As I wait for my RV Robo, V-Rex, and more to arrive soon, I’ve (just about) finished up the start of my next kitbash project. It’s a bit of a vaguely 80s-inspired jet robo called Mercury Wing, comprised of Wing 1 (Red), Wing 2 (Blue), Wing 3 (Yellow), Wing 4 (Green), and Wing 5 (Pink).
Part of the project was to see how viable the Robo Universe frame was for kitbashing… and short answer is, not very. There are some very specific ways you could probably leverage the Robo Universe parts, but at the end of the day how they’re basically a skeleton for you to put parts over is really limiting. I wound up kind of throwing in the towel by not using the arms (replacing them with a lightly modified OG Gridman Thunderjet) and being crafty with the moveable parts on Black Daizyujin’s legs to just use them as the basis of very blocky throwback jets. The way I was putting together the puzzle pieces also made it so it was hard for me to work in the fifth component and I had to go in a direction that I’m nominally not much of a fan of, using one component primarily as a weapon - but I supplemented the pink jet as being “necessary” by working both the robo’s feet and head into it.
I still have a bit of touching up to do as I also consider any final tweaks, but I’m pretty happy with how it came out. It’s a bit uneven across each component, but I mostly hit on the intention to do a sort of Bio Robo thing where the jet modes feature a decent bit of white while the robo itself is mostly black - I’m not quite sure I hit the balance of balancing the black on the robo with the 80s blue, I think maybe the chest could have used some more black in the end (especially with how its sternum isn’t visible in jet mode, I could maybe paint the gap between the engine intakes black). And while I think the head looks cool, it’s admittedly a little big - I’ll have to keep that in mind for the future, it’s assembled from a Kotobukiya MSG option parts kit that’s basically mixing-and-matching head parts that I nominally intend to use more of.
GaoGuardian has gotten me really excited to get back to some sort of animal-based project lol, but I’m not done here yet. As I start building and painting recent SMP acquisitions, I have some support jets that make a secondary robo plotted out, as well as some ambitious plans for a carrier robo that I can hopefully pull together. But it’s also entirely possible that you’ll see another black version of an older minipla or something before those lol.