MG F90 WIP - Hobby Fanatics

Hello all! I just realized that I have yet to post any of my WIPs, so... since I'm currently working on a project that might be of interest, I've decided to post some of the details of it here.

As many of you might know, I have been wanting for there to be a Master Grade F90 kit for a very long time; there was a mockup of one at the show where the MG F91 was announced but alas the F90 was never meant to see the light of day.

Inspired by the new issue of Gundam Weapons and the opportunity to snag a spare F91 off of one of our fellow members, I got to work on modifying my old 1/100 F90 kit this morning. Here is a picture of what I've got so far, using parts from my own not-yet-painted MG F91 to show what I'm going to be doing with it:

F90_part_1.JPG (74.87K)
Number of downloads: 206

I have marked the important points in the picture with numbers for the comments I have about each of them:

1- I've modified the arms of the old F90 kit in order to facilitate the skeleton of the F91 arm. Yes, part of the wrist will still be sticking out of the arm, but I like the look.

2- This is a comparison of "before" and "after" on the arm pieces; showing where I cut off the peg and widened the wrist area to facilitate the wrist of the MG frame.
3- I cut the face out of the F90 head, since it looks rather ugly; and hollowed out most of the inside of the helmet in order to fit the innards of the F91 head. I'm considering keeping the ability to switch it to the "exposed face" version as well. :lol:

4- I measured out the opening where the shoulder joint mechanisms from the F90 stick out of the armor, and cut out a matching area on the F90's torso (I still need to clean up the sides a bit, though...). It's not apparent in the picture, but there is a line where the armor is angled that matches up perfectly with the front-bottom corner of the new hole. Also, take note of the smoothness of the bottom of the "ribcage" area of the torso... there'll be more on that in #6.
5- The leg armor. The original kit has a recessed area to either side of the shins to represent intakes; I decided that the exposed intakes on the F91 frame were just too cool to cover up though, and cut out the intake area to make it visible. I will probably need to remove at least part of the rack for the knee armor in order to get the new armor in place, but it's not like the F90 kit had movable knee armors anyway.

6- What's left of the lower torso. The entire body for this kit was all just a front and a back; I cut away the torso from the "ribcage" down in order to accommodate the abdomen and "groin" of the F91. As I lack power tools, I had to make perforations with my pin vise, and carve out the area between the holes up to the boundary of the parts. I used the same technique to create the holes for the shoulder joints.
7- Comparison between the hand of the old kit and the new one. While the old ones are really quite good for the kit's age, I still prefer the MG hands.

I'll try to have more updates on this soon!