Thursday, April 28, 2011

MG Turn X Gundam ver MatX WIP Part IV

A Turn X update, FINALLY!

Real life work seems to cut my Gunpla time, sometimes it's more my frustration and exhaustion over the projects that drains and prevents me from working on the modifications.

When I first saw the scratch-built Turn X a few years back, I always contemplated the difficulty of it, owing the fact that it is scratch built, and back then, I didn't know the extent of mine own capabilities since I was only doing minor modifications.  This build however is a bit frustrating and more difficult as compared to scratch-building the entire thing because I have to consider the frame of the Turn A and build around it.

The Turn X's head, for example, is also the cockpit.  If I want to incorporate that feature in, I would have to scrap what I've done so far and build one from scratch.  But that defeats the purpose of the conversion. Maybe I'll include a scratch-built option with the cockpit, but I would have to make do with this for the meantime and work on other parts to make up for lost time. 

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I've managed to achieve the basic shape of the Turn X with plaplates (yes, this would have been rather easy with putty, but, that's hardly the purpose of this build).  All I really need to do now is add the details.

The Turn X's Chest and Upper Torso

OceanSean gave me another resource that led me to this nifty bit of information:

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It's a 1/144 kit modeled by K-Taro (not the MMA fighter, I'm sure). I suppose this was the Turn X before it got mangled by the Turn A in their first battle.  It's symmetrical with a few exceptions, like that bigger right hand.  Personally, I like the non-symmetrical mangled version better.

Like I mentioned earlier, I had to make a lot of considerations modifying the the Turn A's upper torso, specifically the proportions between it and the Turn X.  With this modification, the resulting 1/100 Turn X chest/torso would be around 10 percent bigger than it actually should be since I will simulate the Turn X's cylindrical torso by building around the Turn A's torso armor so I can keep the frame intact without modifications.


It's a good thing the Turn A's chest frame is designed hollow (in the lore, it contains 6 nukes, which strangely enough, was thrown instead of fired).  That made it "easy" for me to build an adapter for the Turn X's pentagon chest base.


The adapter itself is connected to the chest base and as a single unit connect to the missile bays, which in turn, connects to the chest cavity.  The only modifications done so far are on the yellow and blue armor attachments, which will be modified further to simulate a cylindrical torso.



The base itself will be textured to simulate the damage it sustained as rendered in illustrations.  I've seen one illustration where it showed the chest "glowing" red, so, If I have time, I might incorporate LEDs.


More later...

6 comments:

Gundam Gunso said...

Ooo... Modifying the Turn A to become Turn X... Not a bad idea! I salute you! XD

Kshatriya09 said...

have you considered using fiber optics for the X scar? i haven't done it myself but the idea appeals to me

Matanglawin said...

Yes, but, fiber optics are a bit expensive, and a bit difficult to source out locally.

Kshatriya09 said...

you could use one of those wands, and take out the individual strands...

Matanglawin said...

Magic Wands, you mean?

Kshatriya09 said...

to be honest, i'm not sure what they're called <_<
but it's these things (pardon the link, if it breaks any rules you have)
http://www.amazon.com/inch-Multicolor-Fiber-Optic-Party/dp/B003N9U5LY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1304179502&sr=8-1

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