HMM Cannon Tortoise My thoughts and semi WIP part 1

As some of you guys may know last week a large package from Japan arrived for me, Koala and Tofu and since I just started my holidays I thought it’s as good a time to get a start on my project.

From Onderon's gallery

My portion of the parcel included several cans of spray paint and top coat as well as the pretty smex Cannon Tortoise by Kotobukiya. Incidentally Tim ordered 2 cans of Light gun metal for me instead of normal gun metal...not that there was much difference as I came to realise after testing out my 4 different cans of silver shade sadly.

From Onderon's gallery

The Tortoise itself is a rather straight forward kit but provided enough challenge and no small amount of patience from yours truly. A rather small kit compared to what I’m usually familiar with (sits comfortably on my palm and I have pretty small hands) it does no detract from the brilliance of this kit as it is packed with minute details and screaming kickass.

From Onderon's gallery

The main draw point of this kit is the cannon on its back and although it is only 7cm long it does not feel disproportioned overall. One note of interest was that I had to do some slight modding to actually get one of the golden pistons to fit thanks to Koto’s moulding inconsistencies. There wasn’t a lot and overall number of faults in the plastic was kept to a minimum but compared to what Bandai pumps out it’s already a few too many.

From Onderon's gallery

The cannon sits snugly on the back of the tortoises shell and acts like a turrent which can spin 360 with some minor up and down movement of the barrel which is cool. If you look closely you can notice some plugs and holes on the shell and the main body. There are suppose to be extra plating, machinery and small headlights which I haven’t put together yet so I don’t have to worry about those when I’m doing base painting.

From Onderon's gallery

The innards is very simple with some nice details of grating on the floor (the zoid is suppose to be able to carry personnel and other stuff inside and that big gaping hole is where the zoid core fits inside (again I haven’t bothered to make that yet). The 2 flaps in the middle flips down and when combined with even more missing parts forms a makeshift ramp.

From Onderon's gallery

From Onderon's gallery

No mecha squirtle is complete without some type of withdrawal mechanism so the head can slide in to some extend when it’s in barrage mode.

From Onderon's gallery

From Onderon's gallery

Legs a very straightforward build with 3 points of articulation and the feet are connected via ball joint with a bulky armour casing go on top.

From Onderon's gallery

Obvious differences compared to the old Tomy zoids besides the articulation are those little gray servo caps. The Tomy kits where soft rubber caps while the Kotobukiya zoids uses hard ABS (hooray for painting!)

Same deal with hind legs.

From Onderon's gallery

The underside of the zoid is not left out in the details department. It’s loaded with bolts, grating and insulation tubing which are all molded in brown so painting is a must.

From Onderon's gallery

Close up of the cannon turret with some obvious plastic faults.

From Onderon's gallery

Those little turrets on the side and the radar thingo can swivel.

From Onderon's gallery

Today was such a shitty day to paint but I just had to get started on it before I put if off for even longer. My Original plan was to do a steam punk type colour scheme with a predominate silver and gold layout and thought that the Champagne Gold would be more vibrant if I under layered it with some aluminium and this was when shit hits the fan.

As you can see there is not much difference with the bottom plate painted in gold. Clearly the aluminium was too strong and the shade of gold was just piss weak. I forgot to mention that I was trying to replace all the green with the gold but I’m more inclined to strip and repaint it now.

From Onderon's gallery

I was extremely happy with how the leg plating turned out. It has a very rough and cool metal effect almost bordering on cut pewter look. What I did was vary the distance at which the paint was applied and some prepainting texturing was done with some fine sanding paper.

From Onderon's gallery

Before I went any further I put everything back together it get an idea of what the colours looked like and it turned out better than I thought

From Onderon's gallery

The slight tinge of gold is barely noticeable here.

From Onderon's gallery

The tortoise can do some dynamic shots although it really only has the one pose. Oh I forgot to mention the soles of the feet are actually those 2 brown plates above the head. The kit comes with 6 and 2 of them are used for extra armour which is a really nice touch imo.

From Onderon's gallery

Look forward to part 2 when i hopefully strip the gold paint without melting the plastic.

♦