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Kshatriya : The Last Champion of Zeon

 

Perched high above the battle inside the remnants of an old castle ramparts, the Last Champion of Zeon calmly watched and waited for his chance to strike. There. A familiar white Mobile Suit was carving its way through the throng of the Champions fellow soldiers. Closer it came. The Champion waited until the time was right and then launched with a rage that had kept him alive for so long during the war. Swinging the hammer, the Champion used all his might to pilot his Kshatriya into what could be his final battle....

This build began soon after returning from the 2011 Gunpla Builders World Cup in Sydney. The initial build was fine with very minimal seam lines to be removed (which is odd for a 1/144 HGUC kit as seam lines are usually the norm) from the arms in particular.

The plan was to modify this kit into something medieval and reminiscent of my previous Zaku II build. I began by working on the upper torso. I added some IC pins into the chest armour first then moved onto the backpack where I added some mesh chains and removed some plastic so those chains could be seen underneath. A vent and snake chain were added to the center part of the backpack and then styrene shapes were added in appropriate places.

Many areas were detailed using styrene and wire whilst the from skirt armour was extended by 1mm by inserting some styrene on the edges and backed with corrugated styrene. New panel lines were scribed all over the skirt armours (front, sides and rear). For the rear skirt, chains were added along the bottom edge for a sort of chain mail effect. On the inside of the rear skirt, a thin piece of wire was added and then each piece of chain was threaded onto it then glued into place. An extra thruster was also added to the rear skirt.

The arms were proving to be an issue when it came to painting as the upper, lower and inner armours were all joined together, so I modified them so that the internal armour could be separated from the outer pieces so I wouldn’t need to mask later on.

At this point, the plan I had thought of went a bit pear shaped. I attempted to mod the wings so that the center pieces would open like in the anime but whilst I got the outer armour correct, I really stuffed up the inner parts. From there I decided to make a battle scene using several kits attacking the Kshatriya. I ended up ordering a ReZel and Delta Plus and even began battle damaging one of the wings but eventually, I abandoned that for something a little simpler.

Since I was going for a medieval theme, I added a big sword and modded one of the wings and turned that into a shield. The sword came from Kotobukiya which was painted in chrome, silver, black and brass. I was happy with it until the end where I just couldn’t get the weathering to match the overall feel of the build so it was abandoned and I ended up using a Gundam Hammer which came with the Shin Musha Gundam and wasn’t used. I added some chain to join the ball and anchor together and weathered the ball end by sponging on silver.

The shield was made using some option parts (the spikes on the front) and parts from the spares box (stuff inside) and was modded to connect to the shoulder and be held in the hand.

Painting was done with the following colours :

Decals added were from the Kshatriya set from Samuel Decals and the RX-0 Unicorn set from Bandai. As per normal, some of Samuels were a big weak (especially the big one on the shield) and had to be strengthened a little with a thin coating of clear.

Weathering was done using chipping with both a brush and sponge using Dark Iron first and then Chrome Silver over the Olive Drab areas. Panel lines were done with thinned Brass also. Next, I dirtied the entire kit using Vietnam Earth, Light Rust and Smoke pigments from MIG.
For the base I gathered my inspiration from Wild Rivers G-World book that contained several island like bases for his Gunpla builds.

I began by making the internal structure using cardboard and masking tape to get the basic form that I wanted. Once that was done, I filled the tube I had created with balled up newspaper until it was chock full. A cardboard platform was added to the top to create a stable base to work on. I made up some plaster of paris rocks using some Woodland Scenics rock moulds and attached them to the sides of the cardboard tube. Expanding foam was carefully sprayed around the top edge to create a lip which was carved and modded once dry. Once all the gaps were filled, I painted the whole base with textured medium to get a gritty feel and then painted the whole thing brown. To make the castle parts, I rolled out some air drying clay to an appropriate thickness and then used a brick stamp that I built using styrene to stamp in the brick work. I used a cylindrical container to get the shape and then attached it to the base using brass rod and Arlidyte.

I also made some exposed areas on the main part of the base as cobblestones as well, and when grass and dirt was added, looked like a long abandoned castle ramparts. I wanted to have an Autumn feel, so using Woodland Scenics foliage and bushes I went about adding tons of scenery to the base. A mixture of orange, red and yellow combined with two tones of greens gives it a real Autumn look (I found a lot of inspiration for this from the local trees which at the time were beginning to change colour). I added some Ivy to the castle and rocks as well to show that it was long overgrown and if you look closely, there are even some small flowers to be found amongst the ground covers.

Overall, this build has taken 11 months on and off to complete (in reality it was more like 8 months as 3 months over Spring time nothing much got done due to work commitments) and in terms of scenery, would have to be one of my most ambitious yet. It has ended up nothing like I had originally planned, but I am very happy with how the kit looks now to what it looks like OOB.

 

 

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