Construction This model has been heavily reworked, I'd say it's about 30% scratchbuilt. Nearly all of the joints were rebuilt, power cables were replaced, most of the arms are scratchbuilt, a much needed facelift was given, and a lot of details were added. Here's the breakdown... Head The most glaring problem with this model is the face. I looks pinched up and wimpy, Grandma's MS. :P The first picture shows the ugly snout, and also the scratchbuilt monoeye detailed below. The solution was a new snout. I glued the halves of the head together, then sawed off the existing face before figuring out how to build a new one, which forced me not to give up on the problem. The basic snout shape was simple enough. I built it from plastic sheet and Bondo polyester putty, with a ridged plastic sheet cut to shape for the vents at the front. This was glued to what was left of the head, and faired in with spot putty. The hard part was recreating the oval shapped extrusion that goes across the simple snout shape. I ended up using 2 different diameter plastic tubes, gluing them together, then filling the space in between with Bondo (using a plastic sheet to create a flat surface). This gave me the oval crossection that I needed. Rather than try to carve the required cutout into this fragile part, I made a resin copy, then carved out the underside so it would fit the snout. I then added cable mounts (cut from plastic tube), and the little bump at the top (plastic sheet and putty).

The kit just comes with a decal for the monoeye. I scratchbuilt a detailed monoeye, using several sizes of plastic tubing, some turrets sliced off of an old SDF-I model, and a Wave H-Eye (back painted with silver). I also cut out the recessed part in the back of the head and made a part from Bondo with details to match the lineart, but somehow didn't end up with pictures of that.

Torso The whole torso came molded in just two parts (front and back), with no articulation at the waist or skirts (save the side skirts). I chopped up the whole thing so I could add much needed articulation. After I had seperated the skirts, waist, midsection, and upper torso, I scratchbuilt a new midsection from plastic sheet and Bondo polyester putty. It took quite a bit of work to get the contours right, but I'm happy with the result. This was attached to the upper torso with a large ball joint (adding some limited articulation), and to the waist with a brass tube. I backed the skirt pieces with plastic sheet, and detailed them to simulate reinforcing braces. I ended up painting the inside of the skirts bright red, which looks really cool, but you can barely see them on the finished model. After cutting everything up, I ended up with no place to attach the skirts, so I added mounts for them to the waist using plastic sheet smoothed out with Bondo. The skirts were attached with small springs after painting.

Arms Between the poor joint design and rubber power cables, the arms of the original kit were left with just about zero articulation. I wanted a lot more motion than that, and I've never seen a Hi-Zack model that properly replicated both the look and movement of the arms (most versions just leave off the power cables!). I originally came up with a joint system that had a ball joint at the top of the elbow (shown at left), but it didn't look particularly good, and the movement gained didn't justify the aesthetic sacrifice.

I ended up using a joint system like the one on the Master Grade Zaku's. First, I built a new bicep part by constructing a mold from plastic sheet, then filling it with Bondo putty. I sawed off the rounded bottom of the original bicep, and made a half circle elbow connecting joint, using a T shaped polycap to plug it into the bicep. A brass rod is attached to the bottom of this part, which plugs into a large polycap in the forearm (held in place with more Bondo). The bicep plugs into the shoulder part with another polycap and plastic peg.

I decided I didn't like the soft look of the squared off parts of the forearms, so cut them off and replaced them with parts built from styrene sheet. This also added a sectioned armor look, which is nice. This required adding a support between the two halves, also from plastic sheet. I took this opportunity to goop some Bondo in the elbow to hold the polycap that attaches to the upper arm. These ended up a little wider than the original arms, so I widened the gray part and filled the cut out (that was supposed to allow the elbow to bend, but didn't do any good) with plastic sheet as well. The power cables in the forearms were replaced with some elastic strings that had the right crosshatch texture, which are plugged in to short slices of brass tubing (the power cables coming from the torso plug in to the other end of these tubes, inside the elbow).

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