Originally, I was going to do this kit in red instead of the blue-violet, but after playing around with my color scheme, the blue-violet just seemed to fit this kit very well. Plus I'd seen it done in red a few times and while it was nice, it was too "bright" for a kit of this size. I used these particular colors as well to give it a prototype/elite feeling.

I also took some influence from an EX-S I saw in a hobby magazine a while back. Those influences can be seen in the whites on the shoulders and the rings around the guns.

The various whites and grays are meant to give the piece more depth and visual interest than you'd get by painting it all one gray or all white.

I designed the decals in Flash and Illustrator. I sketched the "Miss Iota" decal first then scanned her in and traced/redrew her in Flash to make her nice and clean. You can see on a close-up of the decal in the gallery how the Alps printer did the purple. On that close-up it looks weird, but at a normal viewing distance (without the EXTREME CLOSEUP!) it looks great. Thanks to Peter at Models4You for the great print job.

About The Kit »

Okay... this is a HUGE kit. When I showed my wife the finished piece, I actually got a "holy crap" out of her as opposed to the usual "that's nice". LOL!

However with "huge" comes lots of sanding. I hate sanding. Honestly, I worked on this kit for 2 months and 6 weeks of that was cutting and sanding. Really! Granted that was maybe 1/2 hour a night on most nights, but you get the drift.

While doing this kit, I took a break to work on the SD GunTank just because I was getting burned out. At several points I had thought about giving up on it and putting it aside, but stuck with it. And After I got the whole thing together, I'm glad that I did. Now, all that time and energy feels worth it.

The EX-S comes in a PG sized box with hundreds of parts. Many of them are tiny to accommodate the transformation process. I will not be transforming this kit as I fear scratching my paint and decals up.

The kit is nice though as far as seams. There's only a hand full in the usual spots. Head, weapons, backpack, fuel tanks, wing binders, and the base.

Would I recommend this kit? While I was working on it I would have said "NO!" but now that it's done and sitting on my shelf, I'll have to say maybe. If you're willing to put in the time, and I mean a lot of time, on this kit, then it'll be worth it in the end.