Hatamoto Assembled

I cleaned up the parts for Jon's Hatamoto last weekend and did a partial assemble. He's going to do the painting and final assembly (what is that thing on the front of the helmet called?). Once again, I'll probably do a little tweaking on the scale before I do one for myself.

Printed Hatamoto Parts

I did a set of parts for the Hatamoto on thursday night. Just curing them now. Just a few problems... such as the perennial problem of building the bayonette mount in the waist 90 degrees off! The gat was a little warped and there was a little bit of delamination happening in the end of one of the leg parts as well. I may have to manually build some support structure into the model for the gat to keep it from wobbling during construction.

You may notice a few extra and non-standard parts in there. He's a specially modified Hatamoto that I'm doing for a commission. (Hatamoto Sobou) I'm hoping to do some cleanup on the parts and do a test fit tomorrow.

Yet Another Hatamoto Update

I got around to adding a few more greebs to the Hatamoto today and finished up the knee joints...

<rant>

What is it with American online merchants and their love of UPS? Do they think Canadians are made of money!!?? What makes them think that I would want to pay UPS over $20 to ship me $17 worth of decal paper? (and probably charge me $20 to $30 worth of customs clearance charges?). Fortunately, I found someone on E-Bay stores that would sell me decal paper and send it by post. The paper was slightly more expensive, but I'll probably still save $40-50 dollars on 25 measly sheets.

No thanks decalpaper.com!!!! UPS sucks!!!

Thanks mynestegg!!!! Postal Service rulez!!!

</rant>

Hatamoto / Vulcan updates

I've done about as much painting as I'm going to do on the Vulcan, so I thought I post a progress pic of that...

As usual, I coulda done some more sanding, better weathering and some decals, but I'm a lazy bum. That reminds me; I need to order some more white water-slide decal paper.

I tried doing a sheet of decals (on clear paper) in my cheapy Samsung CLP-315 laser printer. Although it didn't melt the decal paper as I feared it would, the feeder doesn't like the shiny thick paper so the placement is kind of hit or miss. So it looks like my ink jet is still the way to go. I need to chase down some good artwork of Battletech house and clan logos and print a bunch.

In the meantime, here's another shot of the in-progress 3DSMAX build of the Hatamoto Chi...

Hatamoto progress

I've been picking away at this periodically. Here's what I've got so far...

Vulcan Progress

Wow! I can't believe how productive I was in December, and how unproductive I've been in January!

Now that I've got the Vulcan and the Flea the size that I want -- time to paint. Here's a work in progress picture of the Vulcan. Its a start.

The paint scheme is an homage to Ken and Paul, with whom I used to play Battletech...

On the 3DSMAX side, I've been working on some stuff for a friend at work. As a side effect, I'll end up with a Chaparrel and a Hatamoto Chi modeled... Also been working on a new Christmas Ornament. Stay tuned.

More Vulcan Pictures

I put the Vulcan together today and it doesn't look too bad. I think the medium laser (left torso) could have been a bit beefier, some missing fine detail on the head and there's some fixing up to do on the left elbow. The rest seems to be OK.

I've been thinking about scale again. Here's a lineup with a 20 ton FLEA, 20 ton Locust, 40 ton Vulcan and 55 ton Griffin. I think I'm going to try and reprint the FLEA a little smaller (maybe 5%) and the VULCAN could be about as tall as the Griffin (align the tops of their heads).