Hi all, not sure if this is the right place for this, but I was thinking about making a Tai Sheng conversion. Problem is, MK12s seem gigantic, and I can't find a good source model for it. Does a Diomedes arm seem feasible if I'd like to attach it to a female Zuyong mini? Maybe even a Daoying operative if I can find a spare somewhere. The clean arm joint seems to make it easy to steal/ repurpose, and terracotta armour plates dont seem too hard to make. Thoughts?
@Shirley While I never owned the model I do think it is worth a shot. The vast majority of the Steel Phalanx model range is older sculpts and are smaller in scope compared to the newer stuff from Infinity. Because of that I think the weapons should fit the newer female minis no problem.
Hmm. I'll keep that in mind. It should be relatively easy to make the shoulderpad/ carve some tubing onto there, but the main issue is finding a body that fits. Maybe I should pick up that messed up Diomedes I saw on ebay for salvage...
It might just work but the only way to know is to actually try. Hope to hear of your idea's success very soon.
@Shirley even though older Steel Phalanx stuff is smaller compared to new stuff, 99,9% of the females from the new range are same or sometimes even smaller than females that were hand sculpted. I have female Zhuyong that model is both tiny and also very hard to convert to anything because of the way parts are made ( at least boarding shotgun one, dunno about combi but pretty sure it's the same ).
The SMG (top) is the butt end of a YJ Combi with a chunk of the front of an aleph boarding shotgun. The Red Fury (bottom) is just a cut down nomad HMG.
That is really creative. I personally wouldn't think of doing that until now. Good job on the cutting and gluing back together.
I saw this a little too late! I had already bought everything I needed to create Tai Sheng. Might as well post the idea since I mentioned it - then I'll stop hijacking the conversion thread. The components are basically: The body is going to be salvaged from a Mobile Brigada Missile Launcher unit. The auction came with the arms and head parts for the brigada hacker and ML, but only the ML body. I'll take it. Spare arms good for parts, too. The MK12 is going to be salvaged from this... messed up Diomedes. Looks like he has microbarnacles hanging off him. Rattlecan primer gone wrong, I guess? My primer never looks like that, so I have no idea what this is. The hacker arm will most likely be used for her free hand, and the hacker pistol could be sawn off, filed down, modified with milliput into a chain colt and stuck to a hip. The head, another Kingdom Death Addition, is from Kingdom Death Pinup Satan. If you google that, be aware that it is a NSFW mini. Quite a long time ago, I received an education in concept art. Whether that was effective or useful I can't really say, but one thing I learnt was that the human mind sees shapes and identifies objects from its predominant colours/ shapes - a good way to test this is to squint. If one can squint and reasonably make out what a painting is about, chances are the painting in question is doing its job pretty well. Same principle here - the Mobile Brigada body has the head and arm joints free. The KD mini head can easily go on there, given that it already has a neck, although it'll have to be filed down a little. The MK 12 arm can be stuck up, reinforced with milliput, and said milliput then sculpted to emulate a zuyong shoulderpad - same goes for the other arm. It also helps that the MK12 arm has no shoulderpad attachment - it's just an arm with patterns. This gives me more space to sculpt a proper pad. If this entire assembly has been corrected for proportion and painted in similar colours, she'd most likely look like a thinner zuyong with a large gun and a ponytail from a fair distance. Granted, she has no Zuyong backpack and the Mobile Brigada plates are a lot more rounded, but I'll take what I can get, this being the solution I've arrived at after 2 hours of looking at minis. The parts will arrive over the next week or so - hope it works out!
Unfortunately I've already gone and got Diomedes! Pretty sure I can work out a way to shrink the rifle if it ever comes down to that - I hope not.