Band of the hand

I love my Tau army but I have had this issue since I first saw them, the retractable hands on the Crisis suits and GW not selling a decent looking one that didn't require me to do a ton of modifications to make it work. I have tried Space Marine powerfist and Necron hands but neither worked. Next I tried The Farsight model. But it only comes with one, metal, left hand and it is a $35 model. This will never work.

Thank you Ban Dai for making Gundam models in all different scales. I picked up a bunch of different models and after some trial and error I found a scale that worked. Even better both right and left and open and closed. The scale that worked is from their Fighting Action Kit series. This group is very simple with only about a 1/3rd the parts count of then normall 1/144 kits. Even then none of the normal detail is lost. The kits are also cheap. The ones I purchased were $6.50 each. With the number of usable parts in each kit being pretty high I think it is a very good deal. As my first pass over the kits I able to use the hands, weapons, backpacks, shoulder guards, heads and leg jets.

The only downside is most of the parts are single sided so I will have to do a little sculpting but no worries.

So next time you see these parts that will be on my Appleseed Landmates. Eventually I will call them done and get to cranking out the final design.

Appleseed XV8 Mold Making

Made some molds of the Appleseed suit build and the mold turned out ok. Venting this mold was tough because their were so many spots that could trap air. Each pour involved me adding having to go back and revent the mold in a new location and switch from a plain pour to injecting the resin into the mold. So I have a bunch of parts that will be used for damaged suites.

WIP - The return of the Appleseed Landmate

After a month of stalls I have finally picked up my Appleseed Landmate design and am pushing it forward. The last one you saw was the blue prototype. This one is on a completely new design. I wasn't completely happy with the torso and jetpack on that one. They still were too boxy and the triple jet was neat but didn't fit the theme. The second issue was the arms. The were a little too short. Finally the head, it is still headless but I have a plan now and onece my greenstuff shows up I can get to scuplting. Here is a preview.

partially completed suit

Redesigned suit legs. Still working on the leg vents/jets.

pelvis and waist 

Base arms, still working on the hands.

Torso made from a modified FW XV-88.

Appleseed Test Fig

I decided that I needed to push forward on this project and decided to paint my prototype instead of using it to make molds. There were a few places that were taking too long and with the new XV-9 being released I am leaning towards using one of those for the base fig.

For the paint job on this project I tried something I haven't used before. Duplicolor has a paint called Metalcast. It is a candy paint that is designed to give an anodized finish. This seemed like the perfect match to the experimental suit from the film. The paint comes in several colors and I am eying the yellow and green colors for my Black Reach marines. This is a fun spray to work with. Candy paints will definitely test your spray technique on larger pieces but for figs in this size it is very easy to control the depth of the color and end result.

I am still working on building the head. I have found a couple of designs that I like so the wait for a head shouldn't be much longer.