Next I evened out the edges with epoxy putty and carved out some space for a vent. Done.

“That’s it?” You might ask.

Yeah, that’s it.

I hated how it turned out. To the trash bin it goes.

Actual new side skirts

For the second attempt, I decided to try and actually design them beforehand. Mostly by doodling random stuff at work. I probably had 10 pages like these before finally settling on a design loosely based on Freedom 2.0 side skirts. Obviously I won’t be adding rail guns to Barbatos, but the piece that holds them looks really nice.

I wanted to draw the final design on a millimeter paper to create a template – like the sword in WIP#1. I couldn’t find any though – I must have left it behind while moving.

That’s when I remembered those awesome Tamiya masking sheets. I bought them months ago, but never got around to using them.

This time around I decided to start with 1mm polystyrene to make the whole thing a bit slimmer.

You can see how the shape compares to the initial prototype.

For most of this mod, side skirt cover was held in place with poster putty.

Adding the vents

Now comes the fun part – vents. I also wanted the skirts to be slanted at the bottom.

First, I used 10mm masking tape to draw a line parallel to the bottom edge. Figured it’d be more pleasing to the eye and easier to duplicate than some random angle.

Using scribing tape as a guide, I sawed off the lower part of the cover.

On a side note – I wouldn’t recommend this kind of hobby saw. The blade is way too flexible and can easily jump out of the groove while sawing. The only reason I used it – I was still unpacking at the new place and couldn’t find my proper saw at the time.

Detailing vents

To make them more interesting, I added dividers in the middle using 0.5x2mm polystyrene strip.

To ensure they stayed upright and where they needed to be, I marked their positions and secured everything in place using poster putty before applying glue.

Later on I sanded them down to match the angle of side walls. With dividers in place, I glued on bottom part of the cover and filled the gaps with epoxy putty.

Eventually I decided to leave the vents open and simply black out the inside of the part. To do it I added additional strip of 1x2mm plastic (compare with above photo) and painted on a couple layers of Citadel Abaddon Black, directly onto the plastic.

This was also the last time I used Tamiya’s Smooth Surface epoxy putty. When sanding, damn thing just started falling off. I suggest sticking to their Quick Type, never had this problem with it.

Drop by his Facebook page and leave him a like – he posts some really great stuff!

First, I cut a piece of 3mm pla-plate that matched the shield’s angle. While test fitting the blade, I marked position of its pegs on the added piece. Once I drilled a hole for them to fit into, I test fitted it again. You can see the result on the pictures.

Afterwards I added more layers on either side of 3mm piece until I matched the thickness of the shield.

Fixing the hollow shield

While it looked great from the front, back is another story. As with most of Customize Campaign parts, the shield was hollow and full of various mounting points.

As a first step to remedy that, I glued a layer of textured plastic to the back and sanded it to shape.

First I used masking tape to create a template, which I then stuck on a piece of transparent 0.2mm pla-plate. I traced it with a marker and roughly cut to shape. I left a little extra though – it made next steps a bit easier.

Once glued, I blended the edges with a bit of putty.

Finishing touches

I still needed to mount it on Barbatos’ arm somehow – can’t use poster putty forever.

For this I created a simple 2-point mount, with a 1x5mm plastic strip in the middle of the shield, and 2mm rod higher up to stabilize the shield in place. I cut matching slots into forearm armor.

Not the most elegant solution, but it works quite well. Somewhere around this point I realized just how little time I had left. As the crunch started, I no longer had the time for fancy solutions.

Clean shield didn’t make much sense to me, considering I want this kit to look battered and weathered. Shield should be the first thing to get damaged. And so I went at it with a file, drill and some cement for spot plastic melting.

As for actual detailing, I began by adding small pistons on both sides of the chest. Hatches still looked somewhat empty though…

Well, inspired by Vonschlippe’s amazing Armored Core diorama (definitely my favorite build this year), I decided to try and add some cables.

It was mostly a proof of concept, just to see how it’d look on a Gunpla kit. I liked the effect, but didn’t have time (or patience) to work the cables in all over Barbatos.

Something to consider on a future build, I suppose.

Arms just don’t look right without them though.

Instead, I decided to trim them, removing the original cannon mount point. Thanks to this simple mod, piping detail on the inner frame is much more visible.

It’s only 0.5mm on each side, but makes a big visual difference.

Not entirely happy with how it turned out, but it’ll do for a first try.

Like many other details, it’ll probably go unnoticed, but I know it’s there. That’s reason enough to work on those small mods.

Since I needed to disassemble them for painting though, I had to use magnets to close them. As with the shield, I used striped polystyrene to make the cover and added a bit of a trim afterwards.