RX-78 "First Gundam" ver. Fingers

[kee]

This is a model that I finished some time ago but I wanted to upload the photos here as an introduction of myself as a modeller.

The base model was designed by Fingers, an extremely well respected paper model designer in Korea. His models are simple yet beautiful, with great amount of details and well thought-out plans. The only problem was.. this was his first model in his Gundam series and was designed for beginners, and while I absolutely loved its proportions and simplicity, I really wanted more details for my taste. So I set out to customize the model in terms of detail, and I decided to further challenge myself by making the model articulated.

I did a considerable amount of research to figure out the detail-ups that were needed, and studied Bandai's RG version of the mechanic in order to figure out how to give my model the most amount of freedom in terms of movement. I chose to use magnets in the joints because I already had some experience with it and it just seemed neat. All customized joints and inner frames for the model were designed using illustrator, because that is the software that I was familiar with.

I am posting photographs of the finished model for now, please let me know if anyone have further questions.

Hope you'll enjoy!

[eatcrow2]

Excellent clean work, with some great clear photos showing it!!

[Vermin_King]

Very nicely done. Maybe some time down the road we can see a build thread on one of your models. I'd like to see how the articulation was done.

Well executed models with well executed photos is a very nice combination.

[kee]

Ok in case people find this info interesting or useful, I am posting the pictures I took while I was building this model.

I started with legs, since I had to completely modify and design the entire inner-frame for the mechanic from scratch and the legs were the largest parts of the model; which meant a good trial for me to find out if there were any faults in my design.

As mentioned earlier everything was designed/built from scratch as far as the inner-frames and joints go, and I used Illustrator to design them and magnets for the joints. I hope the pictures will explain my methods well enough but please do ask me any questions if you come up with any questions.

[kee]

Ok next up is pics of a finished leg. I had to reinforce the armor (white external cover parts in pics) parts as they are just thin, hollow one-layer paper in the original version and I needed to strengthen them so people can hold them and operate the joints just like they would do with a pla-model.

As you can see in the photographs the articulating range is as good as it gets, the knee bends all the way until the leg is fully folded. This allows the model to have maximum freedom when it is posed for display.

I also studied the details in various replicas of the robot and tried to incorporate them into the practical design of the joints as well as aesthetics.

[kee]

I moved on to ankles and this part gave me some unexpected headaches. Ankle is one of the parts that is somewhat tricky to design a joint for because while the human ankle can be articulated in many angles and directions via a very compact joint and this can be easily replicated for pla-models using poly-caps, when it needs to be designed out of paper and magnets the joint can easily become cluttered and clumsy.

It took some thinking to come up with a design that allows most of the movements that human ankle has yet is compact. The original design has its foot in one chunk but I also wanted to have it movable like the RG pla-model version. IT was a very interesting process to say the least.

[kee]

Quite naturally, next up was the hip. Like it has been so far, the important thing was for the joints to be designed in a way that allows the model maximum freedom of movement. The RG pla-model which was the reference has a very interesting design that allows the hip to shift forward and back, which in turn allows postures that wouldn't possible without.

It was also very important that the joints are large and sturdy enough to support the entire mass. 10mm magnets were used as a result, and if you look carefully there are lots of small details that adds believability yet are there for practicality.

[kee]

Hip joints and armor continued- :-)

[MrB17]

Wow! Even though I'm an old guy, I am well versed in older Gundam and have built many of the Bandai Master Grade kits. I am always impressed by the engineering of the Bandai kits, as they are way ahead of other plastic models. Your build and upgrade of this very famous RX-78 is nothing short of spectacular! This takes the paper Gundam to the highest level. And you used Illustrator! I have been toying with the idea of designing, but have been waiting to get a 3D program, now you give me inspiration to use Illustrator and Photoshop, with which I have many years experience. I am very fascinated by your work here and am following it closely. I would love to do an RX-93 in card, that would lend itself well to this format. I am glad you chose to post the build pics and a few Illustrator screen shots. Greatly appreciated.

Well done Kee!

Regards,
Jeff

[kee]

Thanks Jeff! :-)

While I was able to design the inner-frames and joints using Illustrator in a typical top-front-side view fashion, I don't think designing the actual model can be done using Illustrator and Photoshop only- I was very fortunate to have such an amazing model to work off of which had the proportions and overall figure just to my liking. I think I may have ended up extending the legs about 5mm but that was it.

I will continue posting the making of pics- very glad that you found them useful! :-)

Kind regards,
Kee