Plamo: Mega Man X3: Hawk Ride Armor (kitbash of Chimera Armor & accessories from Vile's Ride Armor / full paint job)
I Finally Finished It! Well, i finished it sometime around April 1st, 2024, based on the timestamps of my (older, mostly obsolete now) photos. I've definitely not been keeping up with this blog as much as i should.
These are the main angle views of it. There's some "errors" on this thing, but they're not gratuitous. The most annoying part for me is a spec of white on the left-thigh piece (his left not audience-left). Unfortunately due to the way i haphazardly mixed paints, i cannot recreate the exact shade of blue and thus can't properly touch it up. There's actually a few places you can see where i near-matched the shade of blue for some touchups, but im not sure how visible they are in the image. Also, the bolt holes on his-right upper arm are MEGA duplicated on the back. Those were custom panel lines and holes i made by gouging with an exacto knife and then filling in with gundam panel line marker.
I also did some extra special detailing on the leg greebles (which i plan to NOT recreate in my future ride armors): I glued thin plastic into the greebles so it could naturally create panel lines, then i used "Wave System Option: H-Eyes Red" to put jewels into the greebles (using double sided tape).
I will recreate the jewels in future builds, but not the panel line details
Here's some more (uglier) shots:
So there's still something i want to do with this build: I want to attach it to some kind of action/display base, so it looks like it's mid air, and find OR MAKE some sort of clear blue ring-shaped jet-blast effect part to put under the "hover pack", so it looks like it's hovering mid-air like it does in the game. I'm not gonna try to recreate the missiles though lmao.
BTW, the Hawk Armor parts don't come with the base Chimera Armor
So this was nearly all done using Mr Hobby Aqueous paints and an airbrush, with touchups by hand. Also some Gundam EX Marker Silver for some details, Mr. Super Clear Gloss so get a good surface for panel lining, then flat coated everything except for the red missile tips in the canons (those got a nice juicy gloss coat). I did a lot of masking using tamiya masking tape, which is a technique i'm also doing for the Kangaroo armor.
BTW, the Kangaroo armor is also approaching a state of Completion. I'm still working on greebles and the arms (which were also the parts i put off til last on the Hawk armor lmao). But hopefully i'll post it in a more timely manner when that happens!
I'm really happy to have finished this. When i first saw Bandai put out "official" kits for 3 of the 4 ride armors of this game, i absolutely knew i wanted to repaint the kit and make it look like the actual key art. I actually based the color choices on the sprite art, but otherwise mostly used the key art for reference with details and such. Well, Bandai did most of that work. I just followed it properly.
However... i also have plans to do something absolutely ridiculous to try to recreate the Frog Armor... in time. I don't have full plans for it yet, but i have the ride armors and a dream.
Anyway here's a preview of the Kangaroo Armor, a WIP shot:
