Combo is continuing.

More work done. While the knee doesn’t close all the way is as, I plan on sanding down the LED’s bulb some once it goes in to final assembly to ensure that it closes properly since it’s the peg where the B2 and B4 parts come together cause the Knee to not slide back the rest of the way. To facilitate keeping the transformation intact for this area I sanded down the back edge of the green areas (the red line) and the top of the K22 part (yellow line). I also sanded away a fair amount of space on the inside of the B2 and B4 parts to make sure that sliding the part up and down didn’t damage the wires. The wire will be run up through the frame and joined with the wires from the thigh LEDs. From there they’ll go up the back of the back of the model (wires hidden by the rear skirts) and joined with the other wires in the center of the chest. For now I plan on making it so there are only two wires+batteries inside the cockpit, so I’ll have to merge everything elsewhere on the kit, hopefully in the space that opens up just above the Unicorn’s waist when in destroy mode.

Hi again.

It’s been awhile. Life has been busy, you guys know how it can go sometimes. Seems like things are hitting that point for a lot of us lately (Z, Busterbeam, ASM and myself to name a few) but I’ve had some free time lately to work on more than a few things.

Let’s get down to a few other things first. Robot4Less started their affiliate program, which I joined since their prices aren’t too bad and they have a decent selection of models. There won’t really be any changes to the site, though when new kits get announced I’ll likely plug their preorder page and whatever I’m working on currently will probably be linked at the end of a blog post. Since I do make commissions for whenever someone buys something via my link, that money can go right back towards models and supplies and that’s always a good thing, yeah?

Another idea a few friends of mine and I have be rolling around: Is there any interest in a stream for Gunpla building? It’s fairly easy to set up and while gunpla might not be the most exciting thing in the world to watch it does present a good chance to do one of my favorite things- bounce ideas around and in general talk about gunpla and what people are up to in regards to their own builds. Let me know what you guys think.

NOW, for the real reason everyone is here: Robots. Wing Zero is on hold because surprise, wiring those wings is exactly as frustrating as you’d expect. Combine that with a few other weird problems I’ve run in to (like how to put the LEDs so they don’t shine through the plastic- black paint is out because it’d look horrible when anyone looked at the underside of the wing) and you’ve got me just not wanting to fuss with that kit for awhile. But I’ve been hard at work on something else.

These are primed now, this was the last picture I took of them beforehand though. These alone took a good few days to finish because I’m being so picky about the seam lines. One of the Bazookas still has a seam line on top of it, but I’ll have to either putty it or just let it go because I’ve almost hit the exhaustion point as far as sand, prime, sand, prime, sand prime goes for these things.

With the weapons mostly taken care of for the time being (because pacing is key and I don’t want to burn myself out), I started to work on various parts of the actual mobile suit. The head was easy enough to put an LED in and keep the transformation just fine which was totally expected thanks to the ample amount of room it has in it. The light  bleeding problem will be taken care of when I paint everything and if that doesn’t do it, I’ll switch to a battery with a little less juice.

The legs require a little more creative thinking, something I’m sure the rest of this little project will too. A big part of figuring out how to do this is going to be deciding what parts of the frame are superfluous and cutting them down to make sure the parts can slide around the LED without the wires or anything getting in the way. Here you can see that I carved out a small square of space for the 1.8mm LED to fit (purchased from the ever-reliable modeltrainsoftware). At first that was all I did, but the wires from the LED kept the armor from closing all the way so I had to cut away more of the frame’s part so the wires could move to the inside and not screw the armor’s movement up. The thighs will also have to use two LEDs, one for the front and one for the back, since one LED can’t shine bright enough to light the entire area up.

Again, you can see the light bleeding though the white plastic but it still looks pretty decent as is. The hardest part will be coming up next (the knee) but as I look at it I think I’ve already got a pretty good idea as to how I’m going to handle it. It’ll involve a lot of cutting of both the LED and the wires but you do what you have to do. I’d like to have everything running to one central battery but that may be a bit too much to hope for. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.

‘Til next time!

Little stuff.

The priming section of the new tutorial is up!

I also finished this thing, finally. I need to sand off the overspray on the bottom area since I forgot to mask that area off properly when I sprayed the chest area.

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?

Photodump: RX-0/A Unicorn ASSAULT Gundam

Old project, made back in april-may. This model took me about a month to complete due to the fact I hand painted everything on this suit. It was the first time going to such lengths with hand painting (the most I had done before that was a OYW Gundam, which didn’t get such an extensive job done) so there are a few flaws with this kit but things are rarely perfect anyway. Anyway, hit the jump for the pictures!

Gundam Expo stuff

Care of Rob over at American Salaryman, who is updating from his phone like a champ. Thanks a ton!

• PG 00 Raiser in November
• Gundam Unicorn OVA, 6 50 minute episodes
• Unicorn and Destory mode Unicorn HGUCs
• MG Astray Blue Frame

While the PG 00 news and Unicorn OVA have me pretty excited, not much else so far. I wonder if Bandai will have a preorder bonus again for the 00 Raiser like they did with the PG Red Frame…? I’d prefer if there was an option for the Seven Sword system myself, but who knows. The HGUC Unicorns should be interesting as well, I might pick those up to compare them with the MG counterpart.

In other news, got Sazabi’s pictures taken and the review written up, just need to put the two together so I can be one step closer to being caught up.

Group photo now!

Due to the marked lack of action around here, Here’s a picture of the ever reliable gunpla shelf (click for high resolution). I think the majority them have a post about them and if they don’t it’s something I’m working on fixing. You can also see that Nu is close to being finished! Then it’s just a matter of time until Sword Impulse. Will probably make a WIP post for Nu tomorrow to show most of the construction.

Oh yeaaaaah!

After ENTIRELY too much time, I’m finally finished with my biggest battle to date. May I present…

The RX-0 Absolution! I started this big recolor project back in APRIL, meaning this model definitely took me the longest to finish. Considering all the work I had to do, it’s no real surprise…

Anyway, while this picture is a distant shot I wanted to showcase everything. Aside from the inner frame of the model the vast majority of this model was meticulously painted and decaled though some parts turned out better than others…overall I’m still very proud of it.

The main body, unequipped. That’s the stand from the Gundam Mk2 (which has yet to even be started), I thought it would look nice for the pictures. I really need to make myself a nice lightbox.

Closer shot of the chest. Yeah, I missed a corner. Fixed it later but I’m out of topcoat and HLJ has it on backorder. ((( You can also see I didn’t have a decal pushed down all the way, which resulted in that ugly white spot on the arm. I’m not sure what to do about that but I’m sure I’ll think of something.

Boosters! The NT-D mode has plenty of them and loves to show ‘em off. Chrome/metallic red. The brightness serves as a nice contrast.

I am now convinced I need a better way to shave down nubs than a hobby knife because I hate hate HATE looking at those ugly ass marks on the gatling guns. Anyway,  these are the primary weapons for this particular mobile suit. There’s another set on the other arm. What can I say, I was always a Heavyarms fan.

The shield clips on to the bit that connects the gatling to the arm, so there was no reason to not put it together. The topcoat betrays me again and I don’t know why. I’m sure it’s my fault, but I think the black/blue/grey come together very well on it.

Full load. I had ‘All-Out Offensive’ in mind with this project. I had originally planned on rigging up a second shoulder mounted bazooka but couldn’t find a suitable epoxy.  It doesn’t matter too much since the arms have so much weight on the already adding more would be a bad idea…it can barely hold the arms up!

Pew pew pew beam magnum. The body is done with flat black, with gunmetal for the ammo pack and chrome for the barrel and rail that slides to drop out the ammo.

Bazooka! Not something you want to be on the recieving end of. You can’t see it, but I painted the missiles flat red and the ammo pack in gunmetal, just like the beam magnum’s.

“Absolution…launch!”

So, there you have it. My biggest gunpla project to date (and probably ever- I’m not sure if there’s another suit out there that I want to put this much effort in to again), and it’s one I wanted to do since my original Unicorn Gundam. It feels nice to finally do it and get mostly good results out of it! The deals look much better than the stickers and where a lot less of a pain to put on but they did require additional patience since I had to keep getting warm water over and over. Every little bit of extra works just makes the model that much better though, and I’ve always been a believer in that you get out of it what you put in to it. I came away with some good experience from this model and while I’m not sure if I’ll be going this in depth any more I’m sure that painting my kits to cover clip marks (something I never was originally concerned with) is now going to be commonplace.

I’ll probably make an update before I start working on the Gundam Mk2 since I’m trying to avoid getting burnt out but we’ll see what the topic will be! ‘Till next time!