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.