The making of Mazinger Z

    There wouldn't be much to say about the history of modelling Great Mazinger's "older brother" except that all my efforts have been mainly directed, lacking other intrinsic difficulties, in emphasizing the differences, in structures and even in colors, between this robot and the Great Mazinger. With this respect, being Mazinger Z's design even simpler, if possible, then Great Mazinger's one, the work of lathing and shaping arms and legs with progressive, slight corrections in search of the optimum profiles has proven to be more exhausting than the first case (not surprisingly, I haven't "recycled" any part of Great Mazinger): in fact, besides the usual, already mentioned risk of building up a puppet looking robot, there was the obvious requirement to give a "personality" to Mazinger Z which could be recognized as clearly distinct from Great Mazinger's one.
    In my vision, Mazinger Z had to appear a little bit squatter, more primitive than the Great Mazinger, so that this latter could really be looked at as a stylistic evolution from the original prototype represented by the first one. As you could see from the datasheet, the final count of polygons and points for all the robots are surprisingly similar: Mazinger Z makes no exception, being the Hover Pilder (for the laymen, the pilot's aircraft housed in Mazinger Z's head) the heaviest part of the robot.    As you can see, the Hover Pilder internal is modeled in detail: although this wasn't the original intention, I've found myself almost compelled to do it because of the large "windshield" of the aircraft, that couldn't be simplistically reduced to a large reflecting surface (especially in close shots).     I tried to make it as big as possible but the size deducible from the cartoon is definitely excessive, seemingly neglecting the presence of the bent wings supporting the side fans of the vehicle: pushing further the model's width would in fact cause these elements to emerge outside the robot crown.
    As far as 3D animation questions are concerned, the same basic considerations seen for Grendizer hold for this case: definitely, Mazinger Z is not likely to be a good subject, unless to accept, for instance, a "Frankenstein style" for walking and moving.