Monkey King mecha (Sun Wukong in da house!) WIPs

It's been a while since I updated this blog. There has been much changes and exciting developments in my personal life and Gunpla just sorta took a backseat as I sorted out (and am still sorting) my priorities. I'm trying to relocate to Hong Kong, but finding a job there and settling work permit matters are easier said than done. Still, I welcome the challenge :) While I bide my time here, I'm picking up Cantonese slowly, in preparation for when I finally get the call. Slowly does it....



So enough about all that. Here's something that should excite you fellas. My latest WIP (done at snail's pace) is a Group Build with some luminaries in the gunpla world. We're taking the 1/100 RE Graze and remodelling it according to our fetishes. Sounds like a blast? It is. Check out our FB page HERE for WIPs of all members. I'm honoured to even be in the presence of these titans, and I by no means consider myself one. I'm just making up the numbers for Singapore LOL. Some of these guys are world GBWC champs, mind you.

So anyway, my take is a Sun Wukong conversion, since it's the year of the Monkey, and that's my Chinese zodiac animal, and there's a Monkey King movie from HK that came out earlier this year, and I've read the entire Journey to the West as a child, as well as watched the classic Chinese TV drama serial.....so yeah, big fan. You get the idea ;) Most of all though, Sun Wukong has always been something special to me because my old man used to read the children's novel to me at bedtime. Hell yeah, I had Monkey King as a bedtime story!

So here goes. Never done a Chinese medieval mecha before. So I'm expecting lots of screw-ups. I 'cheated' a little by using spare bits from other kits. With everything in my life to sort out and starved for time, I want minimum work with maximum impact (don't we all), so probably I'll add a dio to it after it's done, but the idea is to juice this baby up with kitbashing rather than time-consuming mods and detailing. Of course there'll still be some of the latter! But kitbashing warps the shape and structure a whole lot faster, provided it's done tastefully...which I hope I can :P

So anyway, here's how far I've gotten. Shape's more or less set. Oh and that Staff, or as they say in Mandarin - 金箍棒? Man o man what a find. Bought it off eBay for just a coupla bucks. Perfect scale! :D

Fooled around with talons for a while but I thought that he looked more like a winged demon or bird, so switched back to the Graze's original heeled feet.

You can see where I'm getting the ideas from....

 Asymmetry....inspired by the artwork and well...to save some bloody time. lol

Guess where this head came from? ;)

 Now he's starting to look like a jolly 'ol ape!

Till the next WIP update....Enjoy.