The Rook - 1/35 Resin Kit Diorama

Design by Michael Herm (Tecco Toys)
Realized in Resin by Michael Fichtenmayer (Industrial Mechanica)

Started this kit around the Christmas holiday season of 2020. I knew I wanted to do something special with The Rook as I absolutely love the design. It’s unique and hits all the right notes that Industrial Mechanika oft does for me. A fun kit to assemble. The legs are highly posable and the main body was a giant chunk of resin. The kit could be built with an open cockpit and seating if you desired as well. Came with two pilots and a sheet of photoetch for extra details. The soldiers are another kit offered by iMecha, the Pawn Brigade. Specifically designed to accompany the Rook and other Michael Herm kits sold at the time. There were a few modifications I made to this one to achieve the lighting effects that I’ll cover here.

The red lighting effects in the exhaust ports isn’t possible with how the stock kit is designed. The photoetch fins of the exhaust port are glued to a circular piece of photo etch that’s hidden down in the port. That circular part would block any light. So I put the completed fin assembly into a small dish and poured about 3mm of clear resin around the circular base of the assembly. This clear resin replace the circular brass retainer. Once cured, I used my Fordom rotary tool to sand the resin into a circle (like the brass retainer and the pulled out the unwanted brass retainer. I now had the fins stuck in position with clear resin instead of opaque brass.

The billboard is made entirely of hobby balsa wood. It’s just scratch built from photos of old billboards. The art was something I found online. Some old pinup model. I created the rest of the design myself. Yes, I am a fan of the band Tool and the phrase “See you down in Arizona Bay; Learn to Swim” is taken directly from the lyrics of the song Ænema. The song refers to the sketch titled “Arizona Bay” created by the late stand-up comedian Bill Hicks. In it, Hicks eludes to Los Angeles (and it’s excesses) upon being hit by a major earthquake would simply fall into the ocean leaving a “Cool, beautiful serenity called… Arizona Bay.” The narative in my mind with this diorama piece is just that future. Post-apocalypse mecha, lost along some highway. A moment is taken to breath some fresh air while the pilot figure out just where the hell they are on the map under the billboard lights.

Lighting is nano led’s from Evan Designs powered by an Arduino Nano. The Nano’s make great lighting controllers allowing me to do some effects like random flickering. An effect employed in this kit with the left most billboard lamp randomly flickering at random intervals. The Nano’s also make good diorama light controllers as no real power supply is needed. Any dollar store USB charger and a USB cable is all you need to power it.

Unfortunately, the Rook is no longer available as Industrial Mechanika has transitioned away from cast resin kits to selling digital designs you print yourself. I count myself fortunate to have a number of the various offering iMecha made. I truly enjoyed building this one and hope you like it too!

Some links to explore if you like this kit!

https://industriamechanika.com
https://www.patreon.com/fichtenfoo/posts
https://teccotoys.com/
https://www.instagram.com/industriamechanika/
https://www.instagram.com/teccotoys/