Mekadon2 in 3d

Update 29/10/02 Completed to 93%

Pictures of the model

click this picture for the 1024*768 version

Name: Mekadon2 (from Koutetsu Jeeg anime)
Pilot: Don Oseki and Pancho
Driving system: The same driving system of a common car. The cockpit is in the cap on the head. Another "cockpit" is the ball on the necklace, a very strange place to drive a robot, isn't it?
Material: The robot is home made using different parts of old cars and a hammer, then painted!
Weapons: Just a few. A pliers and a hammer, that's all!
Particularity: Mekadon2 can change in a sort of vehicle with tracks. His face change expression like a normal person.
The legs are a mystery. Usually they are compound by a serie of metallic rings but in the original drawings of Go Nagai and in a few frames of the Anime they are normal legs with only one joint (the knees).
Note: Mekadon2 is the second robot of Don and Pancho. He is very different from the first Mekadon, he has normal legs and can change aspect, his legs disappear and he start to run on the tracks on his shoulders.
The first episode with the Mekadon2 is the 17th of the anime. Don and Pancho obtain the project of the robot from Dr Dahiri and they start immediately to build their creature crashing old cars and welding the pieces of metal. They want Mekadon to be stronger and most famous than their old rival Jeeg, so they stole a "power amplifier" (this is the translation from Italian name, I don't know his real name) from the Big shooter causing a lot of problems to Miwa. At the end of the episode all the problems are gone and everybody is happy.:-)

Technical notes:

Techniques: The head was modeled using "Organica" and smoothed in Lightwave. The eyes and the mouth are a simple bitmap. The other parts of the robot are modeled using primitives, boxes, balls, lathe and extrude. What lacks: tracks on the shoulder, the interior of the cockpit, the shield, the transformation. My biggest problems: I had a lot of problems to model the head. It is very rounded and it is impossible to model using the old techniques. I tried to use metaballs but they are very difficult to use because they change diameter every time you move them near or far away from the others. At the end, I use a program called "Organica". It's very simple to use, just create three spheres and move them around until they are in the correct position. The program will weld the balls by itself. Wonderful!