Topics

1

Model In-Progress / 1/48 Gundam The Origin Bust.

« on: July 27, 2012, 02:44:49 PM »

I suppose I'm getting a little out of hand, this being the third WIP I'm posting without actually finishing (or making much progress!) on the others, but I'll take the plunge anyway.

I picked this up a while ago during my time in Japan. It was a pack in for the Gundam Ace magazine late last year.
It's a really easy build, except it's all just one colour plastic, so there's some paintwork ahead.

Bonus was that when you picked up Gundam Ace the month after, it came with a beamsaber pen that would actually fit on the back of this

That was all fine and dandy, until I put it together.

Something seemed off. . .


(FYI, the Beamsaber pen is in there, the pen part is just hanging off the table so you can't see it)

Have you ever seen the Gundam with it's beamsaber sticking straight up out of the back?



Yeah, me neither.

And with that one thought I've already accepted the challenge haven't I?

So basically, I'm setting out to redo parts of the back on this bust. When I decided to get to work on that, I didn't really feel like destroying the perfectly fine beamsaber pen just so I could use the handle.

So I got a bunch of different sized styrene tubes and started on a new handle:



Being relatively new to scribing, getting the panel on the front of the tube to look correct, took a lot of work. I've had to redo it about three times, but I'm not at a point where I'm pretty happy with it.
I've still got a little bit of work to do on the handle, but I'll be pulling out the epoxy putty for that (just to smooth some of the edges). Overall I'm pretty happy with it.

Since I was scribing, I moved on to the head for a bit. I've glued the 'helmet' together and puttied up whatever seamline there was left after that. The back of the head is nicely paneled, but for some reason the panel is cut off abruptly on the side of the head.
Came up with a design I was happy with, and finished up the panels (mirrored on the other side, of course). I'm quite happy with how they turned out:



The head was engineered to basically be one piece entirely. The inside of the head included the vulcans and 'sideburn vents'. I ended up cutting all of those off so that after I glued the helmet, I could slide the face in from the bottom. I glued the vulcans into the holes where they belong, and the vents have handy pegs on each side that I can just click them into. That'll make painting them a lot less of a hassle as well I hope.

I've cut off circles on the back that would fit the beamsaber, and covered up the hole with styrene. I'll still add something interesting to the empty space, probably some rods and panels. I've also started some work on the sheath for the beamsaber, which you can see here (this is after I cut off the round sheath pegs, but before I covered them up):


Already looking much better, no?

Now you might be asking yourself why I'm not making two beam handles and sheaths at the same time. Well, there's an explanation for this. . .
This particular bust is of the Gundam RX-78-02 from the Gundam The Origin manga, the re-imagination of the original Gundam. In my research of this particular version of the Gundam, there was one glaring detail that kept popping up, that most definitely set it apart from the original version.

That being this:


(Images courtesy of whatever website watermark they have)
(These particular shots are of the Metal Build RX-78-02 which is also the Gundam The Origin version)

In this re-imagined story the Gundam is often seen sporting a swank shoulder cannon. As this little (big?) detail is what sets this version of the Gundam apart from practically all other versions I know, the decision to give this bust the very same shoulder cannon was quickly made.

Now I haven't started on the cannon yet at all, but I'm sure it'll be an interesting challenge!

2

Model In-Progress / YMS-09S Dom Schneider.

« on: June 25, 2011, 01:05:50 AM »

Hello!

What's a man to do when he'll be at his home away from home for the next three months, with not a whole lot going on?

Well that man should probably do some modeling.

I've settled on working on a new Dom prototype. The Dom is my favourite mobile suit from Gundam, and I think it might be fun to build one that might actually fit somewhere on the timeline of the Universal Century.

After all these years of just building gunpla out of the box, I'm basically leaping into the world of customization with this project. Hopefully I'll be able to pick up some neat tips and tricks along the way if you're willing to provide them :)

So, I started out trying to decide what the base kit would be, and I couldn't choose. So, after long deliberation, the base kit is . . .


That's right, not one, not two, but three different Dom kits! I've chosen to just mix and match parts instead of trying to heavily customize one kit specifically. The three kits are all from the 1/144HGUC line, and are respectively the Rick Dom II, Dom/Rick Dom and the Dom Tropen.

I want the suit to be a semi-plausible prototype, placing it on the Universal Century timeline sometime around the end of the One Year War, possibly as one of the contenders for the position that was ultimately won by the Rick Dom II.

What I've come up with looks to be a very melee oriented mobile suit, although I haven't really decided on the armaments yet (outside of two Heat Sabers).

First I quickly snapped together the three kits, not really doing any work on it aside from snapping it. On the next few pictures you'll see a lot of glaring nub marks and stuff, but those will obviously be taken care of. After building the three kits I tore them apart again, and started picking the parts that I liked the most.
I present to you some pictures of some of the mixed parts test fitted together (with the help of our favourite allies, blutack and masking tape), I've tentatively called it the YMS-09S Dom Schneider:



I suppose first I'll address the elephant in the room. Those arms don't seem to come from either of the three kits I proposed to use.. That's right, I confess. They're actually the arms of the 1/144HGUC Dreissen. The Dreissen is seen as the spiritual followup of the Dom, and I think the arms are pretty cool.
I could see the Neo-Zeon forces digging up some old schematics in U.C. 0088 and deciding that those arms might work on their new mobile suit

What else do we have.. The torso basically comes from the Rick Dom II. That is, the chest, skirt area and the upper legs/thighs. The lower legs come from the Dom/Rick Dom as does the head (it even has an articulated mono-eye!). The Dom tropen provides the shoulder-armour and the backpack/thrusters.

The legs look a little funny right now, but that's partly because the joints didn't match, and I kind of smushes the upper legs on there way behind the knee part, so the whole upper body is actually pushed a bit farther back than the lower legs.

Lots of stuff still to do, I'll try to make another post soon that outlines some of the ideas I'm kicking about!

I'd also love to hear any comments and suggestions anyone might have :)

3

Finishes, Decals, and Weathering / Panel line ink drying immediately?

« on: June 17, 2011, 05:02:36 AM »

Hi there!

I was testing a little bit of painting on a fairly easy subject, a solid coloured 1/144 beam saber.

The beam saber is a dark blue entirely, and I've since painted the handle white, and it looks pretty good to me. After painting I coated the handle with a layer of Tamiya Semi Gloss Clear (TS-79).

There's like two panels on the handle, so I figured I'd grab my GM01 Fine tipped Gundam Marker and fill them in. When I did that, and grabbed my cotton swab to wipe some excess off, I had found that the the black panel ink had already dried, and couldn't really be wiped off anymore. I achieved some success with a toothpick, but I've also chipped the paint a little bit when I wasn't being too careful.

The part was first primed with Tamiya Fine Surface Primer (Light Gray) and then sprayed white with Tamiya Matt White (TS-27).

Is it the semi gloss coat that sucked the panel ink in, should I have used a gloss coat first or no clear coat at all before the panel line?

4

Model In-Progress / Zeruel, the 14th Angel.

« on: June 13, 2011, 12:09:13 PM »

I was digging through my closet, and suddenly pulled out this kit from the dark cracks within.



I had completely forgotten that I had bought this kit years and years ago, and apparently I even sort of started some work on it. At least, it's been primed white..

I figured I need some practice and this seems like the perfect kind of kit to practice with. The body is two halves, so the seamline should be easy to fill, and the other parts will probably have to be glued on.

I'll probably just go for the standard colours, which means something like this:


I'm also playing around with the idea of doing the red orb in a metallic red colour.

Hopefully posting something here means I'll actually get around to doing it soon

5

Painting/Priming / Paint not covering well?

« on: June 05, 2011, 03:46:10 PM »

Hello!

I figured this would be a good spot to ask this.

I've recently built a 1/144HG Extreme Gundam, out-of-box. Since I'm starting to want to get more out of my kits, I've started doing a little more work on them.
For this kit, I did that by finally panel-lining it (with a black gundam panel marker); I'm very happy with how that turned out.

After spending some quality time up close and personal with the kit, the tiny but bare thrusters on the back started bothering me a little, and I decided to do a little detailing, and make the insides of those yellow.

So I go out and get this:

(and some masking tape)

I masked the thruster off, and used a fine brush to brush on some of the primer. The primer went on quite well, and looked like it covered the surfaces quite well; so far so good.

I then applied some of the yellow, with a little bit of thinner. This seemed to go alright, but it wasn't on thick enough and I could still make out the grey underneath, so I figured I'd do another layer.
Now I've got something that looks like this:

(Initially it even looked better, just not thick enough: https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-ksnCSE29l6M/Tev8O_rYKYI/AAAAAAAAgag/vakO0ORas-0/s400/1000000221.JPG )

The more I seem to try and paint on, the less it seems to adhere, particularly in the thruster on the left. Even unthinned, I get the same result, and it just looks like a mess.

Anything I could do to still get this to look good (save using an airbrush or spray paint)?

PS. Bonus pic of Extreme Gundam rocking out, because it is extreme. Love, Shark.