P.K.A AUSF L LEOPARD

The Leopard was not a suit that I was super prepared for originally - as far as I know, it wasn't part of the original SF3D era of designs, and I believe it is more or less original to the Wave kit line. That being said, it was the first totally new design that had come out since I started building Ma.K so I felt like I had to build it! Luckily a friend was in Japan at the time of its release, and they were gracious enough to get one for me and bring it back to the states.

The Leopard is a pretty unique Ma.K suit - it combines the Melusine & Kauz style enclosed bulbous hatch but without the wider body and matches it to a Konrad/Ketzer chassis. 

The kit is probably 2/3rds mostly the Konrad/Ketzer parts with an additional set of parts for the Leopard. The side windows are replaced with what look like sensor domes and it has a periscope sensor on top. Some very small modifications were added to the kit: The kit had a long thin plastic antennae which was too fragile and replaced with a bent paperclip, holes where the guard rails for the clear windows would connect were covered with small rivets, and finally, a small wrist guard was added to the arm. The kit was painted with Gaia Notes lacquers and weathered with oil paints.

The concrete barrier was a 3D printed piece provided by a friend and the rubble and rebar was simply broken pieces of cork added to it. I found some bumper sticker decals that were applied to it, which combined with the graffiti hopefully gives it a good worn appearance. The "3" numeral marking was hand painted over the decal to match the color to the orange accents and to give the look of a roughly applied marking in the field.

The Leopard is a very cool design and a welcome addition to the PKA family - in a weird way it feels almost like a fan-made kitbash - if you had shown me it without letting me know it was an official design, I would have assumed someone combined a Kauz with a Ketzer. That makes me want to kitbash my own variant now...