Zaku WIP 3...A leggy update!

Well this will be my first official use of a computer this weekend. Its nice to take a break from them for a few days.

I did manage to get some hours in working on my Zaku though. I decided with helpful insight from my wife that this Zaku being a sniper type would not be loaded down with a lot of extra weight and armor. That being said the Johnny Ridden custom I am using as a base is a very well armored version. After a little bit (a lot actually) of cutting I have completed the leg, most of the waist and chest. I am only cutting large sections out where I can expose cool under armor details that I will make the most of by adding a lot of color when I paint the frame. Instead of doing a 1 color frame like I do on a lot of my other Gundam. I always appreciate the people that paint every detail under the frame, but once all the armor covers it up what was the point of all that work? In this case I will be able to see it, and since it is for a competition I want to go that extra mile.

Enough typing... you are here for Gundam! I will let the pictures talk through side by side photos.

Only thing of note on the above photo. I will be adding a small piece that will cover the hole I cut out...a bunch of work just to glue something over it...oh well.

I completely removed the lower chest armor, and in case you are wondering why all the holes...lowers the weight of course :)...I cut away most of the lower sections of waist armor also.

I haven't made a final decision on the middle section of the chest yet. There is no way to cut away anything with out exposing the cock pit, don't want that so I have to figure that one out a little more. I am at the point where I need to work on the decals of the RG RX-78, and have barely started on my Resin Booster Kit. A lot of kits in a small time I know but a 6 month deadline is what it is and 3 kits with a ton of customization doesn't leave a lot of time to mess around.

As always thank you for looking!!!

20,000 hits..... Thank you.

Well its just a small post to thank all my readers. I really do appreciate you. The fact that people are looking at my work pushes me everyday to improve upon the last one.

Again thank you for stopping by.

RG RX-78 Painted, decal time.

I took full advantage of the one sunny day this weekend, and painted my butt off! I even managed to reassemble, and future the entire thing. I swear, these RG's have as many pieces if not more than most MG's! I actually had to use the instructions to put him all back together. Almost sounds like a Humpty Dumpty thing. LOL....Below you can see my super luxurious paint station.

And here you can see what a 10 color, 1/144 RG Gundam looks like. Some of the parts are so very tiny, its a pain to take apart and scary because the last thing I want to do is lose a piece.

I really like how the colors came out. I was worried that this would not come together well, but in the end it really did.

Still need to get some panel lining done, and a million decals, but that's a few days worth of work to get done, and I will take my time. This is after all for a competition. And I like to win things!

As always thank you for looking.

MG Johnny Ridden's Zaku II WIP 1

All right my first entry into the 2012 Mecha Competition is moving along nicely. I have always been a slow snap fitter; and this build is no exception to that.

First I am going to show you how I connected my aftermarket thrusters where the original thrusters were. I am always seeing these on finished products, but no one has really shown how they do it.
First thing I do is figure out exactly what the stock thruster is going to connect to and how. This one is pretty easy its just a ball joint.
Once I figure all that out I remove said piece.
BAM gone!
Now I drill a hole just a little bit bigger than the nub from the thruster.
I like to use Gel super glue, but any adhesive that will work on both the plastic and the metal will do just fine. And below you can see everything all joined up.
And the almost finished leg. Just a few more things to add. Then a few pictures of the upper body. As you can see I traded the spiked shoulder for a dual shield version. 90% of the time people add another spiked shoulder. This being a sniper so not a front line fighter I thought I could make some modifications to the shoulder shields to give him more stability.

As always thanks for stopping by.

RG RX-78 ready for paint.

A fast update to the progress of 1 of my 3 entries into the 2012 Mecha contest. The RX-78 is ready for primer then color! I had previously snap fitted this one, so all I had to do was some break down of some seriously tiny pieces. Then separate them into bins and chose the 10 colors for a freaking 1/144 scale gundam. This thing doesn't even sit more than 8-10 inches high!
Here I am separating the pieces into their little sections of my plastic containers.

All done, and the colors are set also.

As you can see its not a drastic color scheme, but its a huge change from the stock colors and a lot of little colors to be done. So many color changes and tiny pieces always make these real grades a pain to do. Oh well its worth it.

As always thank you for looking and if you feel up to it come Join us at MAC and bring you Gunpla abilities with you! The link is on the right side of my blog.

2012 Mecha Competition hosted by MAC!!!

Thought I would share my entries (so far) for the 2012 Mecha competition. The first one is a huge resin kit the MSA-0011LBST1 Booster Gundam! This guy is going to be a lot of fun to build.

Then we have my Zaku Group Build (GB) entry. The MS-06R-2 Zaku II Johnny Riddens Custom. Another huge and really fun project. This is being built as a custom sniper and I have some really cool ideas going for this one. As part of the Ghost Squad with some great modelers! Its going to be a top notch team.
Had to get a piece from my friend Decay so a swap was done there, thankfully both of us got what we sent out. Gunpla.

My final entry will be a RG RX-78, I am going to do a full custom paint job for this one.

As I said in my New Years post 2012 is going to be a great year for Gunpla and MAC!!!

Resin ELS QAN[T]

New Year is here, and so I start with the initial update to a project I have been working on for a few days now. Sorry for the lack of actual WIP pictures, but this being my first ever resin kit I have been focusing on not screwing it up. I really don't know how I would fix a major mistake so I can't afford to make one.

Any way this kit has been a lot of fun to build 100% different from building a plastic kit. I have all the pinning, putty, and sanding done now. I degreased all the pieces after I took these photos. Now I am preparing for some priming before paint.

I ordered paints, have yet to hear anything back about my order so there goes that. Needless to say I will not be ordering anything from this company again.

The back pack on this guy is awesome, the details are really well done, the little nubs are connection points for the clear pieces. I pinned 90% of all the pieces to ensure a strong connection, but the clear pieces are too thin to pin, so I will be using gel super glue for them.







That's were I am at. This kit is a non-scale kit but looks really close to a 1/144 if you ask me. The initial clean up was really easy honestly very little putty work was needed to remove any blemishes. I will update again soon.