If you’re a mecha model fan and haven’t at least seen the work of Luca Zampriolo (even if you didn’t know who it was done by) then you must have been living under a rock! His website – Kallamity.com – showcases both the resin kits he has produced over the years and, more importantly in my opinion, presents a lot of work in progress shots of his projects. Luca’s mechanical design style is instantly recognisable and I’m a big fan.

In late 2011 Luca’s first book became available: Abakan 2288: Kallamity’s world of mecha design. I was aware of it at the time of release but for some reason I didn’t pre-order it. I think because it was relatively expensive and I couldn’t find any page previews. Well fast forward to last week and I stumbled across a mention of the book again. I saw a couple of page previews which looked promising, and checking Fishpond.com.au revealed that it was only AU$31.54 with free shipping! So I placed an order and was pleasantly surprised to have it arrive a couple of days later.

Let me say that this book lived up to the expectation.

Abakan 2288 begins describing the backdrop that Luca has created for his fictional universe. It chronicles major points in mankind’s history up until the year 2288. The traditional economy has long since collapsed and a special, extremely high energy content gas mined from Jupiter and returned in a crystalline form has become the primary fuel in use. Metal is now the dominant commodity and its trade and use the best analogue to a currency. This bleak future has paved the way for massive anthropomorphic machines to become a valuable resource and several generations of continual improvement have now produced extremely hard wearing designs.

Through the rest of the book the fiction is interspersed with design and construction notes of the actual model, for several of Luca’s designs. It’s this “non-fiction” content that I bought the book for and was far from disappointed! Already I have learned several little advanced modelling tricks. Throughout the book are many pages that contain a grid of many small photos showing small details and construction phases. The following is a photo of one such page. My only complaint is that I wish many of these detail pictures were bigger!

Overall I found the book very enjoyable and it’s a great addition to the scratch builder/modeller’s library. Highly recommended!

 

 

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