It’s been a really long time since I’ve done a casual “blog” post here. Like since prior to the big blog redesign in 2015. Anyway I’m going to finally make good on my promises to post more often and maybe more some other things that I used to talk about, like eating out and maybe some random cooking stuff.
So without further ado:
Unposted builds
So far this year I’ve built 11 kits, but here are the projects I’ve finished that I haven’t posted on the site yet:
Thanks again to The Hangar Bay for the HG Heavy Gundam and the HG Pixy, please support me and them by checking out their eBay store if you’re looking for P-Bandai kits!
As for the other AGE-2M and Dynames, I’m also pretty proud that I managed to buy and build these almost straight away. I’ve been trying to reduce my backlog over the past year, and one of the measures I’ve been taking is to avoid buying anything (apart from P-Bandai) that I won’t be building immediately.
The AGE-2 wasn’t the best build experience. I found it much like it’s HG counterpart, which had plenty of mold lines and nubs on details or angles that made it a pain to sand. I also find the proportions of the HG a bit more appealing, since it has much larger F-Funnels and longer legs. Still, it’s a pretty nice looking design, and they managed to take the time to fix the floppy shoulders of the original.
On both kits I struggled to get the primary armour colours “just right”. Since I already built the HG, I wanted the MG to have the same shade of purple, but I never wrote down my mix for that build. I ended up having to strip and repaint it, and then had to do a few mist coats of Mr Color Purple and Gaianotes Purple Violet for more colour correction.
On the Dynames I wanted the default “Green” from the Mr Hobby Aqueous line. The Green from the Mr Color lacquer line didn’t quite look the same so I had to make my own custom mix instead. First I went with a combination of UN Green (Nakajima) + Blue with some yellow and white added for shading, but the overall finish became a bit on the blue side. I ended up having to do colour correction by misting some raw UN Green Nakajima on top to get some of that dark green colour back.
So yes folks, that’s why you should maybe test your colours on spoons first. I don’t to save time, and sometimes I need to pay the price for it :S
I won an iPad from the Gundam Mid Year Campaign
Yep, this totally happened.
The catalyst for all this was because I actually messed up the head on the Heavy Gundam (in the picture) and needed a replacement. I bought a Gundam Type FSD for some parts and little did I know that it would eventually turn out to be the winning ticket! I also found out about this literally just days after my car had a catastrophic gasket failure, so thank you universe for not completely fucking me over!
To take it even further, the Heavy Gundam itself was a kit sponsored by the Hangar Bay, whom I never would’ve met had I not broken my RG Exia a year earlier. Now that’s some storytelling there!
For some reason Bandai decided to give away electronics instead of Gunpla in the campaign this year. Since the iPad doesn’t really contribute to my Gundam building obsession, I quickly sold it off and got some new airbrushes instead.
The coveted 0.23mm Custom Micron for shading and a .5mm Revolution for primers and metallics
Gaianotes!
Around October of last year I noticed that hobby stores in Melbourne were running out of Mr Color pots. This ended up becoming somewhat of a crisis, as about five months dragged on without any restock in sight. I decided I had to take matters into my own hands and to go ahead and do my own “little” paint shipment from Hong Kong.
I used Sealmodel, whose site seems straight out of the 90’s Geocities days but yet surprisingly functional with an actual shopping cart system. The whole transaction took about 3 months to complete from purchase to arrival on my door, and it actually took him longer to pack the order than it did for it to arrive after shipping.
If you ever wanted to know what 500USD of paint looks like, it’s something like this
I’m now pretty much sorted in terms of essentials for at least a good 18-24 months. Of course Mr Hobby eventually got restocked, but Rhyan San Pedro from HobbyCo and Lincoln Wright eventually managed to bring the standard line of Gaianotes into Australia through many years of negotiations, so at least I won’t have to go the import route again. Cheers guys for the hard work!
That’s all for now folks, I will catch you in the next update hopefully sooner than later!
YJ
