Takashi wrote:Thats an awesome upgrade! First I was thinking that 00 parts as well as GN katars are not suited here, but now I clearly see a samurai aura around her! Can't wait to see her partners update
Thanks, though I wasn't really going with the samurai thing, I just wanted her main weapons to be swords since she is a Type Fencer, and those katanas are the only sword pair I have left (save for Susanowoo's swords that Rina has now).
royalpain88 wrote:HOW DO YOU DO IT!
My brother is interested in making a "gundam girl" inspired by Akitaka Mika. To be precise, he wants to make the Zaku girl. I wish to know how you cross the gundam parts and what scale do you use. When my brother begins to make his, I will post them on the "future projects" page.
Well, the key here is thinking of what parts you want the shinki to wear. Most common are legs and arms since shinkis conveniently have pegs in the upper arms and thighs. Some gunpla have joints in those same places (both upper arms and thighs i.e. Gundam 00, Zeta Gundam, ZZ Gundam, G Gundam (2011), Susanowoo, GN-X, etc.), but most have to be modded to make them shinki compatible (i.e. Noir wearing Gundam Unicorn D-Mode parts).
I use 1/144 scale gunpla for two reasons; one, that is the scale I collect
; and two, that scale is pretty much near the same scale as shinkis, (though some gunpla are smaller than shinkis in height), which shouldn't be much of a problem for HGUC units what makes them good sources for custom armors (HGUC units are taller than standalone series like Gundam W, Gundam X, Seed, etc.).
I might as well give an example using Gundam 00 parts (I once posted this somewhere in this thread). For the upper arms, first we take them all apart...
Find the part that should connect to the shinki's upper arm peg and make a hole large enough for it to roughly fit
After that I would apply putty on the hole. While it is still curing, I would then wet the shinki's upper arm peg with a little bit of water then push it into the hole. The putty will then be molded into the shape of the shinki peg and when it dries, you'll get nice fit. If not, which actually happens most of the time, apply some more putty or superglue inside the hole, but be careful not to make it too tight. Sorry, but I forgot to take a picture of this.
For the shinki hands the steps are similar.
What I do is remove some material from the polycap where the gunpla manipulator (aka 'hand') connects to and apply putty inside. And while the putty is curing, insert the shinki hand peg inside.
Leg mods are going to depend on where you want the gunpla parts to be worn. Upper leg connections are easy to do if the gunpla already has a point of articulation on the thighs (look at Maya or Rina's legs, they both use Gundam 00 parts for leg armors). For those, sometimes all you have to do is replace the polycaps with putty. But sometimes, you need to mod the thigh parts yourself.
This is a pic of a Tieren Taozi leg that Rui once used. I just made a hole that would the shinki's upper leg peg would fit in and fill the inside with putty.
And this is when Kei used Throne Ein's legs. I cut the thigh part in the middle, filled the inside with lots of putty, and inserted the shinki's thigh peg inside while it is still curing. I used shinki thigh spacers to hide the not so clean result, but when the putty hardens, the result is a strong connection.
I wouldn't recommend modding gunpla parts for use only on the lower legs (i.e. Ayu's gunpla boots from Astray Red Frame and Rui's Seravee legs) unless you're really confident in your modding skills. I did a lot of trial and error before I got it, and doing that is already a lot of effort and very time-consuming. It involves finding a large enough gunpla leg that the whole shinki lower leg could fit in after clearing out all of the insides, and gluing a couple of pegs inside that would fit in the shinki's lower leg holes (take a good look at your shinki's legs and you'll see what i mean...). Too tedious, even for me, so I'll just avoid this altogether and stick with thigh connections, unless the situation REALLY calls for it (like when I couldn't find any good enough leg armors for Ayu).
Chest armors are simple, if you're ready to sacrifice one of your shinki's chest pieces.
This is what I did for Noir's custom chest armor (large pics, sorry). I took some selected parts off Gundam 00 and used putty to join them all together. You could do the same with MMS 3rd chest pieces, though their being soft might be a little tricky.
Backpacks are probably the easiest since you can mix and match whatever stuff you want, just connect some pegs into the packpack that would fit into the shinki's back parts and you're all set.
That's it for this gunpla armor tutorial (I didn't think I'd do this, but whatever
). If your bro wants to do a Zaku type mecha musume, steer clear from the Real Grade ones, too complicated. Stick with the newer 1/144 HGUC ones and you'll never go wrong.
You are a GOD among mecha musume related conversions. 
Thanks for the tutorial and pics. They are really to the ninth power helpful. I would ask what of hair but have seen how you made I believe it was Maya's ears and tail among others. Since this is our first try at any real putty work to sculpt, it will be trial and error. Again, THANK YOU! Now, onto making my house. 
