RG RX-78-2 Gundam - Leg repair

Long overdue post but here it is finally. As I was building the frame the leg broke because the joint was stiffer than the plastic. I guess I didn't work it loose gently enough, although I'm not really sure how I could have done it better. I'll be more careful next time.

Anyway, after the break... I took a break. Came back to later after I found the parts I needed to fix it, namely a 1mm drill bit and 1mm steel rods.

Tools required.

Here's where it broke.

Where I drilled the holes.  Had to be pretty precise with this as there wasn't really much room for error. 90 degree angle straight down the shaft of the leg plastic.  Worked out fine luckily. 

Insert rod.  No jokes please.

Cut rod, apply cement to the broken surfaces, insert into bottom half.  Apply some pressure for a couple of seconds while the cement dries in place.

Leave it to dry for a while, test it out gently. Works perfectly.  Actually I think it's stronger now than it was before.

No problems standing on it's own now.

Following this I could continue my work on the model and it was really a joy to build and detail. I'm still suffering from weapons block now as the main suit is completed but... I'm glad to have it done and standing with the rest of it's 1/144 brothers.

Delta Plus / Delta Gundam

I love the Delta Plus... but I love the Delta Gundam more. Actually the original reason why I wanted to buy the Delta Plus was just so that I could make the Delta Gundam. I was sure that I wasn't the only person that had that idea and sure enough other modelers did end up making it... but it wasn't as abundant as I thought it'd be. I thought a lot of people would be going for this mod but as it turns out not many did. Looking at what the modeler below did I can kind of see why. It's not really that easy. Comparatively it is because you're making a more complex design simpler but there are a couple of things that have to be almost completely redesigned (the shield for one).

I like the Delta Gundam more than the Delta Plus because of the colour and the simpler design. It's a shame the suit wasn't fit for use during the AEUG/Titan's conflict. It would have made a great suit for Quattro to pilot but he would have stolen the show from Camille and they'd have had to call it Delta Gundam instead of Zeta.

This begs the question... what on earth would a Double Delta Gundam look like?

Perhaps similar to this?

It's not pictured here in wave rider mode but it looks cool.  Very cool in my opinion.

Painting Copper

I saw this tutorial at FitchenFoo and couldn't help but marvel at the techniques this guy uses.  I'm really a sucker for metallic paints and this guy has got his technique down it seems.  Truly an inspriration.

Worth a look.  I think we can all learn something from him.

That said I think a lot of it has to do with materials.  He's picked up a lot of tools and good materials to work with.

One thing I don't get here is that he says he primed and then sprayed flat black and then went on with his Alcad copper.

You can see here that it still looks pretty shiny and has a nice finish even with the flat black undercoat...  Is that just because the Alcad paints are that good?  I thought when you're painting metallics that you should put down a coat of gloss black and then do you metallics.

Did he do this because he was going for a more lusterless/weathered final look from his copper?

There are times when I feel that I'm so far away from really making the type of stuff I want to but sometimes when I see stuff like this and I see the possibilities I feel like... this is probably going to be a hobby that I'm never going to be able to really give up.  There's just so much... depth!  The sky is really the limit with this stuff sometimes.  From simple snap builds to stuff like this...  So much to learn...

I have a strong feeling that next year is going to be a good year for me in this regard. I plan on really stepping my painting game up a notch. Less buying. More refining.

Jeep Style

Defined by me as "A type of gunpla style that uses a considerable amount of metal after market parts, with the focus on high mechanical detail."

Gallery here.

I love the style but from a cost perspective... all those AM parts are probably worth about 3x the amount of the model itself... but to say it's 'impressive' is a bit of an understatement.  That said, I'd love to try and make something like this but the cost is a big turn off.

Opinions?

HG 1/144 GPB-06F Super Custom Zaku F2000 - WIP 2

Ver. F22.2

With Zaku F2 legs.

I love this kit!  There's so much you can do with it!  I just want to play with it rather than just have it sit there in one pose.  That said it does both equally well.  Great kit!

Shadowed shots, while bad for viewing the details certainly do increase it's... gravitas.

Great melee weapon!

HG 1/144 GPB-06F Super Custom Zaku F2000 - WIP 1

Well I started building this two days ago and this is about as far as I've gotten. I could have finished it but I decided to stop just to see what the thing can do.

As I mentioned briefly on my facebook page, there are a lot of reviews for this out there on the net, but not one of them showed the F2000 with the supplied F2 parts.  I personally think this is a great feature of this kit as it allows you to mix and match armour parts thus being able to create any number of variations of Zaku.  The one pictured here I'm calling the F200, as it's not fully up to F2000 power but its significantly stronger than the F2.

 

I like this thing a lot. It doesn't do much but it certainly does look cool just standing there.  Quite a 'muscular' looking mech when you slim the waist and legs down. I've already cut out and assembled all the components but I haven't put it into it's "F2000" form yet. That will come soon.

And if you're wondering I did use an aurora decal for the mono eye. It really works well with this kit. Matches the colours perfectly. I'm not planning a recolour of this. I like it as is. Touch ups and flat top coat and then I'll be done with it.  Trying to decide what colour to paint the missiles though.  Red seems a bit too bold.  Silver?  Gun metal?

Sunshine L

Sunshine.

Sunshine.

Sunshine... really? Who decided that that would be an appropriate name for a war machine? Sunshine. GA GAN01 SunShine L. *sigh*

Even though I don't know that much about Armored Core (Don't think I've played one since... AC2) the mech certainly got my attention just because of the name alone.

Anyway take a look and tell me if this is a mech befitting of the name.  Are there any other names for mechs that you think are weird?  Honestly, I don't really mind the design and the name has kind of grown on me.  I like dichotomies.  I may even buy this someday just because of how... unusual it is.

Review and more images at Dalong's.

Gundam Unicorn OVA 3 - Preview

Looks amazing as I expected it would. Delta Plus? Totally looking forward to it! And the Sinanju with the beam axes activated in the shield! Wow! This is going to be great!

Kind of makes me think I need some neon paints for the beam effect parts. Anyone know anything about that?

Over Brave!!!

Flag Fighters for life!  Hobby no Toriko has done it again!

Why didn't they make it like this?! Wow!

1/1 Combat San - WIP 1

My first of these type of models and I really like it. I enjoyed building her. It didn't take very long. It's not like making a Gundam and I'm not going to mod her like a Gundam. It feels strange because I'm actually thinking of her like a doll. I'm going to change her hair style and make her clothes different colours and... I'm going to put make up on her.

Oh my god. What's happening to me?

Is this the natural progression of my hobby? And why is it that I'm finding that I have so much in common with girls who do nail art? We use similar materials and actually go through similar processes. Ah... Pushing the boundaries I guess. And it certainly has helped me relate more to me new female friends. They seem to appreciate it too.

My saving grace is that she is still MECHA. And she has a beam rifle.

I really like her though. I'm glad I decided to buy this kit.

You have a large selection of hands to choose from but they aren't really that secure. However considering the large selection you can afford to glue them in place around the weapons which I'll do once I have them all modded and painted to my satisfaction.

I removed her antennae "ears" and her cow lick thing on top of her head. I also removed the shoulder section of her uniform in order to free up room for her arms to move. I don't mind the sleeveless look!

The boots and heel part come off kind of easily. Not very sturdy but... I'm not expecting much from a miniature female robot that was made to destroy bugs.

She doesn't have the articulation to do a proper salute so I settled for something similar to the box art. And I'm not trying to be スケベ/やらしい with the up skirt shot but I just though it looked cool.

It really is fun to try new things now and then. Next... Armored Core?!

HGUC Sinanju - WIP 2

Worked a fair amount of time on this one today and got almost everything done except for the backpack.  What a joy this is to build.  Different from normal HG's.  More sturdy.  As it's MG counterpart was sturdier than standard MG's.  If you don't want to go through the trouble of making the MG this is definitely a good substitute.  It's beautiful and the construction is impressive.  All the details you need are there minus a bit of the articulation.  5 sets of hands, 4 beam axes.  Better than the MG in some ways!  This thing is good.  Maybe one of my favourite HG's.  Damn... Can the Sinanju really do no wrong?!

Gundam Unicorn OVA 2 - Thoughts

First let me say this to make myself perfectly clear.  It's awesome.  It's frigging awesome.  I was lucky enough to watch the HD dubbed version and the quality was just spectacular.  The level of animation, the sounds, the voices, the story... everything was top notch. 

One note on the voices.  I found the Japanese voices to have a bit more of an 'adult' tone.  With the voices and with the type of language used.  The English voices make the characters sound younger, which they are.  Also the anime itself uses a lot of English for the written text that appears.  The English voices fit this.  I also liked the voice acting as well.  In general I prefer Japanese voices for Japanese anime but they did a good job with this.  It doesn't feel strange at all.  Not to me at least.

I honestly don't mind waiting a whole season if this is the type of quality they're going to produce.

It's really no different than making a model.  A lot of people speed through the process just to get it done and maybe they take a couple shortcuts and in the end it isn't as good as they'd have hoped but it's something they can show off but it might not be something they're necessarily proud off.  I aim to never do that with any of my models, which is basically why I don't finish anything! haha

But my point is that when this is all done... let's say 2012, when we're all looking back on this and the series is finished, what we'll be left with is an extremely high quality OVA that will stand the test of time for years to come and that's priceless.  That's worth waiting for.

I ended up watching the first episode again to remind me of what's going on and I was also pleasantly reminded of just how good that first episode was too.

Putting the technical things off to side... I have to stay that even though the story is intentionally quite vague right now, they way that things are being done and how they're being presented is very well done in my opinion.

One of the problems I've always had with Gundam is how unrealistic it is and how ridiculous some of the premises are but this episode in particular does a very good job of expanding on the ethos and principles of the main characters and once this is done you're left with a complex array of charaters whose motivations are believable.

Not only that but they're managed to bring this eras issues of war, terror, oppression and lack of political representation into a 30 year old storyline thus infusing a modern sense of relevance to a very old story.  This was excellently done by the writers.  As a life long Federation supporter I found myself for the first time really sympathizing with the Neo Zeon fighters and felt that I'd finally fully grasped on an emotional level their motivations, desires and frustrations.

Speaking not only as a Gundam fan but also a fan of anime, I have to say that this may be one of the best I've seen.  I have no complaints what so ever.

I'll end this post with a quote from Full Frontal.

"As I am now I consider myself nothing more than a vessel, a vessel for the hopes of those abandoned in space."

It almost makes me want to shout of "Zeig Zeon" myself.  Excellent, excellent animation.  Very entertaining, very well executed and extremely well done.  Highly recommended.

October Gundam

Monthly photo dump. Most of these are pics that I used in my latest "Pimp My Gundam" video. Gallery link is here.

MGIJ WIP 11.1 - Back to work.

Last WIP for this was back in July 4. OMG. 5 months?! Wow. Well to my credit a LOT has happened this year and I didn't have enough time to work on Gunpla as much as I would have liked. There will be a post later about the events of this year.

I'm not sure what prompted me to do it but I decided to just assemble this thing again to see where I was with it.  Actually I do know.  I had a half day of work today and am off tomorrow and the day after so I just decided to go into "Mecha Mode" and see where it takes me.  This is where it's taken me.

I'd actually done a little bit of work on it over the past couple months. I mean really not a lot. Working on the rifle and hands and doing experiments with some secret chemicals I got (which I may not use for this project anymore and use on the HG Sinanju instead.)

I think that might have been when I got off track. When I started doing the experiments and didnt get the results I was hoping for. Then naturally, as is my way, I gave up and started working on something else. Man I should really start keeping track of what I'm doing like Gaigun does.

First is to find all the pieces.  I put them in 3 different places!

And immediately proceeded to get distracted again. Was just going to reassemble and leave it at that but then decided to just go for it since I really don't have that much further to go.  No sense in moving backwards.  Forward!  Onward!  Upward!

So I separated the parts for painting and went to work with the airbrush again.  If I hustle I can finish this before the F2000 drops.