INFINITY NOMADS: Gator Squadron Conversion

 

Gator Squadron Conversion

For some reason CB does really cool TAG designs and then occasionally executes the models in less than stellar poses.  Pano suffers the most from this with the derperly posed Seraphs, Jotum and Squalos lessening such iconic and cool robot designs. 

Sadly, the Gator falls into this category also in my humble opinion.  So, in an effort to make it less derpy and elevate the model into the realm of rule of cool which it so rightly deserves, I did some minor conversion work.  This mostly involved repositioning the gun arm. 

It was quite an interesting process since I had never converted a siocast model and have not seen any out there as yet.  The process was enlightening and results speak for itself with my now non derpy Gator ready to kick ass and chew bubblegum.

Test Pose

I did a test pose first which just required gluing the gun arm in a less derpy waving the arm up in the air pose. To be honest this simple repositioning of the arm is almost enough to fix the model, but I wanted to take it a bit further and reposition the head also so the model was looking where it was shooting.  What I did find out, to my surprise, was that a tiny bit of superglue bonds siocast really really well.  When I tried to prize the parts off the siocast was quite brittle and glued sections would remain stuck and tear off from the piece I removed.

Siocast Converting

Cutting off parts was relatively easy.  Certainly not as hard as cutting metal and less brittle than trying to cut resin.  However, the gold standard of miniature convertibility would always have to be GW plastic.  Yet the trade off with GW plastic malleability is always fine detail.  Something that metal and resin and dare I say siocast capture much better. 

The newer siocast behaves much more like resin than the earlier stuff, which was quite rubbery.  Using a very sharp knife is all that is required to slice through it and, as I said, it can be brittle and snap off in undesired places if you are not careful. 

It still goes a bit fuzzy (like the early siocast pieces) when you try and file it and you can’t get away with grinding of hard to reach spots like gaps with a sharp file like you can when working with metal.  Filling these spots with greenstuff and then smoothing them off works better. 

Flat surfaces can be cut, filed and sanded to clean them up. I typically used all 3 each time I worked on parts starting with cutting, then filing and then finishing with sand paper.  To my surprise even scraping (which works well on GW plastic as well as metal) worked on this siocast model.  Sand paper is really key and essential in getting a good finish. 

In short, from my experience here I have gone from hating siocast to respecting it.  I think CB has come a long way from the early batches and the newer stuff is much better in quality and more of a pleasure for hobbyists to work with than past efforts.

WIP

I just cut around the square tab on the gun arm so it could be reposed.

The mounting arm joint had to be removed for the pose to work properly.  This meant a bit of the back carapace needed to be filed down and sculpted there was also a part of the back that had to be carefully cut away and reglued on.

Cutting the head off was a little nerve racking.  One slice was made very carefully between the head and the collar.  I then worked from the back of the neck with a very sharp blade and quite a bit of force to remove the head from the body.  It just popped off at one point, luckily with no damage to the face.

The face required a bit of cleaning up where it was cut from the collar.  Just a bit of sanding got the job done.

In order to reposition the shoulder pauldron so it wasn't rolled too far forward, greenstuff was added as a base to the shoulder

The head required a bit of greenstuff for a new neck

The bit of the back that was carfully cut off was glued on.  The pivot joint on the mounting arm had to be cut off in order for the piece to re-added to the model.

The mounting arm was then glued on as well as joined with greenstuff to the body.

The last thing to do was add the mini arm in a pose that was close to the gun arm (boy these things are nowhere near in the anatomically correct place lol!).  A bit of greenstuff was added to the shoulder joint to repose it slightly 

Finished

Pew pew... This bad boy now looks like he is in the business of wrecking stuff instead of waving about derpily.  Gator has been "fixed."