Cristian Carlone

@cristiancarlone

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Project Summary

This project draws on two passages from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, both describing humans transformed into trees — not as illustration, but as inspiration for a scene in its own right. The discovery of a beautiful piece of bark during a mountain hike with my wife provided the ideal starting point. The kit I chose is a vintage Zaku II in 1/144 scale.

The first of the two passages is from Book I, where the nymph Daphne, fleeing Apollo, begs her father Peneus to change her form:

“….. A filmy rind about her body grows; Her hair to leaves, her arms extend to boughs: The nymph is all into a lawrel gone;…...”

The second passage comes from Book VIII, where the elderly Baucis and Philemon are transformed together at the moment of death — bark sealing their final words to one another:

“Old Baucis is by old Philemon seen Sprouting with sudden leaves of spritely green: ……., And saw his lengthen’d arms a sprouting wood: New roots their fasten’d feet begin to bind, Their bodies stiffen in a rising rind: Then, ere the bark above their shoulders grew,…..”

This diorama imagines a Zaku II, mid-patrol, seized by a sudden and rapid metamorphosis into bark. The cause is deliberately left untold — the scene is concerned only with the fact that it is happening, not why. The mecha shows only minor wear and tear: this is not an abandoned machine reclaimed slowly by time, but an active one undergoing an unexpected transformation.

Its legs have already been absorbed into the tree — only two broken fragments of a leg’s connecting cable remain, snapped off and emerging from the bark. The skirt armor has started its transformation, shards of bark protruding between the skirt gaps. The shield at its side is more advanced in the transformation, the wood having taken over it’s lower part. Vines emerge from the bark and slither along and over the Zaku’s arms and upper body, pinning it down the way roots seal over anything in their path. The shoulders are also covered, like vegetation hands holding it down. The mecha cannot pull free; it is being covered, so the transformation can continue. Still, in a futile attempt, one arm tries to lift what’s left of the body; the other reaches out, its hand open, fingers spread, in a call for help that will go unanswered.

Using natural bark, moss, and lichen, this piece is inspired by Ovid but also pays a small homage to a recurring theme in Tomino’s Gundam saga: nature reclaiming what humanity has taken from it.

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After metamorphosis ep. 7 (I think). More Zaku!

Sci-Fi

46 days ago

Cristian Carlone

@cristiancarlone | Sci-Fi

After metamorphosis ep. 7 (I think). More Zaku!

Ciao! I think you all by now know I ike the Zaku 😂 This video is from May 2021 depicting Char‘s Zaku II RG and a little vignette base made from plaster and weathered with washes and pigments to represent a portion of a rubble filled street with the Zaku charging and about to wield its heathawk.

Fun project. Now this vignette is on display in one of the windows of a local comic and games store in my neighborhood.

MM
Mark's Mecha Models45 days ago
Sorry i just need to say it. The feet on a Zaku are just...........
- CC
  Cristian Carlone45 days ago
  Replying to Mark's Mecha Models
  @timelordbuilds, you do not like them? Please, share your critique.

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