Flash vs. No Flash

Well I arrived safely. Had a lot of time in Korea to reply to comments here and on other peoples blogs. One of the most painless stopovers I've ever had. The whole place has wireless internet!

So now that I'm back home I've been busy helping my family with a bunch of tech problems. (Got assaulted with a bunch on the car ride back from the airport. ps3 rock band instruments arent working, internet isn't working, printer isn't working blah blah blah. Fixed them all in 2 days.) I spent a good part of today cleaning up my old models. They were dusty and in weird poses. I don't know who's playing with them. Probably mom. She said they keep calling down... so she put my Buster Gundam in some crazy yoga pose. I mean... wtf? I didn't take a picture of it because it really disturbed me and I felt that it was un-natural.

I'm going to go backwards a bit with some work I've been doing on my G04. In order to understand what's going on here I'm going to have to outline the steps I did.

1. Wanted panel lines
2. Etched them in without really thinking about it.
3. Inked
4. Didn't like the design so I sanded them down. Lines didn't go away.
5. Tried to cover over it with primer. Didn't work totally.
6. Sanded a bit... Didn't help
7. Decide to just do a hardcore sanding of the lines. Left deep grooves in the plastic but got everything back to it's base colour.
8. Puttied.
9. Sanded.
10. Primed again.
11. Sprayed with white. Didn't like the resulting tone.
12. Sanded again.

And that's what you see below. A mixture of all those steps on the lower leg and knee armour.

These two pictures are exactly the same in every way except for the flash. Which one looks better to you? Personally I always side towards no flash in pictures if it can be avoided. Not just for models but for anything. I'm kind of anti flash I think. However I have noticed that most top modellers never use a flash when they're taking their pictures.

Time to hit the road.

Or the skies in my case. I've prepared all the modelling stuff I'll need for back home. Not really planning on doing much model equipment shopping there as I'm already used to the Japanese stuff. Not bringing too much stuff back with me though. I'll be posting some pictures when I get back, so you folks can see my 'origins' haha.

Looking forward to it! It will be the first time for me to ever try modelling in my home country! How backwards is that. I am going to take a look around the hobby shops just to compare prices and see what they have available. Planning on bringing a lot of stuff home and leaving it there. Not vice versa. The only thing I really want to take back to Japan with me is knowledge. And a new pair of jeans.

Modern aircrafts are nice and all but I still wish I was going home in any of these vehicles instead.

Notice how Savior Gundam and the Valkyrie fighters appear multiple times? That's no coincidence. And for the record I left Waverider Zeta out because everyone chooses that one.

So here's a question for you to ponder while I'm crossing the planet. What's your favourite transforming mech? You can probably tell what mine is.

Alright, that's it for me!

Busterbeam, Savior Gundam. 出る!

ごめんなさい

Final week of the semester is here and I'm going to be swamped with grading, textbook revisions and demo classes so I don't think I'll be able to post much. Leaving the girls in charge of the place while I'm gone.

Yeah I know I usually put Asian women up but... I'll make an exception for Megan Fox because she is mecha related. And she's hot.

Alright folks, see you in the future!

VF-25 Messiah (Super and Armored)

Struggling to use the American spelling of 'armor' but I'm going to try for this post.

While I'm not the biggest fan of Macross Frontier I do love the mecha designs. I think the VF-25 is a great plane. I don't particularly like the battroid mode but I love the Gerwalk and Fighter modes.

I was looking at the box for the Armored Messiah the other day and I was quite surprised at how big it is. I think if I ever bought one of these kits I'd just keep it in fighter mode most of the time. I have a Yamato VF-1S and it's in fighter mode almost all the time. I doubt I'll even buy one of these but they certainly are nice to look at.

Here are some pics.












1/72 scale.

I know a lot of you are Gundam fans but do you like Macross as well? If so which series do you like?

My gf is trying to talk to me about her plans for the future and I found myself thinking... "What am I going to do about the vents on the 0 Gundam?"

So I told her to hold that thought and said I'd be right back. I went to the toilet to think about it in peace.

Looking at this months Hobby Japan (yes I keep a couple in washroom because, let's be honest, that's where a lot of the best ideas start).





I really just want to putty over it all. Same thing with the shield. I mean what is the point of that circle in the shield? No answers... just more questions...

Addicted to Gunpura

Question: What is will power?
Answer: Something that I don't have.



Well I was thinking of a project for when I'm back in Canada. Simultaneous build of the oldest and the newest Gundam versions seems fitting for the 30 year anniversary of the franchise.

Dengeki Hobby vs. Hobby Japan

I'm starting to get agitated by this. Why is Dengeki Hobby so much cooler than Hobby Japan? FA MG Unicorn vs. Armoured Messiah? I know which one I'd rather see. Seriously... that FA Unicorn has got to be one of the coolest models I've seen in a long time.

Don't get me wrong I love the Armoured Messiah as well but... I just feel that Dengeki Hobby is a better magazine. Higher caliber of models and execution, better photos...

Did I get a subscrition to the wrong magazine? It certainly is looking that way. I do like the Gunpura LOVE sections in Hobby Japan though. And the FIX lineart posters... Oh well. Maybe I should have just gotten a subscription to both of them!

XN Raiser

As a lot of you know, Hobby Japan is shipping the XN Raiser (pronounced ZAN RAIZA in Japanese) kit with it's October issue which is coming out next month. This seems to be a 00V design.

So here is the question I have for you. Are you feeling it or not?

In my case, I'm not. I think the 00 Raiser is already way off balance with that space ship on its back and now this... I think it's over kill but some of the poses do look cool.

Another thing is that it was made to connect with the 0 Raiser but you can also connect it with almost any other 00 1/144 scale kit. Take a look.

I much prefer what Dengeki Hobby did with it's GN Sefer/Rasiel kits. Stand alone kits that, while having almost no points of articulation, didn't require another kit for it to be used.

That said... I actually like the design sketches of it as I'm a big fan of these kind of space ships (like the Vic Viper, R-9 etc. from video games.)

As I have a subscription to Hobby Japan I'm going to be getting this automatically... I'm wondering if I should pick up the 1/144 0 Raiser just to make it work. It might be nice to work on a space ship instead of a robot just for the change of pace. Also, I could just get the 0 Gundam that I've been looking at for I don't even know along and just attach it to that. God knows it's plain enough and could use a bit of sprucing up.

But to be honest, from the pictures above, I think it looks best on the Susanowo. Too bad I think the Susanowo design sucks @$$.

Oh well, maybe I'll be struck by lightning and get an idea for what to do with this thing.

Beauty and the Bot

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Originally uploaded by Busterbeam

I think I'm going to un-officially change the 'theme' of this blog to suit that title more. I mean I've been doing it off and on for a while now so I might as well just make it 'my thing'.

Other ideas.

Women and Weapons.
Gals and Gundams.
Madames and Machines.

I don't know, I think I like this posts title the best, but you get the point.

Anyway... semi-massive picture dump at my flickr. About 130 mecha related pictures. Actually some of you guys might be familiar with a lot of the content I just posted but I'm sure there's some new stuff in there that you haven't seen yet. Hope you enjoy.

U.C. 0087 and onward... best Zeon MS designs?!

After just over 100 votes here are the results for era with the best Zeon MS designs.

Before Zeta Gundam (UC 0079-0086) 40 (37%)

Including and after Zeta Gundam 67 (62%)

Once again the public has shown just how out of touch I am when I comes to this stuff... Although after watching ZZ, I can kind of see why. GREAT mecha design! Next poll will be a bit tougher, but I bet I can predict which way it's going to go this time!

That said here are some pics of the winners courtesy of MAHQ

Eh? Saki? Why are you...

hehe

Extremely Feminine RX-78-2 v2.0

I am at a loss for words. More here if you can handle it.

Just...

Wow.

MS-07 H8 Gouf Flight Type

I am weak.

I couldn't resist! It was only 750 yen and I'd never seen it before and I didn't know that it even existed and that there was a seperate HG line for 08th Team designs and and and...

The truth is that I saw it last week and thought that it was cool but I left it alone. I went back this week (for something unrelated to Gundams) and it was gone! I was looking around for it and found it shoved on a bottom shelf somewhere... Someone was trying to hide it! And there was only one... So I bought it! I couldn't let it slip through my fingers! I mean if I'd never seen it before in all the time that I've been looking at models and someone went through the trouble of hiding it... It must be rare... And finally there was the fact that I've always thought that the Gouf Flight Type was cool. So a bunch of factors said... "Do it. Just do it."

And I did.

Now I have it... but what am I going to do with it? And more importantly... WHEN am I going to do it?