines.... and i also installed a pair of leg booster as you can see ( the nozzles are detached for the paint to dry) -
 
- as any one would have guessed, the boosters are scavenged from the 1/144 deathscythe gundam ( I am glad i bought that little guy)... i mean, come on, the nataku is a high speed melee MS, no way it's practical for it to move so fast with just the two booster on his backpack... so, to further reinforce that.. i make this - - ta da, another pair of booster.. and that one swivel up and down and yes. the poor little 144 deathscythe had to gave up his parts for the glory of the double dragon.. ( and yeah, the booster idea comes from the MK. II)

happy with the booster and moving on,  I was deeply upset with my own skills so i corrected that mistakes i made on the skirts and the legs.. and the smudges... and the finger prints

Again, My hand painting sucks..... the painting you gonna see will look like crap in your eyes.. for that, do forgive me... I did my best but i was at my limit....

As you all know.. i made a custom V fin, right??? I happend to have lost that V fin so i had to scratch build another one....  Did the best i could but still can't achieve perfect symmetry...

I just draw a shape that i want to cut on paper and glue that paper on the pla-plate and i just cut it out... i don't know why, i did every measurement carefully and i still mess up the symmetry.... anyway... i cut out that V fin plate and attached that 2nd camera looking thing by making a triangle by stacking plates and etched the middle of that triangle so that the borders are raised...

as you can see from the pictures -


I have to say,, I like it.. but i don't love it .. cos it is not symmetrical AND some what not sharp enough as a MG V-fin..

moving on... i was lazy to put in putty so, i fix a mistake i did like so in the picture


I love how it looks.... .  and next, the legs...I was very very unhappy with the paint i got with tamiya gloss white .. so i switched to Revell Acrylic White...Had to restrip the paint, sand a bit and as seen in the picture.....


Next, regarding the finger print i got, i striped, resand, reprimed and repaint the middle chest piece... the whole chest piece is hand painted and the gold were painted by masking the chest piece with blue tack... (it works quite well)


And if you could refer back to the previous update, the back skirts are really really awful and i hated every thing about it.. so i did a little sanding and a very small amount of details on it... ( fixed the front skirts too but forgot to take photos, sorry)

and the photo of what i did..


Well, that's it for this update... after 10 months, this WIP getting near to finish... I know that i make too many mistakes... but this is my limit for this WIP... hopefully i can improve on the next WIP...

As Usual, Thank you all for reading and C & C are welcome... Stay tuned...

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Improving the HG 1/100 Nataku - Part7

Right, This is update no. 7 and I wll be working on the face and the fangs from now on....at first, I was working to make the V-fin much better, make it thinner yet add a bit more length and bulk and the sorts..

As you can see, I install some plates by cutting off the Fins and gluing back together.... and add some thin plate on the sides of the large V-fins to add more ( I would say) bulk and sanded down and shaped into something similar to that of the WZC V-fins
Unfortunatly, I haven't take a photo of the sanded process for the V-fin so you would have to look at the works i done after a few more pictures...
ok... and i was looking at the nataku head and I saw really really really small ''ears'' and I thought like ''what the heck are they doing there??'' and I decided to make a new pair myself...
As usual, you wanna make something new, you cut your pla-plate first so...
Step 1 :

I admit I based if off the ears of the WZC but I also tried to retain the orgial look
step 2 : some small details

That is my way of scribing, which is extremelly useful to scribe straight line - you see the lines I drew with black pen?? basically you just line up this '' Dymo tape'' along the pre-drawn line and after making sure the tapes are securelly adhered to the plates (make sure the tapes are not moving)... you just scribe by means of a scribe or a hobby knife...
and voila ... here is the finished new lines... the upper one is the exterior of the ''ears'' and the lower one is the inside of the ears..

after that, which is step 4, I just cut of the orginal part, precisely at the place where the ear started bending...  and sanded my SB ears into a angle and glued with the orginal part like so in the picture .... 

Can you guys see the early stages of the V-fins shaping?? That is so ovbiously messy and looks very bad and I just hated it cos its so hard to shape so I made a new V-fin out of scratch.. again, I love the WZC v-fin so I based this V-fan of the WZC V-fin... here is the result I get... which is pretty cool in my eyes...


right.. that's the head done... all that's left to do seam line and some more tidy up.... next up is the dragon fangs....

as everyone knows, the fangs are quite a bit short and little bit dull, so I elongated and sharpen them a bit by means of pla-plate shapings reinforced by putty... and this is the result it give ....

I have to admit, the sharpening of the fangs are not exactly top-notch, but I am happy with what I got... and move to the detailing the shields...

I was looking around the shield and found that it was too bare so i decided to detail it up... and i stared on the sides .... by cutting 4 plates like so ...


after that, I glued them on the sides of the shields and sanded down the sides to an angle to match with the shield, and the final version looks like this ...


and I thought, ''ok, the sides is done, happy with it.. what else??'' and I found that the 'head' of the shields looks rather plain so I just strap on a plate to detail is up a bit . The following picture describe that as well as shows you the upper portion of the shield..


That's the upper portion of the shields done, so I moved on to the lower ( you say the interior of the shield or its belly)... As you all know, the underside of the head of the shield is hollow which is just awful so i filled that up with greey putty... and I used strips of pla plates to come up with that ''panel??'' looking part you see on the pictue.


As you can see from the picture, I also detailed the hollow sections where the fangs go in when it is at their normal position. That hollow section was just aweful so filled that up with a plate, cut according to the shape and size of the hollow region and put on a kotobukiya vent part diagonally ... I was going to SB my own vents but i was just play lazy.. :P hehe ... and as you can see from the following picture (sorry about my ugly hand :P )... the details fit well after every part is fitted, although it's a little hard to see... hope you guys can see that


Now, it has come to the final part of the detailings of the shield... the peg on the posterior part of the shield goes into a polycap at the end of the red segmented chain (i'm talking about the circled part from the picture)

That was  pure eye sore... a absolute bummer to the actual kit.... and so I decided to improvise an detailed up that part... like so...


It was done by surrounding with pla plates, fliing the gaps with green putty and putting another layer of alternating thin strips for cosmetic purposes...
Attached back to the chain, it looks like this...

And I am very very very much facinated by my own results :P :P (if I'm not, who else would.. :P.. nah.. just joking around.. :P ) anyway, that's wrap up the dragon fangs/shield of my Nataku.. next up is the backpack.... Stay Tuned...

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Improving the HG 1/100 Nataku - Part6

Right..I'm sure you all will remember that i was moaning about modding the legs,right??? well... I stopped the moaning and took actions...i modded the ankles...
All thanks to the support of friends and gunpla family and senseis and senpais from all the various fourm that encouraged me to mod on the ankles... ARRIGATTO...

Before that, I made some small touchups to the skirts area....

back skirts


front skirts

and the Groin or whatever-you-called-that-part-armour.. I extended this a little bit and put a peice of plate on each site to add some details.. i thought it was just twoo small compare with the whole kits..so,, yeah


and the butt armour?? (sorry guys)... i also did the same thing as i did with the groin armour


that finialized the skirts and pelvis area.... and now. moving on to the legs, i decided to work on the feets first...
1st - i trimmed it down to a slimmer feet by sanding,sanding and sanding (huu lots of sanding i tell you)
2nd - I cut the white ..eh..upper feet.. and extended it by stacking 4 pieces or 0.2 (i think) mm plates.. u can see the stacks plates
3rd - again, i used my method that i used on the shoulders to extend the toes and make it more better looking (and i am happy with it)
and here is the pictures of what i did....

Side view


that's the feet done,, and yes, still needing a LOT of clean up, i moved on to the feet.... I decided to make the ankles similer to the SF or IJ or destiny...the only thing is that i made it reversed.. the MG have the two ball going both way from the ankle guard, while my ankles have two cups installed in it.... here's the steps...

1st - obviously, i had to cut the ankles apart..
2nd - i used the orginal cup that was in the ankle and another one from koto parts to make the joint, since the cups are not styrene (they are PC, as u know) so gluing won't work in this case,, so i just slapped on a massive amount of putty to hold them...
3rd - again... i used a massive amount of putty and since the koto ball joint are not styrene either, i thought it would be better to sink them in putty and tried to hold them like that... and much to my surprise, it works...
Here's are the pictures,,

1st step -

2nd step -

3rd step -

so now... my lets (lower legs actually) are made up of three parts, as you can see from the pictures


so,., after the mods..... my nataku now looks like this...


I am very happy with what i got.. and quite satisfied,,, now all that's left for me is to do some touch-ups here and there..clean up, finishings,,,oh yeah,, the dragon fangs.. can't forget those.... and the head... gonna have to sharpen the V fin and the ears..... any comments,, just fire away....thank you so much for your support.. Stay tuned for more

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Improving the HG 1/100 Nataku - Part5

As you all know.. the back skirts of every late 80s HG.. and I do mean every... are attached and they cannot be move and it really is a royal pain in the neck... so...  first thing first... i cutted it in ''twain''.. that was one hell of a cutting.. my  arms were aching from the sawing...

and this is what i do after i cutted the skirts... the full process is in the picture.....


so.. after seeing this... i assuming you guys will be thinking what i do with the back skirts... well, here it is... as ususal the full process is inside the picture... and man, this is one confusing process... i had to carefullly figure out where to put in the cups..


and ta- da.... my HG Nataku just got a MG skirt... of cos.. i still have to put more details in it..... will do it shortly...


Inner View


AND this is how much my nataku can bend now....... compared here with the WZC ..

and here is wher my current progress ..... a dirty nataku ... about 75% done..... I first thought of extending the leg... but i decide not to..... but i still have to modify the legs.... or maybe kitbash some....

That's it for the first part of the Waist mod... Stay tuned... next update will be the leg

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