Wild Liger Diaz Custom, or the Wild Liger that shows up in Zoids Wild Zero.
The moment this thing showed up in the show I looked at my backlog and remembered I still had an unopened Wild Liger. And because I decided to sacrifice my Cannon Bull to make another custom Zoid, I had a spare Cannon Bull backpack. The large stash of Zoids Wild weapons I had helped too, I had spares of the long range rifles to utilize and the rear leg missile launchers.
And with the resources at hand I got to work!
Finally articulated the Liger and figured out how to have everything move correctly. Now it was time to paint.
In summer 2018 Zoids relaunched with the Zoids Wild line. I told myself I was going to buy two Wild Ligers. One to keep as is and one to articulate.
That I did. And the project would open a pandora’s box I cannot close back up. Articulating Wild Zoids is a thing, an awesome thing. An awesome thing a lot of people all over are enjoying.
As of this writing it’s been nearly 2 years since the line has launched and over a year and a half since I’ve finished the intial custom. Compared to my more recent projects, there’s some room for improvement despite de core formula remaining the same. The most important lesson learn, don’t use Megablox/Mega Contrux joints. Those don’t hold well over time. Use Lego, Lego fares excellently to the test of time.
As Wild Liger was my first venture into articulating a (Takara) Tomy kit, I didn’t have much prior experience articulating, and didn’t want to invest to much in parts I wasn’t sure where going to work. All I knew was kitbashing Tomy models with Kotobukiya models and did spend many hours trying to make a Liger Zero out of Lego, which introduced me to the world of Lego joints. Oh and the little Lego Chima articulated animals. I spend a lot of time with those too. Because of the lack of experience articulating Zoid models at the time, I deicded to go with the parts I had, which where mostly Megablox/Mega Contrux joints and some Lego.
Hours of playing with these things years ago would be what’d open the door to using Lego in many of my Zoid projects from this point forward.
These are some of the oldest images I could find of this custom. If I find any actual work progress photos I will update this page.
A closer look at the joint breakdown. Feet show the Lego and Megablox joints. Torso and head are large Lego/Bionicle type joints. Tail is Megablox. The legs/ankles are the mixed joints, both types are actually about the same size.
One thing I’ve yet to figure out correctly is how to give more articulation to the rear legs without destroying them. This applies to both the feline and canine bodies.
Wild Liger became the first of several articulated Wild Zoids I’ve done since then. So far I’ve figured out how to articulate about 5 of the body types.
While I’ve articulated pretty much every cat from the Zoids Wild line so far, it would be some time until I articulated another true Wild Liger…..
Let’s look at the Wild Liger from Zoids Wild Zero! The Republican Diaz Custom!
Old Concept Art of Slash Liger featured on the old Webcomic Website back in the day.
The Zoid known as Slash Liger, was a Zoid featured in the old Zoids Webcomic by Tomy back in the early 2000’s. Despite the old Webcomic having become a relic of of the NJR era, with little to no backups of it being saved, many Zoiders of my generation fondly remember the really cool motion and sound comic that featured some really unique Zoids that never made it as model kits. Among those, was the Slash Liger.
Slash Liger had been one those Zoids I had always desired as a kit. As a young teen with access to the internet, I would spend my days online looking up Zoids information, specially all the fascinating tidbits available only to Japan. And when I first saw this thing my mind was blown. It was a Blade Liger. But a Blade Liger with freaking BOOSTER BLADES. How cool is that? And my young mind interpreted its blades as this giant blades. So…GIANT BOOSTER BLADES! HOW AWESOME IS THAT!?
How did this custom come about? It was a combination of things. That desire to keep obtaining Zoids I loved since childhood, mainly ones that didn’t have a kit of their own, and also the desire to keep improving as a customizer.
So, I decided to push forward, run the risk the project could crash and burn because of what at the time I thought would be to dificult. After running some tests on spare Blade Liger parts, I jumped the gun and ordered a cheap BT Blade Liger.
First tests on spare parts.
The first test where to see if I could make the head work somehow. The face blades, the more detailed cockpit, make a the head fins closer to the original’s.
After getting the BT Blade Liger and two sets of MSG Swords I thought got close to what I was aiming for, work began!
Then as the weeks went on and I had time to work on it, painting slowly got done and I started giving some of the parts shape utilizing parts from some Gundam kits I either owned or bought for parts.
Slowly the Liger was taking shape! Some pieces would change as the project went on. And since I wanted to make it a bit more unique compared to a normal Blade Liger, I gave it a new chest barrel cannon. And not any chest barrel cannon, but a big chest barrel cannon, cause why not. It already has giant blades! Might as well have a little more fun with it!
Unfortunately tragedy struck, in many senses. I had to leave on a family emergency back home for a week. And ironically it was the same week my apartment complex was getting the windows changed. The people that came to do my apartment weren’t to careful and while moving my stuff around lost some of the Liger’s pieces. When I returned from my trip I was to bummed to continue work on it..so I left it alone for about a month. When I came back to work on it I pretty much had to retool the whole waist. I used parts from Wild Zoids and Lego bits to do this.
I continued further work by finishing the remaining booster and retooling the connection system.
After fixing the waist and booster it was time to have a bit of fun !It can even wield its blades like a sword! Watch out Liger Souga!
At this point all that was left was paint. Which due to work and other projects to me a bit to finish.
And then after some time, finally it was done! The way I see it, there’s still a lot of improving I can do as a modeler. Slash Liger was a great experience that showed me that with time and effort I can accomplish things I’ve always wanted. And it’s not a perfect kit at all in my eyes, it has it’s faults. To me it’s a great kit that celebrates my childhood, and I’m happy with it for it. It’s a fun project that showed me many new things that’ll allow me to do even better next time.
This Murasame is the results of trying to salvage a kit twice. The initial “form” of this individual was the Toys R Us limited Murasame Liger that came with the Ruuji figure. But after suffering a flood back in 2012 that cost me most of my Zoids and most remaining ones to loose parts, I was left with a midly incomplete Murasame Liger. I had taken and modified surviving parts from my other Murasame that perished to try to complete this one. Some of the head fins are actually the same fins twice (has to of the same right fin, but modified the second to fit the left).
Eventually I managed to get my hands on the Tateishi Store resin kit. And decided to try it out since my Murasame was incomplete. Thought I wasn’t gonna loose much by experimenting with it. I had never worked with a resin kit before. The result had been passable, but the paint could be easily scratched of.
With time I got better at customizing Zoids and felt it was time to pay another visit to this old boy. Removing the old paint was going to be to much of a hassle, so I decided to do something different and just make it look like a weathered and battle damaged Zoid.
Realizing the resin was starting to break in some joints I decided to add Lego ball joints to it, which in turn also made it more poseable. The tail also was missing a bit, so I took some bits from a spare Schneider armor I had and use some of it’s blade tips to do the job.
The Burning Armor is a recast I comissioned of the standard Death Rex Armor in a clear red. The quality is pretty good, but like with most Holotech/Clear it does feel more fragile than standard solid colored armors.
zoidsuniverse.com 