So, is the articulation on this thing as good as promised? Overall, yes, yes it is! However, it does come with three caveats (one small, one medium, and one large)
The small caveat is that you have to pull out and extend the torso if you want to get a good ab crunch:
The medium caveat is that the head has almost no articulation. The orange collar surrounding it is so high that it stops it from moving left or right. The only workaround is to pop the head off, turn it the way you want, and gently rest it back on the ball joint (and hope it doesn’t fall down).
Considering the rest of the articulation is so good, I’m not sure how this was ever approved. You can still largely work around it using the trick I just mentioned, but still. They already messed with the shape and the silhouette of this thing; why not do it again to make the neck better?
Now we get to the Big Caveat. The mechanisms in the shoulder joints are complex, granting the arms and shoulders both great vertical movement and great cross body range.
The problem is that due to the way they’re designed, the joints are also at high risk of being extremely fragile.
Let’s start by looking at the instructions, so you can (partly) see how it’s constructed:
The ball joint that’s on E2 46 is the one that attaches to the shoulder. Notice that it attaches to E1 15, which is a basically a flat, vertical plane.
Now imagine also that the ball joint is extremely tight in the shoulder socket. When you move the shoulder, that tightness sometimes generates torque on the flat plane of E1 15. At best that part will start getting stress marks, and at worst it could possibly cleave off.
While posing, I tried to be very careful to hold the shoulder joint between my fingers, to keep it steady and stop the torque from applying any force. Eventually I went a bit further by putting a tiny bit of lubricant in the shoulder socket. Together these worked to prevent any breakage, but I also think I may have lucked out. Given how much I tried to pose this thing, there were a lot of chances for things to go wrong.
Goofing Off
Here’s some shots I took when I was testing out the articulation and having some fun:
Anime accurate or not, this thing cleans up nicely. The colors are bright, and it’s more detailed than I assumed (at least in the legs).
Action Shots
As I said earlier, this build almost broke me. One reason is because I had a hell of a time getting action shots that I found satisfying. This has actually been a problem for a while now, and I’d been trying to fix it by simply taking more photos and hoping some of them would work out. Eventually I decided that that wasn’t working, and that I needed to go back to square one and reassess everything I was doing.
If you want to know the one single photo that encapsulates all of my worst habits and practices, it’s this one right here, no contest:
- The gun is just kind of hanging there. It should probably be doing something. And even if this mobile suit is simply flying to a destination, it would’nt be holding it like that.
- It’s facing the camera. Rather than staring down a potential enemy that’s off camera, it’s posing like I took it to the Sears Portrait Studio.
- The left arm is doing … I honestly don’t know what it’d doing.
There’s simply no sense of action or motion or purpose to a pose like this. And sad to say, but a lot of the early shots I took of the Zeta Revive had this same vibe. I had to throw them all away and try again.
Now I’m not saying these new ones are the bees knees, but at the very least they feel like they’re a step in the right direction:
Okay okay, so admittedly a few of these were just poses I recreated from the box, but that still helped me get a better understanding on angles and positioning.
My reaction to these shots is simple:
With these bright colors and these proportions it looks perfect in action shots. Nice and dynamic and aggressive.
No matter it’s proportions, be they accurate or not, the Zeta is supposed to look sharp and precise, almost papercraft in its appearance. Something like the Ver. Ka does a phenomenal job of replicating that vibe when it’s standing, but this model perfectly captures it in motion. It look ready to cut through its foes like a flying dagger.
More Dark Shots
This is another reason why this build almost broke me. I recently figured out how to do shots with a bright mobile suit and a pitch black background, but I also really wanted to figure out how to do moody dark shots with lots of shadow. Suffice to say that it was easier said than done. Lot’s of people out there that will tell you things like “do three-point lighting”, but not many willing to explain the why or the how.
In the end I ended up using single light sources, in some cases tilting the lightbox on its side so as to better control reflections and intensity. I’m know I can do even better given enough time and practice, but at the very least, for now, I have some shots I don’t absolutely hate, and that should serve as good motivation to keep improving.
Misc Shots
Here it is using its beam rifle like a beam saber. It’s kind of awkward to get a good attacking pose with it though:
And of course, here it is with the Hyper Mega Launcher:
Amazingly, it really doesn’t have any trouble holding it up:
On To Part 2
Next up is the Waverider form, as well as some comparisons.