The above are the HG releases, but it didn’t take too long for them to release a 1/48 mega size scale:

Here’s some stuff from the Gunpla Builder’s section, some of which were published in Hobby Japan magazine:

And here’s some Limited edition stuff on sale for the Gunpla Expo in Akihabara. Too bad I couldn’t attend it. From what I saw there’s a RG Strike Rogue, a pink Bearguy, clear RG RX-78 & Exia, a shiny AGE and PG RX-78. Hmm, not so interesting…

But here’s something I might look forward to: weapons set in 1/144 scale. Currently there’s the gattling guns for the Unicorn & some Zaku machine guns. Also, a fancy display base will also be on sale soon. It seems to fit 1/144 scale models, but it can expand to accomodate the smaller MGs (Wing series, Crossbone).

Next is the Gundam Unicorn section. From the HGUC series, there’s the Zee Zulu and Dra-C, and you can see them in action on Vol.4 of Gundam Unicorn. Hopefully Bandai will release a remake of the Kapool. There’s also clear versions of the Sinanju and Ksatriya, but I’m not sure if they’re limited items or not.

Then there’s the MG Full Armor Unicorn. The amount of weapons attached is bordering on the ridiculous. For sure assembling all of them will keep you occupied for quite some time.

Moving on to the Gundam SEED section, where there’s been a sort of a revival. The first few SEED Gundams (Strike, Aegis, Buster, Duel, Blitz) will be re-released with some minor changes: 1) The box art will be different; 2) an adapter peg for the Bandai Action  Base will be included; 3) the color of the plastic will be slightly different; 4) marking stickers will be attached.

But the main attraction is undoubtedly the RG Freedom. If I didn’t already have a MG Freedom, I would have bought this RG version. I’ll probably skip this one and wait what’s next on the RG production line. A Zeta perhaps?

Here’s some B-club releases: Turn-X, Nemo & Gelgoog

And finally here’s some pics from the Gundam Wing section. Headline news is the already released MG Sandrock, which looks cool. Might get one in the future. But my main interest is in the upcoming MG Heavyarms. I already have the HG 1/100 from the Endless Waltz OVA, but I’m definitely getting this MG version. What’s next on the line? A MG Tallgeese perhaps?

And there you have it. All the Gunpla-related items from the 51st All Japan Model & Hobby Show. I’ll follow it up with photos from other exhibits in my next post.

Using that as a point of reference and inspiration, I added some detail-up parts from M.S.G and painted digital camo for my own kit. As for the building part, it required a bit more planning than when building the RG Strike. The parts that needed seam-lines fixing are the head, shoulders, forearms, calves and the shoulder cannons & rifle.

For painting, I decided to try out painting digital camo on the shoulders, forearms, hip and calf armors. First I sprayed German Gray (Mr. Color Spray No.40) on those parts, then I added masking tape that was cut in squares. For the 2nd layer, I sprayed Navy Blue (Tamiya spray can AS-8). I was pleasantly surprised at how well it went. For decals, I used a mix of aircraft & Gundam waterslide decals. And finally for weathering, I used silver enamel paint to add scratch marks on the parts painted in dark blue. For the parts painted in light blue, I used dark brown + red enamel paints  to simulate rust.

As for the kit itself, it comes with a shield, machine gun and a beam sabre mounted on the left forearm. Also included are 6 kinds of hands and strangely Bandai provided some kind of holder for those hands from the runner parts. The arms can bend 180 degrees but sadly the fatty fat legs can only bend 90 degrees. Overall its a great looking kit that was pretty fun to build. Coming up next will be the GM Wagtail.

Anyway here’s the list of all 16 types: You nay notice they’re all mobile suits or characters from the 1st Gundam series.

1) RX-78-2 Gundam

2) Guncannon

3) GM

4) Zaku II

5) Char’s Zaku II

6) Z’gok

7) Char’s Z’gok

8) Gouf

9) Acguy

10) Dom

11) Char’s Gelgoog

12) Amuro Ray

13) Sayla Mass

14) Char Aznable

15) Gihren Zabi

16) Ramba Ral

In the end I only managed to get 13 types from the supermarket. I was missing the Gelgoog and two Z’goks. Eager to have all 16, I searched & bought the other 3 from Yahoo Auctions (without the soft drink thankfully). Although up to 3x(!) the normal price, but at least now I have all 16.

So I decided to have fun with my new camera and an ancient lens so here’s the outcome:

Here’s all 16 of them

Just the mobile suits

Federation suits

Now with more bokeh

Can our heroes get out of this sticky situation? Stay tuned next week

Maybe not. Zeig Zeon!

Band of Zeon

Amphibious suits

Gelgoog & Dom

They’re mine…all mine….

So who’s the father?

Pilot & his Gouf

Must be the beans I had last night…

Where’s waldo?

So there you have it. They’re colorful little things, but there’s not much else you can do with it. Now I have to think about those bottles of Pepsi in my room.

]]> http://kusakusa.wordpress.com/2011/07/20/gundam-bearbrick/feed/ 1 kusakusa http://kusakusa.wordpress.com/2011/05/25/rg-aile-strike-gundam/ http://kusakusa.wordpress.com/2011/05/25/rg-aile-strike-gundam/#comments Wed, 25 May 2011 03:12:41 +0000 kusakusa http://kusakusa.wordpress.com/?p=2091 ]]> I bought this out of curiosity actually, as I never had an RG model kit yet. The other two RG kits looked interesting, but I was looking for something else other than a Gundam or a Zaku. And burning with curiosity, I immediately started with building it as soon as I got home. This thing boasts a complete inner frame, although most of it already came pre-assembled on the runner, kinda like the legs for the RX-78 Ver1.5 and OYW versions. When put together, the inner frame does look a bit thin and fragile on its own. But when you put the armor on, it all starts to look magnificent.  The amount of parts are staggering, but at times felt a bit unnecessary.

As for the color scheme, at first I thought of sticking with the original colors, but then I decided against it. Looking for some inspiration for a custom color scheme, I browsed through a hobby magazine. A white & grey color scheme came to mind, before I decided for white, grey & yellow colors, just like the Nu-Gundam. Hardly original, I know. Heck, I’ll just call mine the Nu-Strike. Having decided on the colors for the body, I opted for an aircraft kinda feel for the Aile Pack. I decided to try for a camouflage look using different shades of gray spray cans I have available.

The kit comes with decals on a blue-colored sheet. Don’t be fooled, they’re not water-slide decals, just plain ol’ stickers. I didn’t use any of them, except for some of the shiny bits. For the most part, I used my inventory of water-slides, but I didn’t have many in 1/144 scale. Some of them were old, and tore quite easily. So I had to be extra careful.

My final comments on this kit: it looks absolutely gorgeous. Its design and range of movement are reminiscent of the PG version.The details are intricate and color separation is well thought out. I can’t think of any negative comments about this kit at the moment. If this were a review, I’d give it a 9/10. I’m very impressed with it and hopefully other RG releases will be just as good, or even better. The only down side is, after being served with such a treat, building my next HG kit would feel like a total downgrade.

Master grades. On display was the MG Delta Plus. Not my cup of tea, still prefer the Delta Gundam design. There’s also MG 00 Raiser, complete with LED gimmicks and clear effect parts. Still no sign of MG Heavyarms Custom though, but the next in line is the MG Sandrock. Oh, and the MG Epyon didn’t look as bad as I first thought, but still I’ll skip this one.

HGUCs. Coming out soon: the GM Cannon II. It looks fat with all that armor, but still looks appealing. Might consider getting this one. Then there’s the GM III, which looks like a poor man’s Jegan and it probably is. And back from the 1970′s: the HGUC Dreissen, with bell-bottoms which will put a Dom to shame. Not exactly UC, but Master Gundam will have his white horse to ride. HGFC (1/144) Master Gundam will be released with his horse, Fuunsaiki.

Real Grades. RG no.4 will be the Zaku II. Surprise, surprise! More specifically, it’s the space type MS-06F so it will only have the standard weapons: bazooka, machine gun & heat hawk. I really don’t like the different patches of green they used, but if you’re gonna paint it, it won’t matter.

Figurise. Did I spell that right? Anyway, I’m not really into it, but worth mentioning are the first two Kamen Riders, ichi-go and ni-go, will be released.

Did I miss out anything? As usual, I’ll post the pro modellers work in my next posting. Until then, enjoy the following pics

And then there’s an assortment of mechas, including Super Robot Wars, Armored Core, Patlabor & Frame Arms:

There’s also these Hoi Hoi san figures:

And some other figures:

Next up is the Revoltech section. At the Tokusatsu (特撮) series section, they had  several already released and soon-to-be released lineups on display, including Ironman & Jack Sparrow. I wanted to get my hands on the Skeleton Warrior but as luck would have it, it was sold out. They also had this promo where you buy a Tokusatsu series figure for 3000yen and you get the chance to win another random one with a spin of the dice. But having already bought Alien Warrior and Gamera recently, there wasn’t anything that I was interested in (except the Skeleton Warrior which was sold out).

For the Yamaguchi lineup there was the Jehuty from Zone of the Enders:

And several Gainax-related figures:

Some pics from the Yamato Macross series:

These are some pics from the Figma section. I’m curious how the Robocop figure will turn out.

Some Marvel  & DC Comic characters:

And some Panty & Stocking figures, including Pantymus and Stockingtron from the Transformers parody episode.

The very few Gunplas that were on display that day:

Mechs from Full Metal Panic and The Big O:

Some finely detailed monster figures:

And creepy heads:

Some random figures:

Some other stuff in and around the area. The pic on the right is a scale model of the Tower of the Sun in Banpaku Kouen, Osaka.

Remember the boob mousepads I showed some while back? Well they came up with another variation: ass mouspads

And if you’re expecting some cosplay pics, sorry to disappoint. I just couldn’t bother queuing up to take their photos, especially those ladies with more skin on show. Here’s just some random shots I took:

It seems Dom and Gyan lost their inner frames:

As a consolation, here’s some pictures of proper models (race queens maybe?) at the Evangelion section. There was a race car and bike painted in Eva unit-01 colors there as well.

And that’s it for this years Winter Wonfes. I was walking around looking for some stuff to buy, and was quite tempted to buy the Peacewalker by Playarts at 5000yen. But in the end I decided against it. Tried looking for some rare gunlpa kits as well, but as expected most were sold at a premium price. In the end, I bought a 1/6 scale sniper rifle from Yellow Submarine. I figured it would fit my MG Dom which I plan to build (someday).

1. Snapfit your model
Sounds simple enough, just follow the instruction manual. This is where you get acquainted with your model kit. As you build, you should take note of which parts need to have the seam-line fixed, which parts need coloring, masking or modification. Since I usually disassemble the kit again after snap-fitting, its better not to snap-fit the parts too tightly.

2. Disassemble and apply modification/fixes
After snap-fitting and identifying which parts need fixing or modification, I disassemble the kit and sort according to color. Then I do the following to the individual parts:
i) Clean up the nip marks
ii) Fix seam lines
iii) Apply structural modifications (battle damage, cutting off parts etc.)
iv) Mask parts that require different color

3. Priming and painting
For priming, I use a spray can (Mr. White Surfacer etc.) and I usually do it for parts in which the molded color is totally different from what I want. For example, if the original plastic is molded in red, and I wanted to paint it white. So its better to cover up the red with a layer of primer & then paint it white, rather than painting many layers of white color to cover up the red (in which case it will most probably end up pink). There’s other reasons to prime your whole kit: it supposedly makes the paint stick easier to the kit surface & also allows you to identify scratches or imperfections on your kit. But for economical reasons, I use the primer sparingly.
For painting, I mostly use spray cans (Mr. Color, Tamiya) and hand painting. Before spraying, I attach the model parts to a bamboo stick and then stick them on to a polystyrene block (the white packaging stuff inside boxes). Then depending on weather, I do my spraying outside, layer by layer.

4. Apply decals
After all the parts are painted with the appropriate color, its time to apply decals. I started out using the stickers that came with the kit, but now I use mostly waterslide decals. For me it’s important to match the decal with the overall color scheme of the kit. So if I wanted a weathered and battle damaged look, I would also apply some scratches to the decal (subtly, of course).
Some people would recommend spraying a layer of gloss topcoat before applying decals, but I skip this step. Instead I apply the gloss topcoat AFTER I apply the decals. This is to protect your decals from the next step, which is panel lining and weathering.

5. Add panel lines
I already wrote an explanation on how to apply panel lines in my previous post. Also in the previous step, it’s better to use gloss coat before applying panel lines because applying flat topcoat might cause unwanted smears or smudges that are harder to wipe off.

6. Add weathering effects
This step is optional, depending on what final outcome of the kit that you want. For weathering, I usually apply the wash method using enamel paints. Basically I just apply a layer of enamel paint all over the kit surface (including those with decals), and this also fills the seam lines. So if I applied this wash method, then I skip step 5.
Other weathering effects you can do include:
i) Dry brushing
ii) Add paint chipping effects
iii) Apply touch up using weathering pastels

7. Final topcoat and assembly
After you’re done with all the previous steps, its time to apply a final layer of topcoat; gloss, semi-gloss or flat depends on you. You can either apply the topcoat on the separate parts or you can do it after you assemble your kit. And that’s it for the building part

8. Photography
What you want to do with your kit after you’re done with it is up to you. You can play with it all you want, its YOUR kit. But for me, I take photos of them and post them here. Even if you don’t take photos of them, posing your kits for display is important too. Too often I see gunpla kits in Barbie-doll poses and that just makes me sad.