By Pete
My impression of char's zaku:
This ace pilot customised moblie suit, which so-called 'RED COMET' is very very awesome! It is so cool because the very attractive red color, representing it is belongs to the famous Char Anzable, the biggest nightmare of the Federation-government during the early
'ONE-YEAR WAR'. Different from normal mass-production type Zaku II, this proto-type got an engine which is 3 times more powerful in terms of out-put power, which make it traveling in space so fast like a 'red commet'. In the original 'GUNDM' TV series, many spectacular scenes
were created by this char's Zaku and armuro's Gundam, both long range and close compact battle were true classic.
In terms of moblie suit performance, this Zaku II is not as advance as Gundam, however it still made a rookie pilot like Armuro such a headache.
When Char discovered the amazing power of Gundam, he realised that some new moblie suits need to be develop, and this red Zaku II were
retired from the war, in a quite good condition, unlike Gelgoog and Zeon,without any huge damages.
Char's Zaku plastic model:
This is my 2nd Char's Zaku model kit, the first one was a
1/144 original first grade model that I bought long long time
ago. It was a truly nightmare for me to put all the parts
together too. This Master grade model was released at
about 1996, the level of details and the overall 'form' of this
kit is very good, in some area even better than the new MG
Gouf, for instance those panel lines and interior of armors
were nicely recalled on this model. However, the joining
structure and engineering design of this kit are certainly not
as good as those new Bandai 2000 line ups...It really have
a great improvement on the joins and parts structure in the
new MG Gouf..
Back to this Zaku kit, it doesn't require large modification,
since it looks quite good just by putting the parts together,
only one common adjustment is to sharpen up the
antenna, which I want it real sharp...and the rest on it, just
need to apply putty on the gaps between two parts, it tooks
quite a long time though, but that is about all for making it
looks good.
Char Zaku's red:
'Officially' Zaku's red color is in some lighter tone than other Char's moblie suit, which makes some contast to Char's Gegloog (dark
orange red). However, too rich and bright red will make it looks more like Johnny Ridden's color, which will turn into a disaster(??). The
color I have chosen can be discribed as 'pink' (about 30% red and 70% white) as the main color. The more weird the better...
The final outcome of the colouring is a bit different from what I wanted, since the undercoat I used was in grey, which makes the
overall color looks a bit dull. Also because this was orginially a crystal 'transperant plastic' kit, therefore it required more layer of undercoat than normal solid color plastic, as a result I need more topcoat in order to cover the grey undercoat. Which takes a bit more time than usual to finished the spray paint of this model kit.
Final touch:
To make this captain moblie suit a stronger carracter, I added some white straps on its arm and thigh. It was done by using masking tape to mask the unwanted area and then carefully spray the white paint with a fine nozzle air brush. It was a 'one-off' process because 'if'
it goes wrong, I need to repaint the pink color underneath again. So lucky it didn't happened.
After that, decals were also applied on certain areas, clear top coat was used to protect it by falling off. That's about all, looking
forward for the making of MG Gouf. To be continue....
Pete
11/4/2000
【 完 】
