Rise Up, Jaeger Army. Pacific Rim Uprising build

[dbsamurai]

Oh man has it been a while. Poor Gipsy's looking lonely and the new movie's out, time to do another build!

Unfortunately there's no overpriced tie-in game to rip models from this time, but all is not lost. Thanks to Adam Savage's video where he documents how he's gonna make patterns for the Martian suit (shows you how long it's been since I've had the chance to peruse a build of my own...) I've come up with a workaround...we'll see. Sort of.

This time too, it's not just gonna be me and Hailee making jaegers, oh no. We're also getting her husband, the Leatherback from last time, in on it as Obsidian Fury, as well as a friend of mine who's gonna build Saber Athena!

So here's the game plan:

Step 1: buy model kits of the Jaegers, Action figures where there are no model kits


Step 2: acquire modelling tape, because it's extra thin and intended to secure to model kits anyways
Step 2A: go back and buy 2mm tape rolls in addition to the 6mm tape rolls when it turns out your "1/144 scale hg kit" is actually like 1/420 scale...

Step 3: put tape onto the panels of the model to make a pattern

Step 4: remove the tape and put it on paper, outline for clarity and to help correct for any curves or what have you...

Step 5: Have a conniption when the micro-errors you can't see with the naked eye become impossible to rectify when you blow up the patterns to human scale...

Come next saturday everyone else will be getting in on this too, so we should have more progress.

Ultimate goal (in fantasy land) is to get Obsidian Fury's swords extending and shoulders opening to reveal the cannons (want to make them firing but I don't know of any con that will allow loaded nerf guns in...), Bracer Phoenix's arm cannons and thigh missiles moving, and his chest cannons to fire either actual darts or at least mimic firing with an audio raport, as well as Saber Athena's swords to light up Genji style.

Also if anybody can find a scrapper action figure or model I'd greatly appreciate it, the Scrapper mini that comes with Bracer is 1 piece, so it has a lot of thru-material from the 2-piece mold.

 

[Dumontrudisel]

From r/PacificRim good luck on this my guy. I was a bug fan of your Gipsy and Cherno from a few years back

 

[dbsamurai]

We've had a bit of progress for both of us:





My patterns are all done, so I'll be able to start scanning those in. Obsidian Fury's kit finally shipped, and we're still struggling to find a Scrapper model...going off of references from the film that are all blurry at the moment.

 

[gothic]

Found these if they help,

 

[dbsamurai]

Thanks, I'd actually seen those too. Sadly they're not right. The one on the far right is the in movie model, and it has a series of armor plates over the chest that the three concept art versions on the left there don't have. Unfortunately I can't really get a clear, high res shot of the chest piece in the movie version.

Trying to get a clear sight on scrapper from stills has been a nightmare too, because they're literally all motion blurred. Very aggravating...

On another note, we've finished Saber Athena's parts layout


And at the same time I received my own Obsidian Fury figure, so we can start laying out parts on that. As another side-note, I don't think the scale is that accurate for the HG series...


You'll notice that Obsidian is slightly shorter than the Robot Damashii Saber Athena, which is on its own scale. By contrast it's about 50% taller than Bracer Phoenix, whom it's ostensibly in scale with. At that scale it would put Obsidian Fury at over 100m tall...

 

[dbsamurai]

Work has been coming along quite nicely on Saber

 

[dbsamurai]

So in the past four weeks we've had a bit a progress...


I've also got a mold of her hand cast in plaster, assembling the wire frame now so I can cast a silicone replica that's poseable and use that to make her gloves.

 

[halrhyrr]

Looks awesome! Can't wait to see the finished product.

 

[dbsamurai]

Alicia's been busy with life an' **** so she hasn't had the chance to come over and work Fortunately she dropped by last week and we got some serious progress!









She's gonna be busy for another three weeks or so, but once she's done we'll finish her feet and gloves and be good to go on the superstructure! then it's on to seal, paint, and lighting! And making Guardian Bravo, since we couldn't find any good models for Scrapper.

 

[dbsamurai]

Hado everyone! We've had a productive month(s)! Despite the apparent valve time progress is coming along rather nicely.

We finished constructing everything then sealed it


With it sealed we had to decide what to paint Saber. After so much effort put into getting her design right we figured that an orange spray paint just wasn't good enough. Fortunately I have an airbrush...unfortunately I've never tried this kind of candy paintjob before. With that in mind I had some testing to do:

Based on the results I was happiest with we went with two coats of spray paint and one coat airbrushed, starting with a gloss black rustoleum

Then moving on to an aluminum chrome spraypaint for the whole suit


And now we've begun the slow and arduous task of airbrushing the transparent orange car paint we had to get from an auto shop (hobby shops didn't have the volume we needed of transparent orange). In addition there's some physical tweaks that will need to be done, mostly adjusting the rigging in how everything sits on her body, especially rotating the thighs around to cover her butt more

 

[dbsamurai]

painting is done! now we're rigging and lighting

 

[dbsamurai]

It's been an eventful few months. Things got slowed down by moving and repairs on my laser but at long last Saber is complete!


Superstructure wise, at least. All we really have left on her is her swords, and then reinforcing any weakpoints in her assembly.

As such we've moved onto Guardian and Obsidian. Obsidian's wearer is a maybe atm, and he and I are the same size, so if he decides not to attend I'll wear the suit so we can have a proper fight

Guardian's progress is going quick though because it's myself and cherno working on it, so we both have extensive experience


I'm working on the arms now in my spare time, and when Cherno and I can get working together again I'll focus on adjusting the chest so it sits better on her relative to the rest of her

 

[dbsamurai]

Sup bubblegum.

Rigging is still ongoing, but the overall superstructures are done. Also this

 

[dbsamurai]

We're done.

It's finished.

So this weekend we went to Phoenix Fan Fest or whatever nonsense San Diego has forced them to rebrand as. Got a hotel for the first time and MAN was it the right call.

Fortunately too the weather was cool, on account of climate change mucking with the polar vortex and whatnot, so breaks were few.

Still we were suited up for 12 hours straight and it kinda wrecked us all physically. We got into the masquerade and sadly there was a lot of great competition so we didn't even place.

Still I got to meet Adam Savage! And thank him for making it possible for us to do this

We got all our decals and all the construction complete

 

[pengbuzz]

Something of a necropost, but I saw this up top on the front page when I logged in;.

Very nicely done on both suits! And a photo op with Adam Savage just makes it all the sweeter!