So, thanks to a super awesome and amazing person, I was lucky enough to get my hands on this super-hard-to-get-your-hands-on exclusive model. If you don’t recognize it, it is the R.O.G. Mechanical Eye Sculpture model. This model was designed as a promotional model for Asus’ Republic of Gamers brand. It was given out at several gaming / electronics events around the world. You can also pick it up as a bonus item when you purchased select Gamer Laptops (you can find the full details here). And if you are lucky enough to be going to a college with a TESPA chapter, you might be able to pick one up if your chapter hosts an event sponsored by ROG.

Anyways, this single-sheet model is a representation of the Republic of Gamers logo, with a lot of added “mechanical” details thrown in. And, admittedly, it’s pretty cool looking. Of course, I would have no idea what it was if I didn’t know about the promotion, but it still looks cool. I’m glad, and thankful to that special helper (you know who you are!), to be able to check this model off in my completionist quest to build every Metal Earth model. Now I’m back to the Shanghai Disneyland Exclusives as my white whales of exclusives.

While this isn’t the most challenging model to build, it’s definitely a complicated one. There’s only a few curved surfaces on it, but most of them are slow, easy curves, with only one or two tight curves. The challenge to this model present themselves in a few ways, all of which have to do with the strips of metal that give the model depth. These parts connect the “face” pieces to the “back” piece on most sides of each section of the model.

First off, you’ve got a lot folds in each of these strips, and most of them are not 90 degree folds, as they are in place to enable the strips to follow the outline of the logo segments. And because they decided to make this a mechanical-inspired interpretation of the logo, there are a lot of small protrusions and shifts along these edges, making for an unpredictable line to follow. Luckily, the instructions include the handy side-view representations of how to fold the parts, but it’s still hard to get right, and you spend a lot of time refining the shapes as you attach the side pieces, which brings us too…

The second thing you will have to contend with: floppy side parts. Now, this will only affect you if you insist, like me, on not having twisted tabs on the exterior of the model. Several of these edge parts are fairly straight, and so if you try to just fold the tabs over, when you move on to attaching the next side part, the one you just attached will flop over. You can fold the tabs in opposite directions, but as they are all along the edge, the most aesthetic option is to fold them inwards. It becomes a bit of a balancing act.

Finally, the last item on my list of challenges is the microscopic segments in this build. Okay, I’m exaggerating a little. But there are some segments of these side parts that are so short, they might as well not exist. I’m talking less than half a millimeter wide. It’s crazy. You can see one of the resulting folds in the photos below. Unfortunately I managed to think I had hit record while building this model, but I hadn’t, so no video evidence for this craziness.