PLAMO DIARIES

Here's the promised photoshoot for my HGUC Zaku II. To be honest, I was quite disappointed by the articulation and proportions of this kit when I had first snapped it together years ago. But now that it's detailed up like this, I'm appreciating it a bit more. Improving the derpy-looking monoeye helped the look quite a bit. I'm hoping to do a similar mod to my Origin Zaku II and HGUC Gouf. 2022 Update - I decided to change the monoeye piece and I thought to paint the heat hawk. New photos added at the bottom. I'd have done a few more action poses, but I was afraid of scratching the paint. Same reason the leg rockets got left off, even though I fixed them up too. New photos with the replaced monoeye and painted heat hawk are below:

I bought this kit on sale a few years ago for just $9 with the intention of using it as cheap practice. I had built it and sanded and welded the seams (not very well), but I couldn't find the right green colors in spray cans, so this project got shelved (literally) for some time. Now that I had a respectable painting setup and some new tools, I thought that this kit might finally serve as a warmup before tackling more recent and expensive kits. My plan was to improve the monoeye and maybe add some more surface detail. So after disassembling the parts, I started with modifying the head. I couldn't stand how ugly the monoeye was, so I thought to try to make it look more like the MG 2.0 or RG. I found a curved piece of clear plastic that I measured and cut to fit in front of the monoeye. This clear plastic was soaked in Pledge to make it shinier. Next, I replaced the crappy monoeye sticker with a 4mm pink rhinestone. But because of the new protrusion, it wouldn't fit behind th