HMM Gojulas WIP #4

Since the weather was actually mildly nice yesterday, I took the opportunity to go out and primer and base coat three runners of parts - K1 and both Q plates. Which was a good thing, because a pretty decent sized ice storm hit last night and now we have over an inch of solid ice... everywhere. Doesn't look like I'll be going out to paint again anytime in the next few days. I've already finished detailing and top coating these, all of the pieces to the "inner frame" of the head, but I'm only about half done with the other parts I have base coated. These parts were actually a lot of fun to paint, especially the one in the bottom right corner - I expected it to be a paint with how small some of the details are, but it turned out pretty nicely in my opinion and it was quite rewarding to see how good it looks after everything. Here's a couple close up pictures of these parts:

Custom Painted Hasbro Dark Spiner

This is my custom painted Hasbro Dark Spiner zoid - technically the first Zoid I ever painted. It was about a year prior to me getting my first HMM when I decided to paint this guy, and I must say that it's one of my proudest accomplishments. I was actually very unexperience with even using an airbrush at the time, and the shading on this kit rivals what I can do to this day.

It's much simpler than an HMM of course, but there was still a wealth of detail to hand paint, and lots of great armor parts to airbrush. I honestly can't remember what insprired me to do this paint scheme, but I like it a lot more than the original to be honest.

It's unfortunatly missing a few pieces - the small vents on the forearm on each side - but those were gone whenever I first picked up the kit to paint. Looking back, the plastic on this kit (being an older hasbro model) is actually a bit unusual. It's very soft, almost to the point where it feel's malleable. That's not a bad thing however - it actually makes it feel sturdier after assembly than other kits.

Below is a full photo gallery of the kit:

 

HMM Shadow Fox Review

I posted a review of the HMM Shadow Fox yesterday on my youtube channel, so I figured I'd highlight a few things about the kit and post the video here as well. This is an unpainted kit that I snapped together, a first time experience for me and the HMM line, and I must say that I think it turned out spectacularly.

The kit has no detailing, panel lining, or any other kind of work done whatsoever, and it still looks fantsatic on my shelf. In particular, the gold on this kit is very impressive. The gold has no marbling to the plastic like the HMM Dark Horn Harry Special did, and looks nearly flawless. The other molded colors are nice as well, but the gold really is the winner in this category.

Articulation is very impressive as well, as each different segment of the kit has a wide range of movement and posability. In all honesty, I really can't come up with any criticisms to give this kit - its truly one of the best representations of what the HMM Zoids line is. I highly reccomend anyone interested in the line to pick one up.

For my full video review of the model, check out the video below:

Daily HMM Gojulas WIP #1

I figured I'd post some work-in-progress images on here, and talk about the kit some. I've actually gotten a decent amount (well, like 20%) of the kit done, and I'm extremely happy with how it's going. I hope to make these WIP posts daily and keep you all updated, so I'll try my best to keep on top of that.

Today I finished up half of the S plates, mainly consisting of the spines on his back, and parts for the thrusters that go on his back. The spine pieces actually took a TON of work to complete, as each two-sided piece was a 30+ minute job detailing alone. These pictures are of them all after top coat.

 

Next up is the other half of the S plates, with some reasonably less interesting parts, but it should still be a enjoyable to paint anyway. I hope to get those painted tomorrow, and detailed at the beginning of next week. If you'd like to see the progress of my Gojulas up to this point, check out the WIP video from my Youtube channel below:

 



HMM Berserk Fuhrer (Fury) Inner Frame

Here's the painted inner frame of my HMM Berserk Fury. It's  really solid inner frame, and can get in lots of poses as you can see from the pictures below. I really applaud Koto for making a full inner frame on this guy, as I think it's a feature that really puts it in the upper tier of the entire HMM line. Personally I wish that all, or at least a lot more, of the HMMs had full inner frames that could be displayed on their own.

I still havent completed the armor on it (had a bit of a mishap that means whenever I do complete it, it will be a "battle damaged custom) but I'm happy displaying it like this, just as I would have been happy displaying my Liger Zero as just the inner frame. Check out the full gallery of pictures below!

HMM Gun Sniper Custom

Here's my HMM Gun Sniper that I custom painted for the 2012 Zoids Poison Contest. It's a much smaller and simpler kit than most other HMM Zoids, but it's still a ton of fun to build and paint. It's a relativly quick work, as mine took only a week and a half for paint and building.

The kit has very good articulation, and can get in a wide variety of poses, but it occasionally take a few tries to get the balance for each pose worked out so that it stands upright. One of the most impressive parts to this whole model is it's tail - each segment is individually articulated and posable, making for lots of great different ways to display the Gun Sniper.

There are quite a few variations of this kit - while this is the original, there are also ones that come with the Wild Weasel Unit (essentially just a LOT of guns to put on it's back) and there's the Naomi version, which comes molded all in red. The original colors for this kit are a mix of dark blues and purples, but unfortunatly I dont have any pics of this kit without paint, so you may just have to look that up if you want to see an unpainted version of this.