Forever Gundam Variations

Suddenly I want this kit.  Hobby no Toriko strikes again!  The creativity coming out of that place is just amazing!  It's what I aspire to myself with my own Gunpla.  This level of originality.  I never even considered all the things you could do with this kit!

Nu

GM Cannon

Full Armor

They're all so good! Kind of siding with the FA though.  I honestly looked at that kit and saw nothing but now... The possibilities...  More here.

RX-77D Guncannon Mass Production Type - Stage 1

Well I hope you all had a great Valentine's Day. I did but I got a speeding ticket... :( bleh.

OK onto today's post, about my work on the RX-77D Guncannon Mass Production Type.

First, this kit is seems so extraordinarily simple after working on the Sinanju. My mind felt relieved at the relative straight forwardness of it all. Also... I hope to be able to incorporate some of the techniques I learned (and used) building the Sinanju into this model with a better effect. At least I should be able to see the results quicker. First I'll start with the assembly

This kit only has three panels and not that many parts. I decided that, for this kit, I wasn't going to snip or sand away the nubs as I usually do and just left them on. Usually when I remove a piece from the runner I shave down the nub with my knife. When I first started modelling I actually took it a step further and sanded it down. All of my model kits have sanding marks where the nubs where but that was the only part I sanded. Because of that those parts would collect dust and dirt the fastest (because of the extra grooves). I'd constantly be scraping at that surface to clean it (when it got really bad).

For this kit I decided that I was going to do heavy treatment on all surfaces, that means sanding at the end, before priming, and then, if necessary, sanding again before painting. I also wanted to do ALL the seam lines for this kit and went through great pains to do so... well... that's an over exaggeration, because nothing about this kit is a great pain. It's all very simple. Refreshingly so. So because I decided that I was going to commit one whole stage for surface preparation I didn't do ANY doing assembly. Just got the pieces off and stuck them together! That was it. I've done this only once before and that was with the FG Rasiel and GN Sefer and I realized that omitting that one step cut down my build time DRAMATICALLY. I built the whole kit relatively quickly. Maybe 1 hour. This is what it looked like at the end.

I was very happy. It looks great in its stock form. Not a lot of articulation or range of movement but... its a long range support mech. It's not meant for flashy moves or speed. I'm not doing any upgrades or mods to this kit at all besides the holes which I'll talk about now. This is a relatively common mod for this kit. Take a look.






I bought an electric drill a couple of weeks ago to fix my tape deck (Don't ask. It worked though.) and decided to also use it for this project. 44 holes later and I'm done. I added a bit of basic putty to some areas just to smooth it out. I'll sand it down later. This is basically what I've done so far.





Before I drilled, I scored the drilling areas a touch so the drill bit would find the center more easily. It was a nice idea but didn't help much. The bit tip was a bit too blunt to find the small hole I made. Either way it worked out fine in the end.

After I glued the pieces together using Tamily Cement (liquid) I organized them into sections according to colour. As usual this is a re-colour job and I will be changing the colours of all the pieces. Red to Olive or White, Brown to Gun Metal, Blue to Black

Special note about the shoulders. The shoulders actually have two separate layers, so the first one has to be seamed and sanded before the 2nd one can be started.

That's all for now. Now the sanding process will start. I think it may take a while

My Sinanju, motivation, plamo addiction and my girlfriends advice.

Well... I've fallen off the wagon. Again. I bought another model kit today. Spur of the moment. RX-77D mass produced Guncannon for $6.50 US or 600 yen. For that price how could I not!? And it's one of my favourite MS! And it's rare! The thing is... I told myself I wouldn't buy another kit until PG Astray in March because I have enough stuff to work on but... when I saw it I just couldn't resist. It was too good an opportunity to pass up so I bought it. That puts my list of UNOPENED kits up to 6! 4 I bought last year (at the same time no less. Long time readers may remember when I bought HG 1/144 Aegis, Justice, Savior and Infinite Justice close to this time last year), 1 I got for my birthday (HG Zeong) and now this. My blog is appropriately named. I have a problem.

That brings me to my current project. MG MSN-06S Sinanju. Re-colour. I'm working on the legs and I'm doing a little bit each night. Each time I try to do something I notice something that's not quite right. Something that I want to fix... and I do. I have been fixing ALL the little things that have been bothering me about this project and it's taking time. And I'm getting tired. It just seems endless and to be honest... I'm kind of sick of looking at the same things over and over again. It's been about 6-7 weeks now. I think it's time for a change.

So now on to my girlfriend’s advice. I talk about this stuff a lot with her and she listens. She says that the only reason I push so hard is because of the blog and that's kind of true. If I wasn't doing this I probably wouldn't work on my models so often. I wonder. I'm OK with getting this model done eventually but... I just want to do a good job. A thorough one and I feel I'm getting jaded now. Jaded? Maybe just tired. I'm being disgustingly meticulous again. And I'm starting to take short cuts and I'm letting more things go as time goes on. Not a good sign.

She says, "Why don't you make a WIP (work in progress for the uninitiated) area? You can put all the models that are WIP there and just switch it up whenever you want and it doesn't have to be a big deal. You can just pick and choose as you like."

Good idea. She has a lot of those. So I do what she suggests. I re-organized my room. Put away all the kits and parts that I wasn't using. Cleared up space, organized things better. I assembled my Sinanju as it is and put it on another shelf instead of on my table where I can see it all the time. All the hobby magazines, manga, books, literature etc. are all in one spot now. All my sand papers, paints, extra parts, unfinished kits, they're all in another area. Really it makes sense, that’s how things should be, but it wasn't that way for me. It was all just scattered. I mean they were in general areas, but things are much better now. Take a look. This is just my table. But I have basically everything I need right there.

To those of you who have seem my work area before you may notice that the RITZ can with my tools in it looks a bit different now. I covered it up with some manga newspaper. The red crackers tin look just wasn't doing it for me.

To those of you who have never seen my work area before... the speakers are there so I can listen to music while I work (notice the IPod connected to it.) and the little blue storage bins have extra blades, tools, tooth picks, sand paper etc. in them.

In short, I'm retiring my Sinanju project. Well, it's more on hiatus. I'm definitely going to finish it. I'm just not sure when. But that's OK... It will all get done in time. But I'm working on a lot of different things. It's easy to get caught up in it all. Sometimes you have to take a step back and re-evaluate things. I did.

I'm going into the RX-77D project now. Bought new paint for it (Olive Drab. Going straight military on this one, weathering and battle damage included. A first for me.)

I also brought out and re-assembled my G04. Going to start working on that again too (sorry to those of you that have been following my WIP at the Plamo Out There forums. I get distracted easily apparently!) . Even bought some new hands for him. But those cost me almost the same price as the RX-77D itself! wtf. Also bought some extra weapons for this kit. Just because I can. Here's a pic of today's loot.

Need those XBOX points! A new R-Type game just came out! I must have it!

So I'm starting over. Need to start looking at things with new eyes again. Start something new. Or work on something I haven't seen in a while. When I come back to the Sinanju I'll be able to do a better job on it than if I continue the way I am now. Just not that type of a worker I guess! It's seems to be a re-occuring theme in my life.

Now... even though it's not finished yet... to those of you who have been waiting, here is what my re-colour looks like so far. You can get a basic idea of how it's going to look in the end.

I'm calling my Sinanju project "Ebon Enforcer".

That's it! Sorry to those of you who were hoping to see my finished Sinanju soon. You'll see it eventually but it just won't be this season. Probably in the Spring. I hope!