Barbatos Lupus Custom - WIP #2 | Work in Progress

Here’s the 2nd WIP of my custom Barbatos Lupus. Late as hell, but you know what they say – better late than never.

Originally, I planned to release this post towards the end of June, but you know how it goes. A little more polish here, extra mod there. Eventually I started feeling a bit of a burnout. Decided to switch projects before it really hits me. I picked up and built Tamiya’s Kawasaki Ninja H2R for a change of pace and some painting practice.

I will be restarting my work on Barbatos soon and try to stay up to date with WIP posts. For now, here’s a summary of the work I did from May to July.

Proportions

In WIP #1 I extended the spine by 6mm to improve the proportions. While it helped quite a lot and helped showcase waist mechanics, I felt the proportions still needed some work. Barbatos Lupus benefits greatly from leaner, more athletic look, so that’s where my main focus at this stage was. I further extended the spine, thighs and widened the shoulders.

In the end, I feel like his badass factor went through the roof, gaining a bit of Evangelion vibe in the process.

Waist Hydraulics After the first waist extension, original actuators turned out to be a bit too short and tended to fall out. I decided to rebuild them. As I took them off, one of the mounting pegs broke off, just to make sure I had no excuse. I cut off the remaining peg and drilled through the part to make space for brass rod, as per standard fix. Then I rebuilt the pegs, using some drilled out plastic rod and original ball joints. Since I didn’t have the right size plastic pipe on hand, I had to glue 3mm pipe inside 5mm one to make new hydraulic cylinders. This also prompted me to stock up on various sizes of Evergreen rods and pipes. Still, they turned out alright. Later on I smoothed everything out with AB Putty.
Thigh Extension While the first spine extension helped the proportions, I still felt like the kit was a bit too short. At the time I didn’t want to cut it up again. Decided to extend the thigh inner frame instead. First up, I cut the thigh right below the polycap. With no pegs and no armor attachment points it seemed like the best place. The only issue was cutting through that little spiky detail on the outer side, something that caused a ton of trouble later on. After cleaning up the cut, I glued in extra 6mm of plastic, just like I did for the spine. Inspired by Joshua Darrah’s Zeta Plus ebook (get it, it’s awesome), I decided to make my life harder and extend each half individually, so I can still disassemble the legs for painting.
I spent nearly two weeks sculpting the thighs using Flex-i-File, my ghetto chisels (a.k.a. sharpened screwdriver bits), various files and random bits of sandpaper. As you might have noticed, I also cut off the back parts of the frame, as they were getting in the way. Even though I’ve spent a lot of time on them, I couldn’t re-sculpt those knife-y details properly. In the end I gave up, filed the entire thing down and rebuilt it using 3mm triangular plastic strip.
I did some extra beveling on the seam line to turn it into a detail. It’s not perfectly straight, but should look pretty nice with a bit of weathering. Then again, it’ll mostly be hidden by armor anyway. Overall I’m quite happy with the result. Ignore the new knee for now, we’ll get back to it later.
You can see the finished hydraulics here. Also new hands and some head mods. Ignore them for now, we’ll come back to those later. Shoulders Barbatos Lupus already looks quite beefy with his unique round shoulder armor. Still, I figured with a little work, he could look downright heroic. I’m a bit short on pictures here, so I’ll be using left and right side pics interchangeably. First, I sawed the ball joint off the original shoulder connection piece and glued on a piece of 3mm pla-plate. Yup, still using those sword leftovers. Added a piece of brass rod to install the ball joint back onto the piece. I filed the extra plastic down to match the original shape and added extra bit of 1mm plastic at the bottom. It was needed to stop the entire thing from dropping too low under the weight of the arm .
Next up, I needed to mod the armor plates mounted on those pieces. Since they’re hollow, I began by tracing them onto 1mm pla-plate. After cutting out the rough shape with scissors, I glued it to the armor piece and used jeweler’s file to match them. With this flat surface ready, I used 1x2mm plastic strip to bulk up the armor plate. 1mm pla-plate was added for a bit of support. On the third picture you can see a comparison against OOB. There’s a bit of a gap left – I wanted to add a bit of detail there, building vents with striped pla-plate. It’s the reason I built those pieces as “boxes”, instead of sculpting them from 3mm plate. I closed it up with another layer of 1mm and used AB putty to fill the gaps.
Here you can see how finished mod compares to OOB version.
Spine, Episode 2 I really like the wider shoulders on Barbatos Lupus, but this mod made the kit look shorter than it was. Figured it could use another waist extension. In the meantime, I’ve already closed up the back of the spine, so cutting through it again was not an option. Not to mention another rebuild of hydraulics. Instead, I sawed off the ball joint at the bottom and glued in another 2 pieces of 3mm leftovers. Also added bit of 1mm plate as stabilizer, bringing the total spine extension to 13mm. Sorry, but that’s the only picture I took when working on it.

New Set of Hands

I’ll be blunt: I hate the standard Barbatos Lupus hands. I hate their basic looks and complete lack of expression. I kid you not, I’ve seen more expressive roadkills. The minute I started this project, I knew I had to replace them with something more interesting.

I had no problem choosing new set of hands. Kotobukiya Wild Hands are probably best looking ones on the market. Nice mechanical look, tons of details and open variant looks simply badass. Still, I wanted to give them longer claws, kinda like the ones on Barbatos Lupus Rex, just not as massive. This presented a problem – while they looked great on the open hands, they wouldn’t really fit holding hands. I figured I could just change narrative – after all claws could simply retract towards the knuckles as the hand closed. Think Wolverine. To make the talons, I used 3mm pla-plate leftovers once again. Starting to see a pattern here? First, I used sharpened screwdriver to chisel out a slot for the finger. Afterwards, I did some initial sharpening using Dremel and a flat file. I glued them onto the fingers and finished sharpening using various grits of Flex-I-File.
Took me ages to finish all 20 (I decided I won’t use closed fists at all), but the end result was well worth the effort. Still, they didn’t look quite right on the massive forearms.
Then again, neither did original hands. What makes them fit are those white armor panels. Mounting them onto new hands took some elbow grease, but was well worth the effort.
Let’s take a look at that earlier picture again. I think they fit Barbatos Lupus way better than original hands.

Head Mods

Head on this kit isn’t in big need of modding, but I still wanted to try a few things. I’m somewhat happy with its current state, but redoing it is still on the table.

First, I wanted to get rid of the seamline, without turning the “helmet” into a single piece.

I decided to use this little knife-y part, unused leftover from MG Astray Red Frame. Figured I could turn it into a mohawk of sorts.

Once reshaped, I glued it onto the left side of the helmet, right over the seamline.

Turned into a mohawk after slight reshaping.

Same thing for the back of the head. Luckily, MG Astray Red Frame has a ton of unused parts.

In the end, I’ve managed to hide the seamline, while the head can still be disassembled for painting. There’s still that small bit at the bottom, as well as some under the V-fin, but I’m gonna leave it alone for now. Later on, I’ll probably add some details to cover that up.

For now, mission accomplished.

Reshaped and glued on left half of the head.

Sadly, I forgot to take pictures during other mods.

I’ve added extra fin on either side of the head. Thought about adding them to the V-fin itself, but figured they look better this way. I also added extra “mohawk bits”. Figured having it split 3 ways looks more interesting than a single one. Didn’t like the hollow V-fin, so I filled the back with AB putty.

I’ve also created a bit of armor separation on the chin.

Knee Armor

My second biggest issue with this kit (after the stock hands) is the knee armor. In my book, those crown-shaped knees and diamond bevel look absolutely awful.

Therefore: saw.

To make new knee armor I used – you guessed it – 3mm pla-plate leftovers.

I used Dremel to sculpt the basic shape and finished it up with bastard file and various Flex-I-File grits.

Finally, I’ve used some AB putty to cover up the diamond emblem and better integrate the new piece with the remaining armor.

Before taking a break, I’ve only finished one of the knees. As of now, I’m wondering whether this spiky shape really is the way to go (vs. flatter one, as on the picture above),

That’s about it for this Barbatos Lupus WIP update. Sorry it took so long, but as you can see, it’s quite a lot of stuff to write down.
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