X-ATH-02 Strike Dog

These WAVE 1/35 VOTOMS kits are really fantastic - I had this one in the stash for many years and after building it, I now would really love to build another one from this line. The perfect mix of the chunky proportions of the original line art with good solid High Grade style construction - very much as if they had just modernized the engineering of the older Takara models without going crazy.

The stock gun was replaced with a large cannon from a Kotobukiya Armored Core weapon set as I wanted to do the look of an Arena Battling AT, which is an aspect of the VOTOMS universe I always found to be very interesting. Of course, in the Armored Core games, there is an Arena mode so it seemed like a great fit to combine the two. Unfortunately the Kotobukiya weapons are full of awkward seams and are made of very grippy hard to sand plastic. The kit was painted in a scheme reminiscent of the Perfect Soldier prototype BrutishDog and I used HiQ Parts decals mixed with vintage decals to do an arena markings.

The base is made from diamond plate textured plastic sheet and some random parts from leftovers bin. The hairspray method was used to texture the chipped paint on the warning stripes, and some oil paint weathering was used to dull some of the shine on the metallic paint used on the ramp. This is my favorite kind of project: simple and to the point but with a nice looking result!