SIC Custom Hyper Zabee / Hornet photo gallery and further commentaries :)

Photo gallery! plus as added bonus: my worthless commentary!! joy!

 

 

I believe i can flyy... no? what do you mean not these kind of commentary?!

 

Anyway after many weeks here we are at journey's end. I tried to describe as much as i could on the custom steps plus taking as many photos as i could of each step of the custom and I think I am improving... sorta ;p

 

So without further ado, here is the photo gallery of the completed SIC Hyper Zabee / Hornet plus my further comments. Enjoy ;)

Time taken to complete this custom (counting the no of days irregardless of the time spent each day, which is usually 2 hours max per day late in the night) would be about 18 days give or take. Most of the time was spent not really doing anything physiclaly but figuring how stuff mix together, plan the steps to take and so on, basically conception and rethinking the designs, plan color schemes etc. All these thinking and planning is important as you will find sometimes you may regret certain sculpts or cuts you made which are irreverseable.

Total costs (estimate based on proportion of actual cost of materials) excluding the cost of punchhopper figure (which cost could varies depending on where you get it) would be:
S$8 for the armored core figure
S$2 for clear putty
S$2 for epoxy putty
S$8 for paint and topcoat
S$2 glue and nails
S$8 stand
S$2 for various minor parts
Total = S$32 before taking into account of punchhopper figure cost.

So lets say I got the punchhopper at S$30. Total custom cost would be S$62 :)

Not that bad considering this is a complicated custom. One thing to note is that there are other costs involved that I didnt include in because I already own certain items necessary for the custom e.g. handdrill, line engraver etc and of course the biggest cost not counted in the custom is my own time cost which is way more expensive esthetically than anything I took into account here but thats besides the point since this is a hobby (unless I wanted to sell this guy that is then it become a major point) :)

So when you see customisers selling their customs (good ones) for S$200, don't scoff at their price and appreciate the massive amount of personal time taken to create just one custom (if he is not mass manufacturing them to sell that is).

Basic Hyper Form:
As mentioned before, I did a grave mistake of making his shoulder pads way too big making it hard to create relevant designs on it relating to Zabee :(

Notice also I left some metallic red on his color scheme. I left just enough of them to act as hints to his Hyper Mode when he reveals his wings.

This photo below shows the discoloration on the eye, a mistake I made when I was coloring the outer layer of the clear eye with clear yellow, the clear yellow dripped into the compound eye putty layer and created those discoloration :(

Also something to note about those giant shoulder pads: when layering putty over them try to make them as thin as possible to avoid enlarging the shoulder pads too much plus having a sore eye of a thick shoulder pad.

Here is how the back looks like without his wings I used punchhopper's shoulder pad horns (added a couple of ball sockets on their underside) as a cover for those sockets at the back of his body.

 

I usually try to add as much detail as possible to my sculpt eventhough most of the time certain parts are hidden from view such as those vents underneath the giant shoulder pads. The only part I can't really do anything about are the underside of the giant shoulder pads. Due to its location, I find it very hard to add details there without messing up.

 

If you see the photo below again, you will notice I hsould have sand the giant shoulder pad's inner edges more to avoid those ugly uneven surface :(

Here's how the ugly sockets at the back look like without those covers/wings. I rushed through this part as I assumed it will be forever covered by either the wings or those horns. I didnt want to color the inside of the socket black as it will hinder the joint and eventually those black color will be scrapped off by the ball joint anyway so they'll look ugly forever. Wish HLJ.com will issue black color double ball joints next time instead of grey ones.
 

Here is Hyper Zabee with Wings

And here's the chest opening mechanism. When sculpting those moveable chest components, I used transparent food wrappers to separate the putty from the inner chest allowing for the moveable chest components to be moveable:

And here is his Giant Stinger weapon before charge up I originally wanted to find a Perfect Zecter modify it so that it splits in the middle with a stinger coming out of it but I couldnt find a spare :(

A lot of time were spent doing all the linings on this guy especially the stinger

The shield can be further improved perhaps if I used clear orange on those hive designs but it was too much work plus clear orange are very hard to handle especially on small lines

Here is all his accesories worthy of the S.I.C name ;D

His main accesories

Again another part I rushed through and didn't make a nice enough sculpt out of it. Anyone can tell me what the hell this is suppose to be?! ;p

A comparison of the original punchhopper figure and the final custom product

Comparison between earlier design and the final custom

As a closing commentary, I would like to admit that more than half the sculpt may not resemble the original Zabee design :( I admit that although I tried to follow a bee-looking sculpt, I got carried away with certain designs to fit my own fit and fancy. So here I'll like to apologise to all Zabee fans out there and I'll try my best in my next customs to stay true to the original designs ... no promises but I'll try haha

And that wraps up Hyper Zabee/ Hornet tutorial :D see you next time!