Banpresto
Non Scale Gundam Head Display |
V-GUNDAM |
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Sometime mid 2008, Banpresto released a “not for sale”
series of Gundam Desk Top heads as prizes, meant for
circulation within Japan only. The release of these heads
were split into 4 volumes of four heads each, and include
most of the main mecha for all the Gundam series from
the original TV series right up to the Seed Destiny series
(Gundam 00 is not included). Volume 2 of these heads
somehow made its way to the shores of Malaysia, and when
Eric showed them to me, I was hooked! Considering that
the next closest alternative to these heads one would
have are the amazingly detailed ones produced by G-System
(which are rather pricey by my standards) I find these
ones pretty affordable and reasonable. The fact that
they are molded in plastic is a definite plus point,
since it gives one the opportunity to modify / detail
or customize it. So being the hoard I am, I set out to
collect the entire series. I’ll do up a review of the
sets later. Check back later for the link!
So here’s my first stab at the heads. The one I chose
to be my guinea pig was the V Gundam. If I’m not mistaken,
the V gundam was one of Katoki Hajime’s earliest Gundam
related designs. Here are some shots of the actual product
straight out of the box. Requiring minimal assembly (just
attach the V Fin) and molded in the final colours,
it
looks great as it is.
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Here’s how the head can be disassembled… |
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The heads come with transparent parts
for the eyes and also the camera lenses, but has been painted
silver on the inner surface, making the part opaque. The
eyes are locked in place with a “holding” piece of plastic,
which has been glued in place, totally preventing chance
for any internal lighting. I carefully broke off the connecting
stub for the “holding” piece. |
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This reveals the inner surface of the
eyes which has been coated with a layer of silver paint.
I experimented with some LEDs and to my surprise, the silver
paint was not fully opaque, and the lights from the LED
shone through nicely! Something tells me this is going
to be a fun build! |
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Here are some line art I got from some
of my reference books.. |
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You can see that the “sleeve” at the
base of the helmet is angled outward on the Banpresto rendition,
whereas the line art shows that the sleeve tapers inwards
instead. I liked the original line art version much better
and went about fixing this by first cutting away the entire
base sleeve with one of my micro saws. |
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I repositioned the parts back temporarily
with some blue tack to see how it would look like. Here’s
a comparison for the before and after. I think I’m on the
right track on this. I’ll have to reconstruct some of the
base sleeve with some epoxy putty though.. |
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