MC Hi-Nu Gundoom isn’t just for show…

If third party kits make you seethe with anger, you might as well stop reading now.

I’ve been working on this kit for awhile now (since the damn thing came out) and I’ve finally managed to get to the point where I want to show it off a little. It’s for another person, but regardless of that I’m really digging how well it all came together (on top of teaching me the values of masking and waiting for the paint to fully cure before removing the tape). The final kit will have a flat finish, and I’ll be sure to toss up pictures of it rocking the ‘Soul Cleaver’ once I touch up the beam sabers to match the Nu Gundam (pink instead of blue).

Given the bootleg nature of the kit, this thing really comes very close to hitting Bandai’s level of quality in general and I’m of the mindset it far surpasses their own 1/144 version of the Hi-Nu. The extra detail is excellent to see at this level and considering the price (33USD) I wish Bandai went to this sort of extent with their own kits. The wings of light on top of coming with waterslide decals is outright awesome and makes it something unique. The color separation leaves a little to be desired but since MC doesn’t have the luxury of Bandai’s injection molding it’s expected to have to deal with some areas needing a little work. In any case, if you can enjoy a kit for what it is I would say check it out and you likely won’t be disappointed.

In unrelated news, the FAQ/How-To page is finally really undergoing revision. Updates on general assembly, tools and painting will all be included, so you can look for most if not all of the current stuff there to be replaced.

Borrowing a page from Gaijin Gunpla’s book.

Let’s take a look at what’s on the work bench (see, I changed a word) for this month. Most of these are very close to being finished, it’s just a matter of having nice weather last long enough on top of finding the free time while handling school and work pretty much full time on top of other social obligations. More hours in the day would be nice please okay thanks!

Anyway!

First up, for Reddit’s r/gunpla groupbuild I broke out the Real Grade Zaku II I’ve had sitting around for a really long time and got to work on that:

I think I have too much white, so I’ll probably be taking it apart to change the top white on the chest, the back of the shield, the front skirts and the bits on the forearms. Also, I’ve managed to misplace two parts ALREADY…how does this happen even when I work quickly on a kit? I really need to fix this issue before I get in to building more things, I think it’s easily become my biggest issue.

PG Strike is still undergoing work…

Priming all of the white parts for their coat of pure white followed by pearl clear to really make them shine with the metallics, but this is still shaping up to be a nice little build. It’s for a friend, but I’m sure an Aile kit is somewhere down the line as well.

PG Wing Zero Custom has been in limbo for a bit now.

This is due to money, as things go sometimes. 30$ for LEDs for the wings alone, and I need more paint to match it (this is the last project I use Mr.Color paints on, more on that when I have money to dump in to refreshing my supplies) which adds more to it…plus I need to order 4 more microswitches for the rifle halves+wings. Luckily those are only 1.50USD each. At least all the time spent not working on it has led to me having a maybe perfect plan of attack for how I’m going to handle the wings!

The Crossbone Brothers have a new toy each.

Both work splendidly and will certainly look better once they’re painted up to match their respective suits as well as the Black/Red Crossbone getting touches up proper and whatnot. Also, the ol’ Crossbone XM-X7 got his rifle touched up to match the shine.

I still love how well that weapon turned out. I’ve managed to get a friend to at least give gunpla a shot as well, despite them not knowing anything about the universe and all that jazz- with none other than the MG Red Frame Kai.

Mine isn’t exactly stock at this point and I think I’ve finally come up with a decent plan of attack for it. Ideally I’ll be done with the other things that have paint on them before I go and start hammering this out though. You can see I kind of forgot about a few parts on the feet as well, which I’ll have to take care of.

These are just the tip of the iceberg, too. Those of you who have been around for awhile will probably remember the MG Shenlong, MG Deathscythe (and the HELL conversion project), the Vicious Project Hi-Nu, PG Red Frame, MG Wing TV Ver…the only kits of my list of things to get eventually is the HGUC Jesta, MG Epyon, the MG 00 Seven Swords and the sexy sexy sexy MG Unicorn Full Armor Ver. Ka…I’ve got more than enough stuff to keep me occupied for quite some time for the foreseeable future!

Kitbash is continuing.

I still need to mask and paint the blues on the skirt armor, legs, head and forearms along with the chromed orange for the GN drive strips/chest orb/mask, but this is rapidly approaching completion. Not pictured: MG ReZEL backpack parts have their white base coat, ran out of what I had mixed up and didn’t feel like doing more after painting all the parts I did earlier!

Let’s try making semi-frequent updates.

Don’t know how long this will last, but since a huge snowstorm is coming (it would seem that someone heard Z and I hating on winter) I might wind up with some time to actually work on my kits.

Still a decent amount of work left on ReZEL, the entire backpack and rifle but at least the blue is coming out nicely on it. I have to touch the crotch hook up (I’m not as bold as GaiGun to remove the whole thing) so the line doesn’t take a weird bend but so far so good.

The Astraea is finally starting to look like more than a random hodgepodge of suits though both of these projects will be stalling out as far as applying finer detail goes since I managed to run out of masking tape. Mental note: keep more of that stuff around in the future.

Dear winter,

You suck.

Still out of sorts, so I haven’t been doing much lately. V-Dash has a few pictures taken, but to be honest the kit itself is one of those that is great to work on but when it comes to posing and photos there’s only so much you can do especially if you don’t want to damage the paint or anything. I’ll try to have the page done soonish, sill.

ReZEL is coming along now, it’s time to start masking areas off to paint the blue accents and work on the backpack and weapons.

The Astraea kitbash has become a monster of it’s own. I think I’ve finally hit the point where it’s time to start puttying all the parts together and painting things. For the curious, the total sword count is 19 blades. In other gunpla news, I wound up with the RG Zaku II and MG Red Frame after going to Ohayocon this weekend…so much for not buying more kits. This must be how busterbeam feels.

The backlog never ends.

Just to give you a good idea of how far I’m behind on SHF reviews and Gunpla projects I give you these two pictures:

Gunpla backlog

Pile of SHFs.

Will I ever catch up?

Juggling act.

Progress is getting made on everything, despite mother nature’s best attempts to hold me up as much as possible.

V-Dash is coming along great. I still have all of the other weapons to build and paint, not to mention decal everything. But I think now that I have this much together I can really focus on ReZEL and the Astraea kitbash. I’m VERY pleased with how this turned out so far.

ReZEL’s parts are all prepped for priming and painting, just need to find the free time to get that done. I even have the primer mixed and ready thanks to having some Mr. Spare bottles now (another awesome purchase care of Sonar).

This thing has been tweaked a little bit and is on my list of stuff to prime at the same time as ReZEL. So far so good!

WiSSP: 1/144 Kshatriya 2

Did a little more work on this, actually near done testfitting now but I’ll just make this post about the arms head and torso for now. You might notice that some parts have not been cut off the trees but this is because there are a lot of things planned for this kit and honestly, I don’t feel like doing the extra work for something that probably won’t be on the kit anyway (unless it’s for the purpose of getting the basics of the kit done).

There is really nothing interesting to say about the head. The monoeye moves, but I’m going to be replacing it anyway.

The torso is pretty wide and fairly chunky with a more MG-like construction. I’m looking forward to the trim and how well I’ll be able to handle it. I have some new ideas in mind that might yield some interesting results so we’ll see how that goes.

The arms aren’t too complex, though the way they handled the wrist cuffs is…eh to me. Having that split down the middle probably won’t look too great but then again I have been known to be wrong. The arm has a 90 degree range of movement. The biggest turnoff on this area for me is the hands, you don’t get any open are splayed hands with it. Not a huge deal since Kshatriya only has beam sabers for weapons to hold, but still.

The binders are a cakewalk, just repeat the same thing four times. On a final note…

Meet the CRABSHATRIYA.

WiSSP: 1/144 Kshatriya

Yeah, you read right. A gunpla post. Started working on this big guy tonight since I wanted to get the tedious part out of the way before anything else.

Yeah, I migrated to the floor to work on this one so I could watch some TV while working. The carpet in this room isn’t too shaggy so there’s no worry of lost parts. Anyhow, HUGE. The size of the binders (Which are easily the biggest thing on the runners for Kshatriya) kind of took me by surprise when I opened the box the first time. With all of these things extended and posed, I’m pretty sure this thing is going to have to go on the top shelf due to size alone. Of course, I fully plan on making it worthy of going up to the same shelf as Sinanju…

24 Funnels with 3 nubs each, meaning repeating the same process 72 times. All in all it took me about an hour to sand them down proper (the nice file I have for this is my new best friend) and get the binders and inner part of the binders that they attach to sanded down. Thusfar, everything is looking pretty hunky dory.

Also related to gunpla-building news, some of you may notice the new addition to the top row. It’s not a Kamen Rider page (I’m working on it), but a Commissions page! I was really slacking on getting that up, but maybe now that it’s finally there we might see some new and interesting stuff from other people.

What I’ve been Doing

Firstly, gunpla building is on hold for a bit, as stated so many times, airbrush. Two weeks from now? Next week? Who knows. It will be soon, but life is hectic and it’s hard to pull the trigger on a 270$ purchase sometimes. However, it is not hard to throw down for some 40$ purchases, even if they total up.

I got in to the SH Figuarts line this month with the release of their Son Gohan figure and at the same time decided I’d get myself the Son Goku and Kamen Rider Kuuga (Ultimate form) They went for about 25$ a pop but were entirely worth the purchase price. While a diStage or two would be very helpful for fighting poses I’ve definitely gotten enough of a feel for them while playing around with them and I’m really impressed with the quality. Expect a page some time after this week since I’m currently working ten days in a row, which tends to leave one without much energy for doing photoshoots or the like.

In other news, a good friend of mine picked me up the Real Grade RX-78-2 model at SDCC, so that will be here sooner or later (and for a change, I plan to paint it in normal colors!) along with the special edition ANA G30 RX-78-2 care of Rob over at ASM. That will be getting straight built, so if nothing else you can look forward to some pictures of that! Until then, I leave you with some more Figuarts pictures.