Ryurai Kai Suppression Vanguard custom

Took around 5 weeks to complete, on and off of course interspersed with family life and activity. All-in-all I really like the design of this model, it has a real chunky, thick-armour feel and is the closest match to what I can only describe as a walking tank!

The addition of the gatling gun was a bit of a whim, but it did give me the idea to call it the "suppression vanguard  with the idea of this machine being a pure, frontline mech with artillery and ballistics combined. Its heavy armour would make it ideal for initialising battlefield operations by laying down a spray of gatling cannon bullets along side long-range artillery, enabling other forces for drive forward with less challenge.

In summary, assembly was easy and straightforward, the inner frame gets very loose, very quickly and the model does suffer a lot from "droop". The additional armour bits are really cool, although I kind of ran out of steam to detail those parts properly so they returned to the box where perhaps future frame arms will utilise them. Would I get another frame arms model? Yes, if i like the design of course. Some final pictures below:

Late November Gunpla Update

Hello Gunplanatics! It's been an action packed weekend of blowing up balloons, wrapping presents and putting up decorations in celebration of my sons 3rd birthday, so not much Gunpla wise has actually happened. Despite that, I did receive some new things from HLJ, and purchased some amazingly awesome things in the recent sales, even though I can't really afford it.

Anyways, here is a short video of me rambling in your face about stuff:

Ryurai kai continues this coming weekend with some detailing, panel lining and decalling. Should have it all wrapped up pretty soon.

Ryurai Kai - WIP 3

Quite a productive weekend this for a change, well, that and I had a lovely day off work on Wednesday and spent it all painting. All airbrushing now completed.

Managed to do a lovely Norwegian flag on one of the shoulder armour parts - take a look in the video below which is mostly me unmasking things.. :)

With a little luck, should have this completed by next weekend. Got to give it a gloss coat, do some decal work and some panel lining, then we're done :)

Ryurai Kai - WIP 2

With a rudimentary thought of colour scheme now figured out, the work on painting and slightly modifying has begun. I decided to make the grey parts a light blue, with a shading of royal blue. On top of this, with some masked off parts will be a JA grey. I also scribed in some additional lines in the leg armour - to better the separation on the masked parts and to serve as additional detail. Further colours are yet to be decided but I am leaning towards a beige, along with some stripy motif of some kind.

Took me forever it seems just to prime the gray parts. Once it was all primed (after several airbrush clogs and cleans) I had already lost half the day, and doing the masking and first undercoat of royal blue took up the rest. Lessons learned here - if your brush is consistently clogging, your not thinning it enough. Although I trusted the primer to be adequately thinned for my needs, it was a false presumption. I knew I bought a bottle of thinner from plamo UK for a reason.. Next time it will run smoother I hope.

Once the royal blue was completed, it left a bobbly, dirty residue, in which after some deliberation I decided to stick with as a "texture detail", some of course would grin with a sceptical comment about laziness, they would probably in all fairness be half right :)

Anyway, a video of the preceding described WIP below. Turned out quite nice in the end, and with the discovery of the additional Gatling cannon hidden in my spare parts bin, this Ryurai-Kai I have decided to title:

"Model 38 Ryurai-Kai: Suppression vanguard"

Now I need to hunt for some suitable decals :)

Thanks for watching and reading, more soon!

1/144 HG Age-1 Spallow: Halloween "jack 'o lantern" custom

Thanks hummingbird for the alternative name suggestion :) Yep, its done, its not perfect but its done. It was kind of an experiment in colour really as there (although it does not look like it) are 4 different shades of green on this one. The orange was just to make it "pop" and it kind of inadvertently turned into a hallowe'en thing when my wife commented on its colour combination.

Anyway, enough waffle, here's some ruddy pictures for you to look at for your own allotted time of viewing. I hope you find them acceptable to your brains.

Age-1 Spallow WIP

Treating this as a bit of an experiment, as well as some much-needed practice when it comes to airbrushing, and slight modification. I added just 2 extra panel lines to this kit, along the shoulders, and also added a koto round bit to the rear of the shoulders. Looks a little "stuck on", perhaps I should have sunk it a little by drilling a hole.. still, what's done is done. 

Have completed all the base coating, looking mighty colourful. "Inner frame" is the usual gunmetal, the blue pats are now all the awesome looking Tamiya park green, white is now orange, a few yellow bits and a little bit of light green.

I will be masking off some of the park green parts, and adding some Khaki in. Shall also be masking off some of the gunmetal parts, and adding in silver. Its going to look like a psychedelic hippy death ninja by the time its done. In fact.. that'll be its custom name I think.

Age-1 Spallow: Psychedelic death ninja custom.

Yeah. Like that.

Frame parts, in the usual gunmetal. 

The blue parts, now park green.

Look at the colours, taste the toxic rainbow.

Gunpla Update, in video form

Yep, I have finally shown my face on camera and am talking, despite being in the throws of one of the most shittiest colds I have experienced for a while.. listen to me jabber on about gunpla here:

More soon.

Zeta MG WIP Part 4

A little bit of progression in regards tot he Zeta MG 2.0: Painted the backpack now black / red / white / gunmetal. Not really gone into too much detail wise just undercoating really. Base coated the black parts with a navy blue, although the finish I am not entirely happy with as you can see below.. I am hoping the gloss overcoat will disguise the awful sputtering caused by what I can only assume is the compressor. I have 2 moisture filters fitted now, and an entirely new (and quality I might add) airbrush - so the only thing left that can cause a spattering issue is the compressor.. I shall have to save a little to afford a new one!

Anyway, here are some pix:

Ready for re-assembly in around 24 hours time. 

Dodgy finish.. 

Completion soon I hope, gotta meet the deadline :)

Palace Athene HG WIP 3

Completed! Yay! And I must say I really enjoyed this build, it is one of my very favourite MS designs for its pure assaultyness, and I think the colour choices turned out fabulous. A little ropey in some places when it came to the panel lining, but overall I am happy with the result. Here is the final WIP video from youtube:

A few pictures of the completed, now titled "Palace Athene Anaheim Refit" (on account of the anaheim shiny logos all over it).

Palace Athene HG WIP 2

Took a break for a week on this one due to the sweltering heat we experienced, not to mention adjusting to the hours of my new employment :)

On with the work in progress and man, I have been busy this weekend doing a ton of painting and shading, as you can see in the following motion picture show hosted on the you tube. Hope you enjoy, and completion is imminent this weekend with luck on my side.

I couple of minor hiccups on the way, couple of scratched here and there remedied with some light sandng and re-coating here and there. Fingers crossed for the assembly, gloss coating and detailing to follow. Oh, some decals too!