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arvin.lim@samsung.com

The Sazabi is one of my favorite mobile suit designs as it has a unique aura about it that's both brute and stylish. However bandai didn't do it justice with their first release of the 1/144 Sazabi in their Char's Counter Attack series of model kits, as it had several major flaws(in fact most of the kits have very big flaws).

I actually finished painting this kit awhile back, but since my modelling skills has since been improved over time (as if I've improved a lot :P), I decided to re-work on it, first by stripping off the awful shiny paint job I gave it before and then modifying some of the parts that I deemed needed major improvement.

Here I will go about defining the Sazabi's major flaws one by one (IMO) and give some descriptions on how I modified these to achieve the look that I envisioned the Sazabi to have.

(note: The pictures for all the descriptions go from left to right, top to bottom)

I didn't like how the head looks on this kit, it's too skinny, and the face is just really wrong so I did some little modifications on the head.

1. I cut out the whole face plate as it's a tad too protruded and there's no monoeye. So what I did was glue the halves of the head together , and with the use of my exacto knife, carved out the face from the monoeye block down the lenghts of the cheeks and down to the chin. (it is important that you glue the halves of the head first so you can keep the proper alignment of the face plate.

2. I then removed the whole monoeye block (the plastic piece on top of the face plate) and got a green LED that I have lying around and attached it on the face plate to simulate the mono eye.

3. After securing the monoeye on the face plate, I test fitted the new face plate and placed it deeper inside the whole helmet as to achieve an overall streamlined and meaner look, then after a few adjustments I pushed the former connection between the chin and the neck deeper inside the helmet with a long nosed plier, applied some modelling glue and set the face plate in the final position.

4.So did you noticed how much better it looked after the modification? ^_^

5. You might have noticed that the sazabi has a neck area that is so plain and boring(the original conduction cables are molded right into the neck). In the pictures you can see that there are extra conduction cable attached to the neck, well it is because I decided to detail it up a little bit.

6. What I did was drill some holes on the lower part of the neck and on the area behind the chin right under where an ear should be. Then I selected some wires with the right diameter and partitioned the whole length of the wire by trimming it in such a way that you produce little segments and yet not totally cutting through the wire so you get something that looks similar to the Zaku's conduction Cables. Finally you insert the conduction cables through the holes that you made on the head of the Sazabi, shape it a little,apply some glue to fix the position and voila! new improved look for your Sazabi's neck!

7. I didn't actually like the V fin on the Sazabi's forehead, although it's long and nicely shaped, it looks very wrong as it is too slanted. In order to remedy this I got a blow dryer and heated up the Sazabi's V fin, then gently pushed them forward so that the V fin is now almost vertical (be careful when using the blow drier as it can become too hot and scorch your fingers! believe me, I found out the hard way! >:P)

8. After achieving the proper angle, I trimmed and sanded the V fin down to the proper shape to make it look similar to the MG Sazabi's V fin.