By Chris Popp
Seeing as how we’re in the middle of making a game with giant mecha called “Servo” the talk around the office has inevitably shifted to movies and comic books representing those things - Gundam, Evangelion, Pacific Rim, Transformers, etc. The toy and model market for these properties is huge, and I absolutely love the die-cast transformer models from Japan, having an RX-8 Laserwave model myself. During an entirely unrelated trip to barnes and noble I stumbled upon some imported Gundam models for sale - that’s when I decided it would be neat to build one since it reminded me of Servo. After doing some research I found there is an enormous range of models to fit all budgets and skill levels. I settled on the Sengoku Astray Gundam Master Grade version mostly because it looked awesome and the price wasn’t too steep.
Construction begins. I laid out all the plastic bags filled with the pieces I will use the assemble the Gundam.
I start by putting the torso together. The first completed piece! It was made up of 4 other pieces and very small. At this point I look across the table at the field of plastic and wonder what I had gotten myself into.
After many, many small pieces just the like the one above I finish the torso. It probably took me twice as long to do this part than any other because of how slow I was going. I still managed to break one of his shoulder joints, bummer, but after I finished I marvelled at the level of detail and intricate construction. Believe it or not, there is a pilot inside the torso, and the chest armor folds down to reveal him!
I finish the awesome looking head. At this point I hadn’t realized that the reflective sticker on the top was supposed to go *under* the green-shaded transparent piece, which caused me much hardship later. His gold nose/teeth/cheek strip was especially troublesome to get on, but the end result looks great.
The arms were probably easiest to put together. I liked that the thumb and index index move independently. The armor on around the elbow moves up and down depending on how much of an angle it’s at.
The fully assembled upper body! The black shoulder pieces move on 2 hinges that allow for some very cool poses. They can also hold weapons so you can do a general grevious-style 4 sword attack!
His groin. I managed to not break his leg joints, which was a significant improvement over the shoulder joints.
The legs were easily the best part of this model. So many pieces come together to form a complex knee. There are pistons attached that when the knee flexes it moves the armor and pulls the rest of the thigh down. It’s very cool.
With the major pieces assembled it’s time to start on the decals. The glasses are shown for scale. In the picture I only show one decal paper but there were two that had to be completed. This was the second time in the project I wondered what I had gotten myself into.
I finish decaling his right shoulder. This was when I figured out that the shiny green stickers were supposed to go below the transparent covers. I had already placed the covers on with the stickers on top on all the locations (shoulders, knees, head, ankles, shoulder armor), so I had to get an xacto knife and slowly and carefully pry out all the covers. I’m glad I did though because the proper application looks absolutely amazing. The sheen on the sticker coupled with the design in the plastic does some very cool things when the light hits it.
After lots of cursing and a very small specialized tweezer, I was able to finish with the decals and finally ready to piece the upper body, groin, and lower body together and finish the sword and shield accessories.
The completed Senkogu Astray Gundam!
His Oni shield attaches to his back. The mouth also opens. I love the way the jets look on his arms.
Action pose!
Building the model was an absolute treat. I found it well constructed with fantastic detail and quality. I look forward to building more Gundam models in the future and building more Servos to look like my models!
