Best Federation MS Designs!

CCA	19 (14%)
Unicorn	113 (85%)

I think we all know where this is going but let's see it through to the end!

The WINNERS.

MGIJ WIP 7 - Progress shot

Getting there!  Still have a long way to go though...

Seed vs. Astray - Van/Amatsu/Savior

This is the nail in the coffin.  I officially think this series is a silly waste of time.

A backpack on top of a backpack?  And does it transform and if it does how ridiculous does that look?  What's next?  A Sword/Launcher Striker Pack on top of all this!?

Well that actually looks cool but that's not the point!

I don't think there's one design that I liked from this series even though I know a lot of people like the Nix Providence Gundam I personally think it's ugly.  Not to mention those "Beast Astray" things...

I don't know who the designer is for this stuff but it's starting to make me think that it's just some hack who was told by Bandai "We want an original design but we want you to use only the parts that we've already designed so just mix and match them together."  Lame.

I'm angry about this.  I love the Savior Gundam.  It's one of my favourite Gundams ever and I hate seeing this crap being done to it.

Sorry if I offend anyone with this post but I just can't let this one slide.  This is horrible.  Bandai shouldn't have wasted their time and resources on this crap.  They'd have been better off putting those resources in one original design from the X or W series.  This type of crap can get made (at the very least designed) but an HG Tallgeese gets shelved for a decade?  Ugh.

GM Quel - Gun Mod

Who said you shouldn't play with guns?  The GM Quel can't hold it's beam rifle straight simply because of the design and lack of articulation.  I got sick of looking at it so I decided to change it.

**** that

Cut that

Glue that

Take that!

Didn't take long to do.  I'll clean the gun up proper when I get back to the model but I'm much happier with this more compact beam rifle.  Glad he can finally hold it properly!

Is this... MG Wing Gundam?!

Modded to be Wing Zero?

Miyuki Uehara strikes again.  If they can make the MG look like this I've really gotta see what they can do with the stock kit by itself.  Damn this looks good.  I wonder if it's because of Miyuki's skills or the design of the MS itself.  Probably both.

Q&DWIP 1 - HG Astraea Type-F

I said I was going to get so I went and got it. No second guessing myself this and no thinking about the consequences and how many other kits I have. I used a 1000 yen gift certificate to get the primer, paint and stand for free. The paint is Mr. Color #57 Metallic Blue Green. I decided to pick up a colour that I don't have while I'm at it.

Q&DWIP - Quick and Dirty Work In Progress. That's right. I'm just going to power blast this and get it done as quickly as I can. Which means I'm going to work on it everyday no matter what. No matter how small a section, I'm going to work on this everyday if I'm home. I'm not planning on doing too much with it but I have standards and I want it to look good but I want it done fast because I want to play with it. Simple as that.

More on the process later.

One interesting thing I've noticed about this kit is that there are only two original runners. The Astraea armour and the runner for the new weapons, which is labeled as "00 Weapons Set" meaning that if you're inclined to do so you can order an extra set of weapons by just ordering the one panel. That's cheap to do. All of the weapons are on that runner excluding the Prototype GN Sword, GN Beam Rifle and GN launcher which are specific to the Astraea runner.

The rest of the kit is Exia parts which means it comes with the short and long swords, plus Exia's own GN sword but I'm not sure if all the parts are there to assemble this pistol section of the sword as well. More on that later. This kit comes with five beam sabers. 1 with a blade built in, 2 beam saber effect parts. I'm sure a lot of you have extra beam saber effect parts laying around if you wanted to get all 5 going for some reason.

This kit also comes with the parts to make the Type-F2 version if you're inclined to build that one instead. I'm still on the fence about that. It looks like the Type-F version can actually hold more weapons because of the absence of GN Condensers on the legs.

That's all for now. Get ready for some heat!!!

*edit - Exia pistol parts are included*

HG Astraea Type F - Released

One word for you.  STACKED.

This thing has got so many weapons that it's ridiculous.  It even comes with Exia's arsenal!  Check it out here.

I'm buying this.  Just because I want to play with it.  I don't care so much about making it look pretty.  I want to play with this thing.  I might do a quick and dirty recolour job so I don't have to look at that red but I won't be doing much else.  Haha I say that now.  Like I could stop myself.  Whatever.  I'm getting it and I'm going to see where it takes me but I'm seriously going to try and finish this one FAST.  I don't want too much of a distraction from the Infinite Justice Project but I must have this.  I've always liked the Astraea design and I like the fact that the Type F comes with a mask.

Oh boy...  And here I was trying to cut down.  Damn it just too many cool things coming out now!

MGIJ WIP 6 - Shoulder modification: Start

Maybe you can guess what I'm going to do here?

I bought clear pla-plate by accident a long time ago and I told myself that I wouldn't buy anymore until I use some more of this stuff up. Actually it's come in handy for some other non-modeling projects too.

MG Musha Gundam Mark II Special Decals?!

According to Ngee Khiong the China release of the kit comes with these special decals.

You mean I can't get these in Japan? On first glance I felt a bit disappointed but after thinking about it... Do I really want a flower print Gundam?

Actually... I think I might. It reminds of one of my favourite planes from Ace Combat 5.

You know... I can imagine what most of you are thinking? Really? Flowers on your war machine? Yes I know. I feel the same way but there's just something about the contrast. And I like purple...

I wonder if I'd use the decals if I could actually get my hands on them. I actually think I would to be honest with you. It doesn't look that great here but with the right paint, I think this could kick my Musha Mark II project up from "impressive" to "epic".

I doubt I'll be able to get my hands on them but... in this day and age is there anything that you can't buy on the internet? And we are talking about China here. In a country of 1.3 billion people surely a couple people must be selling them.

Anyway what do you think? Are flower/leaf prints on your Gundam acceptable? Would you want that?

HGAW - X Gundam

Anyone tempted to get this? It sure looks good! I really like the hologram sticker for the solar panels. This Gundam looks pretty cool! I haven't watched much of Gundam X so I don't really know the story so well (just the basics) so I'm not a big fan or anything but I do like the relatively simple design of this MS. I had a no-grade version of this kit a long time ago but I gave it away to a friend. Seeing this kit again reminds me of when I first put that NG version together. This is way better though of course. If I had this I'd cut off those shoulder blade things though. They look like they'll just get in the way. Otherwise I have to say that I like this design a lot! How about you?

MGIJ WIP 5 - Beam effect part recolour

My first time to attempt this. The pink beam effect parts will look out of place with my new colour scheme so I'm changing them.

First used the last of my Tamiya Gray Primer on them.

The white 1000 Mr. Surfacer I was used initially was too thin and the pink was showing through. Can't have that contaminating my colours. I did it with Grey Primer again after.

After I saw the mold lines I decided to shave them off and make the blades smoother. I initially tried sanding the parts but... I didn't want to ruin some of the detail and wanted to keep it smooth.

It was fine. The primer did a decent enough job.

After this I covered them again in Mr. Base White 1000 (much better than the Mr. Surfacer in my opinion!) because I didn't want the grey throwing my colours off.

I tried making a mix of clear green and silver because I wanted a bit of shine/reflection but it didn't look right. Naturally I jammed up my airbrush in the process. >_>

Base White again then I sprayed them clear green later and it looks okay but... I'm not sure how it's going to look in the end and if it will match the way I want it too. I might do a light wet sanding job and then respray them to make them pop a bit more. The paint seems a bit uneven right now and too dark in some places. I was going for a kind a gradation effect starting light at where the beam connects to the emitter and darker near the middle or end of the blade.

Has anyone seem beam effect parts painted well? And I don't mean just paint clear red on top of pink. I'm talking about changing the colour. Like from pink to blue or something. I've never seen it done before. At least I've never seen it done in a way that I liked.

Something like what Keita did here is nice.

How do you think he did that? White, pink, gloss coat? Is his airbrush work really fine or is it just the lighting? I can't tell. Also I think it's much easier when you're doing this type of the stuff with colours in relatively the same spectrum. Blue to green for example must be easier than blue to orange. Red to pink probably isn't that tough and wouldn't screw things up too much. I don't get how it's possible to do a clear coloured part recolour but still keep the transparency/translucence.

My result came out close to this on the regular beam sabers but I couldn't replicate it for the leg and FATUM beam blades. Not sure what I did wrong... I think the key might be to use really thin paint as I painted the beam saber blades as my paint was running out...

MGIJ WIP 4 - Paint filtering

I love posting about the mundane aspects of modeling. Ugh. One more time!

Let me tell you two things about me.

One thing that sucks. I know something isn't going to work but I want to see just how badly it won't work. Actually I'm hoping that I'm going to be wrong and that it actually will work. My initial instinct is usually right though.

One thing that's good. I'm a tenacious son of bitch. Sorry mom.

So basically I'm painting and I'm using old enamel paint from like... 10 years ago.There's some dried up paint in the bottle but I add some thinner and mix it up hoping that it will dissolve and spray OK. I know this is a bad call and that it's probably not going to work but... let's try anyways.

Of course it didn't work because some of that undissolved stuff got into the airbrush and jammed it up. Cleaning out the airbrush was like cleaning the shower drain. I saw some pretty nasty things and I was like "wtf? What is that and how'd it get in here?"

That said I've pretty much become an expert in disassembling and cleaning my airbrush.

I decided that I'm going to filter this paint just to see what's going on and get some usable paint out of this whole thing. Begin the filtering process. Basically I poured all the paint into a paint tray and then filtered it slowly by allowing the paint to trickle down my paint rod into the jar leaving the 'sediment' or whatever it is behind. I'd then wipe that out and repeat. I did it about 5x or so until I was left with pure smooth paint in the jar.

What I found in the paint trays was a bit unusual though.

Some type of crystal/jelly type of material. I have no idea what it is but large chunks of it were getting stuck in the airbrush. Smaller particles actually sprayed onto the part I was spraying giving it a rough almost gritty texture. I didn't like that.

So I sanded it down with some 320 grit paper. It was a bit rough but it was what I had laying around and I didn't feel like going to find my 1000. I figured It doesn't matter since I'm spraying over it anyways and the part is supposed to be flat black so shine/texture doesn't really matter. Of course I don't want it to look TOO rough but the 320 was fine.

Sprayed again with the filtered paint plus a bit of extra black. I was hoping for a flat look but I got some gloss! It's nice! It feels like I got kind of a mirrored surface here and I really wanted to protect that for some reason. I might just keep it like this.

The good thing about experimenting is that sometimes you end up with results that are better than what you expected.

That said, it's not perfect. I can still see a bit of the sanding lines, a couple tiny sediment pieces in the paint. Very tiny and you've have to be looking really close to see them but it's within my margin of imperfection and I can let it go.

Onward. Slowly but surely.

MGIJ WIP 3 - Mischievous PC parts / New saw

While stripping the armour off for painting I found that I was really struggling to get the upper arm armour off. It absolutely would not come off! I didn't want to force the issue and cause more damage so I did what any frustrated Gunplar would. I cut the damned thing off. I made vertical cuts on either side and cracked it like a nut. I realized that the PC part that connects the arm to the shoulder was sticking up just enough to prevent the armour from sliding off.

I pushed the PC part in a bit more on the other arm and the armour slide off nicely... No cutting necessary.

I made this blog to chronicle my experiences with this hobby, both good and bad. This was an elementary oversight and I hope that some of you will now be made aware of this and avoid making this mistake yourselves in the future.

When you're removing armour, check the placement of the PC parts before you pick up the the saw.

*end public service announcement*

That aside, the mini saws/etchers I picked up recently, worked excellently. Totally worth the 280 yen I paid for them.

Unicorn

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Originally uploaded by sandrum

Nothing special. Just really like this pic. Thought I'd share.

FA 00 Gundam

Opinions?!

haha it's practically a space ship unto itself! Too many weapon options for this machine. It's not right. All of that and it doesn't even have the GN Sword III! This thing is incomplete!

Here's the source.

MGIJ WIP 2 - Acrylic paint thins with what?

Water?

I read that on the net in a bunch of places but it didn't work.

As some of you may remember, the first time I used acrylics in my airbrush it produced a less than desirable effect.

I thinned it wrong then and I'm thinning it wrong now. The water didn't do any kind of dissolving at all. Actually I was able to pour the water out of this and leave the paint in. That's how separated it was.

I gave up and just used some thinners I had laying around. I think they were enamel. The paint dissolved, I loaded it up and sprayed. It seemed to work.

I will accept this result. I thinned it too much and the paint come out ultra thin and runny but it atomized well. If I spray at a distance I can get a decent coat but I need to do it two or three times to get it looking nice and dark enough. Gloss coat on the metallic black would make it really pop I think. I'm using Mr. Hobby #78 Metallic Black which I believe is an acrylic paint. Otherwise I've really been screwing up!

Upon comparing this with my Sinanju I realize now that this paint is practically identical to the Tamiya Metallic Black lacquer mini spray can I was using. Hindsight. Oh well.

-

Just a quick note here about using the airbrush. I'm still a beginner but I have to say that I am LOVING this machine. It's a bit more of a pain to paint now (as in I have to prepare for a painting session before I actually do it) but it's actually more fun and the amount of the control I have now is amazing! And this is from a cheap beginners airbrush that has a pretty wide spray field in comparison to what most other modelers are using.

Still though... when I think that I spent 120 yen on the paint, 400 yen on a big bottle of thinner and I thinned like a cap full of paint and put it in a tiny paint jar, I didn't even go through a third of it and I could spray over a dozen pieces to satisfaction. Very impressed.

I still use spray cans though because sometimes I just want to spray something quick and be done with it but yeah... Very wasteful. Convenient but wasteful and not nearly as much control.

It's amazing to think that there were days when I hand painted! Can't imagine going back to that now.

MG Musha Gundam Mark II

... I don't think I'll be able to wait for the "Sengoku no Jin" box set, should it ever be realized. Which, apparently, not only do most of you think it's going to be created but that it's going to be coming soon, according to my poll.

Soon! 57 (62%)

Not anytime soon. 34 (37%)

I haven't been this excited about a model... ever. I really don't think I've ever wanted one model so badly.

I can wait for this though... I have a feeling that after this it'll take a lot to impress me and I may not buy another MG for some time.

Flickr

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Originally uploaded by Busterbeam

Flickr's being a pain in the butt recently so I haven't been uploading stuff as of late. The 'uploader' program screws up on me constantly, freezing during mid-upload, and it seems to upload pictures randomly and not in any set order making it a pain to figure out which ones it uploaded and which ones it didn't.

It seems kind of silly to keep paying for a service that doesn't even work that great. But that said... they've got me locked in as all of my galleries link to my Flickr photo sets which are no longer available because I decided not to pay when I was supposed to. I can re-open them again but I feel that they may have me by the balls on this one. Granted it's only 20 bucks a year but I'm just going to keep paying for that indefinitely? Don't see a good way around it right now so I might just suck it up until I can figure something out.

Anyway, here's a small pic drop. I'll try and do the rest a bit later.

MGIJ WIP 1 - Mr. Hobby Surfacer vs. Tamiya Primer

Specifically, Mr. Hobby "Mr. White Surfacer 1000" vs. Tamiya "Fine Surface Primer (L)"

White vs. Grey essentially, but it's not really that simple.

Take a look at the pics. You can probably see the differences for yourself. Same colour pieces, same basic spraying pattern.

My Tamiya gray ran out so I decided to finish the other parts with the Mr. Hobby Surfacer.

As you can see the gray really goes on thicker and provides more of a flat texture. The white gives it a slight shine and doesn't go on as thick. Not so good for what I'm trying to do here which is recolour the pink to black.

Yes I'm going from pink to black so technically I should be fine with just spraying the black on straight away but it doesn't work that way in practice.

If you look at the piece sprayed in white, you can see that the edges are still quite pink.

This is why modelers use the "C-men technique". A technique I may be forced to employ. I realize now that I didn't have this problem on my Sinanju because of all the curves in the armour. All the straight lines on the Infinite Justice might cause a problem when I'm trying to do a recolour like this. I don't want a trace of pink to show anywhere when I'm done.

I'm even repainting the beam effect parts. I used the white surfacer on those originally but the result was less than satisfactory so I sprayed again with the gray primer and I was pleased.

The problem now is that I have a lot more pink parts to paint and no more gray. I'm going to use up the rest of my white primer just because I'm trying to go through all my cans and move onto smaller bottles to use in my airbrush from now on.

Another problem with the white primer is the potential for over spray and having it pool up along edges as shown here.

For some reason the Tamiya gray primer is much more forgiving of over spray. You can barely notice it when it happens and you have to be spraying pretty hard and pretty close to get it to happen. Basically you have to be trying to get it like that. Either that or you're spraying completely wrong.

I'm going to trying doing my recolour job on legs first to see what's in store for the rest of this build.

I'm under the impression that this is going to be a bit more challenging than I'm expecting it to be.

HGUC - GM Quel

I got this done pretty quickly. I pretty much put it all together either while I was waiting for paint to dry or while I was watching Wrestlemania.

It's really simple... I think I could have done it without the instruction manual. Armament is quite light. Standard beam rifle, beam saber, shield. That's it. Totally basic.

Nothing too special to say about this. Articulation is about what you'd expect from a cheap model of a low rank mass produced MS. I wasn't expecting much but it was worth it for the price since I'm a fan of the suit.

One thing I will say about this is that I think the Quel/GM Custom head is my favourite of all MS. Very simple but I think it looks really cool and is totally fuctional. If you think about it... why do Gundam's have two eyes? What's the practical purpose of that for a machine? And why does it have a chin? And if you look carefully a lot of them actually have two line mustaches.

Take a look at the Unicorn's face.

Why does it have that moustache? It's face gets hot so it needs a vent?

So anyway the GM Quel is one of my favourite suits because of it's simplicity and it's design. Very basic and functional. I like everything about it. Reminds me so much of the Jesta now that I think about it, of course much simpler.

I'm probably going to be doing some simultaneous work on this and the Advanced Hazel when the time comes but for now I like having this guy around just as is. To remind me that not everything needs to epic and massive and have huge wings and massive cannons. Simplicity also has it's own beauty.

MG Infinite Justice WIP - Preface

I'm suspending all my other projects now to work on this. Actually I'm cutting out the GM Quel when I feel like doing less creative things and just need to shut my brain down for a bit or when I'm waiting for the paint to dry.

First thing is I have to find the damn model. I often pack my unfinished models away but I have so many Gundam boxes that I lose track of where what is.

I found it this plastic bag. Everything except for the torso which was in another place


Found everything EXCEPT for the small piece that keeps the V-Fin in place... Of all the pieces to lose... I have to lose one that small.

I need that piece so... commence the cleanup... of EVERY Gundam part that I have... which is substantial.

Everything was quite scattered around in a bunch of different boxes. I have a lot of models sitting in hibernation right now. A lot of accessories, weapons, hands, extra PC parts, extra everything it seems.

I organized it into some different categories then placed them into their own bags. Models, weapons and hands, PC parts, extra parts, accesories, and display stand parts.



Lotta PC parts. And this is with most of the unnecessary runner parts snipped off!

It took some time but I guess I was just driven. I didn't quite feel like myself. More focused than usual.


Just kinda zoned out and organized while listening to music. I get that way at night sometimes. This was around 2am.

I cut parts off of runners and threw the runners away to save on space.



I went through a lot of plastic.


What am I going to do with all these guys?

And after all of that I STILL didn't find the one piece I was looking for!



Packed everything up and decided that I'd just have to make another one...

And then...


There it was. Sitting on my handkerchief. I don't know how or when I got there. I don't really care but I'm glad it decided to show up!

So he's back to combat readiness again and waiting for his upgrade.