Griffon Auricom Mash-up

And for my next trick, ladies and gents...

The Pkf.85bis Griffon (by Hasegawa).. with a twist. 

Just started building this thing and I have to say, it is a dream to build. Everything fits so well you hardly need the instructions (if it doens't fit it's not supposed to go there).

The figure however... not so much. Weird how they both come in the same box.

The kit comes with two figures, but I'll only be using the pilot. The part hardly went together at all. So a lot of filling, filing and sanding was required.

The whole cockpit and figure needs to be done before you can put the two main parts together, so that's mostly what I've been working on so far.

The cockpit has some wires and boxes with buttons, but I thought it could do with a little more. Gave it a little air-conditioning and ran some tubes through the place to wire up some mystery boxes (one is the back of the targeting unit left over from my Super Jerry build)

Also gave the pilot and extra seatbelt and padded out his shoulders a little. In positioning his arms I wanted him to touch the controls so the ended up a little low. The padding disguises and compensates for it.

Of course, after dry fitting the cockpit in, I discovered that almost none of this will be visible when the build is done... This has happened to me before (on the Super Jerry), but I don't think I'll ever learn. I just get carried away haha.

Anyway, I put some primer on it.

Then I started layering some colour on it.

First a basic dark grayish layer. Then some Tamiya german grey on most parts and some colour on the knobs and buttons and the guys helmet...

The paint's not done yet obviously but this is where it's at.

I also decided, a bit late, to give him some gloves as I thought it weird he didn't have any. Most pilots would wear gloves.

Now you might be thinking "why in the hell would he paint that helmet bright red!?"

Well I'm planning to do something a little different with this one... It's only my 3rd Ma.K. build so something tells me to 'keep it real' and stick with the Ma.K. universe, but the idea I've got for this I can't really resist...

Maybe you are familiar with a video game that came out on the PS1, eons ago, called WhipeOut 2097. There have been a whole bunch in the series, but that one was by far my favorite. 

In it you race antigravity vehicles equipped with weapons (looking quite similar to this griffon) and you basically race and or shoot each other to (at the time) cool techno music.

I want to do this Griffon as if the game and the Ma.K. share a universe (maybe at different points in the timeline), and someone decides to paint an old Griffon he's found in the same scheme as his favorite WhipeOut team (namely Auricom, which was my favorite) and race it.

It could even be part of a back story for the game where "those guys started racing their Griffons back in the day and that developed into the great sport of WhipeOut we know today...."

Anyway sorry for this rambling. Here's a pic of the thing I going to base the colourscheme on. I'm hard at work figuring out a way to get that logo on the hull.