Off to Japan, some updates and looking back at 2013

Off to Japan in a while, so thought I would round up the year with a final post looking back at 2013, which has been a all-round good one for me, as well as give a little update as to what I have been up to. 

Setting aside personal things like (finally) getting myself in employment I actually like, watching my first born growing up past the toddler stage and into boyhood, and of course welcoming our second child into the world, my Mecha building world has grown substantially. Whereas I did not get as many models completed as I would have liked to, I have definitely improved a bit and learned a hell of a lot from my peers. I have also made some great friends and interesting characters this year through the hobby. The mecha lounge has continued to grow, with the success of the CHAOS group build setting a new standard in forum-based competition. Hats off to all the chaps on the mecha lounge for a year of fantastic work. 

Gunpla Fixations google hangouts have been a tremendous success this year, bringing together for the first time many you tube and Mecha modelling community members and continues to gain popularity, I have been lucky enough to be chosen by Jim to be a co-host of this awesome fortnightly event that you can catch up on by clicking here. New events currently in planning for the new year, and we always welcome new faces so if you are interested, do drop Jim, Justinius or myself a message through G+ :)

Updates wise, the Level Up Competition now has an amazing total of 20 entrants! I am admittedly shocked by the amount of entries and am very pleased everyone has entered into the spirit of the competition, and are genuinely upping their games. Prizes will be announced in the new year, so keep an eye on the gundamuk facebook page for updates. 

The Victory Gundam is nearing completion, I have been doing a little filming here and there so should cobble together a final WIP and reveal video in the new year. Made some slight errors on masking the red circle parts and they ended up looking a little wonky.. still I am hoping some retouching and panel lining should fix this. Just a few parts and weapons to paint now, then I can move onto assembling.  

So, after a 2 year wait I am finally going back to Japan, I'll be staying for a number of weeks and (hopefully) regularly updating the sights and sounds of all things Gunpla related on my travels in Japan. I will be (of course) visiting Gundam front and praying to the almighty 1/1 scale to provide me with another year of smooth air brushing application and non-splitting parts. I have an extensive list of items I plan to purchase, and a pretty ingenious way to get them back here to the UK with the aid of a set of clippers, and some plastic containers. Some things on my list are all the thunderbolt kits (as many as are released during my stay), and MG Nu Ver.Ka, and a HG Gerbera Tetra. I will also be picking up some exclusives that are actually worth buying and are not just recolours. No doubt there will also be large amounts of ridiculous tat that are Gundam related. The first thing I am going to eat when I arrive? A McDonalds Teriyaki Burger. If you have not had one of these, these are things that if you ate more than 2, you will have a heart attack. They are simply, stunningly tasty. We already spent considerable time planning our eating plans.. :) 

A couple of bits of news to share: Monoeye press' fantastic beginners Mecha building guide has topped the "arts and crafts" section over on Amazon. If you are new to Gunpla or need some handy and comprehensive instruction on basic technique - then this is for you. I was lucky enough to get an advance copy and I can personally say, its excellent - covering everything from the history of Mecha in Japanese culture through to panel lining, assembly and modification techniques. Pick it up now! 

Anyway, that's enough rambling for now. Thank you all for a fantastic 2013 and I wish you all a great holiday and New Year! 

A quick vid saying more thanks :)

The GundamUK Contest: Level Up!

With my hands tied for a while by parental duty, I thought now would be a good time to launch a contest!

The concept is really quite simple, I want every contestant no matter how few or many, to UP YOUR GAME and LEVEL UP!

What do I mean by this? Well, the idea is you must build yourself a mecha model, within certain constraints listed below where you improve upon your own modelling ability in some way.

Some of you are already pretty shit-hot when it comes to mecha modelling, but everyone, no matter what your skill level is has something they have not yet tried, or have reached a plateau in which they have been stuck in over time.

This contest however is not locked into the idea of improvement on your technical ability - it can also or be inclusive of an improvement in your creative skill. Perhaps you have had an idea swimming around your head for some time, but have not yet found the drive to put it into action. Or maybe you are tired of doing the same old model in different colour schemes, or for once you feel like adding a few extra barrels to that gun.

With all this in mind, I want to set some ground rules.

The Model:

• Must be modelled. By this, I mean no plain snap-fits. Anyone can snap-fit and make an ornament. Modellers make it a model. 
• A single model. No dioramas. Scratch building/modification fine. Weathering is fine. Any scale fine. 
• Must be Mecha/sci-fi based. No real-world stuff. Sorry Gary. 
• Not limited by manufacturer. 
• Must be made purely for this compo. If I see it elsewhere, sorry your disqualified. Re-entries defeat the whole premise of the contest. 

The entry requirements:

• I need legible quality photo of your kit or parts, with the entry graphic in frame (below). This can be done with a mobile phone or on a monitor in the background. Adding it in with software won't count. You can enter any time up until the closing date. Details on how to submit are below. 
• A link to a WIP somewhere. A good place to do this is on the Mecha Lounge. Judgement will be on the final model, but it always helps to see how the model was built and painted.
• Preferably a link to your previous work. Helps to see how far you have come so far. 
• A little info on what you intend to do.
• Any skill level accepted. Don't be put off by others skill levels, it's about you, not them.  
• *EDIT* 31/08/13: One entry for contestant only please! 
• *EDIT* 31/08/13: You can enter a model you have started, but it'll be on a case-by-case

Time

I will start accepting entries from today, the 31st of August and will close on February the 1st 2014. This gives you 4.6 months to complete your entry. 

The Winners

Will be chosen by me, with perhaps a little advisement from my non-participating friends and non-mecha modellers -  and will win prizes. What these prizes will be will be announced later but your motivation should be improvement and enjoying the competition and not material gain. I do understand however making models costs money, so the winner will be suitably rewarded :). I have chosen to do this to sort out the chaff from the real people who want to improve and/or compete in something they really love doing. I will also announce later on how many places will be given. 

There will also (depending on how many entries) be one winner chosen by my 3-year old son JK. 

Ok, got it and have read everything above. How do I enter?

Easy. You need to give me a "like" on my GundamUK facebook page. 

http://www.facebook.com/gundamUK

Click on "message", and attach a legible picture for your submission. I will then add your picture to an entries folder, and add your name or alias underneath with your proposed model. Once you see it here, consider that your entrance acceptance. 

Rightio, now then, once I am done?

I don't really need to tell you that they need to be a good enough quality for me to see your model in good detail, with good lighting and absolutely no photoshop trickery. Please submit 5-10 good quality pictures to:

chokaiuk+levelup@gmail.com

Please include a link to somewhere I can see your work in progress - this can be YT vids or a link to a flikr account, blog post, facebook photo set, forum thread - anywhere I can easily access. Please check links work!

Anything else?

Of course! I would also request that all entrants accept me using any material posted in WIPs, YT videos and so on in my own social media channels, so I can talk about them. These will be progress reports, nothing more and will not be showing favour to any particular participant. Depending on how many entries I get will depend on how much is featured, and of course how much spare time I have :)

I will hopefully be featuring entries (if any) on my youtube channel, youtube.com/gundamUK.

I also advise that, as the time frame is relatively short - have a good think about the scale of what you want to make and think ahead about how long it is going to take you and the stock of material you have.

If you have any questions, you can either post them on my facebook wall or message me directly. I am frequently online as I am a social hermit who scowls at sunlight.  There is probably something I have not covered here that I will later kick myself for not adding.

Please enjoy this contest, and take that extra step towards a greater potential. If your reading this, you have the interest. Now up your game. I greatly look forward to seeing what you can do.

Entry Graphic:

Gundam F91 - WIP#2

Having completed the inner frame parts of the legs (well, mostly bar some additional things I would like to do once the whole inner frame is completed) I worked on the inner frame parts for the torso and head.

This complete, I thought I should start working on the armour parts for the legs. Unfortunately they did not turn out as expected, but none the less are mostly done.

Having applied the primer a little thick on some parts (and regrettably not sanding them smooth as you are supposed to), adding the first base coat of white created a bit of a mottled finish, so I added another layer of white to smooth it out a little. Worked to a degree - then I decided to do a little pre shading - a technique I am new to. This to, resulted in a bit of a mottled finish but much smoother. All that remains now it to add a top layer of white to smooth it all out, hopefully this will fix it because right now it looks terrible..

Sorry for the lack of video this week.. I did film some but today's and yesterdays work took a ridiculous amount of time.. so much in fact I did not have time to cut a video, so next weeks will (hopefully) be a kind of "double" WIP.

Anyway, a pic below of the pre shaded parts :)

Geara Zulu Angelo Sauper use - WIP 1

Hello strangers! Yes, Its been a little while, but i have been working on the Gera Zulu Angelo Super use. As you can see form the below, I have primed, base coated and in some cases highlighted, quite a bit to go though. 

The purple parts turned out a little strange, in mixing up a supposed "lighter" shade of purple to highlight with,  it somehow turned out darker, resulting on a quite bizarre 2-tone purple effect. The alclad turned out marvellous as it always does, and the blue on the shoulder pad parts and waist armour turned out pretty nifty too. My only drawback is the royal blue I was using for the torso and feet turned out no so royal blue.. more just blue in fact and not all that different from the normal blue I used for the shoulder armour.. perhaps I will highlight, not sure yet. Gunmetal and masking the weapons, as well as that tricky trim all to be done next weekend. 

Anyways, that's all from me. More soon. :)

Mid-January update

Hello!

After completing the Rick Dias MG I thought I should take the pace down a bit with a HG model, and decided to build the "Geara Zulu Angelo Sauper use". I say take it down a bit.. in fact this is probably going to take some time, the trim on this kit is very detailed so no doubt i'll be frustratingly hand-painting the detail on this kit. Progress to follow in later posts.

Still having a think about what to do for the chaos GB. I have a model in mind, the Kagasuchi-kou from Kotobukiya (with some additional modifications in the shape of missile launchers, and "AA" style guns, still being planned). I have bought the model but unfortunately it's on backorder form HLJ so I am in for a bit of a wait..so having some thoughts about a possible diorama. I should also probably consider another model in case this one has troubles getting to me.. hmmmm.

Anyways, here's a vid of my latest update:

Zeta is done, plus some other things.

Hello! Yes, I finally completed the Zeta 2.0! Well, not entirely. Truthfully, I did not get around to doing everything I wanted to, and that was to paint the base up nice and add a little plastic man guiding the Zeta out from the footplate. As time would have it, I did not get it done. I shall make another post soon with some pics to peruse.

This means, luckily, I have met the deadline for the gundam eclipse summer war competition. Fingers crossed.. I entered the OOB intermediate category but I don'y hold out much for success, the other entries are marvellous.

Anyway, here is an update from the you tube, with a little look at my Gundam display cabinet:

Next up: Frame arms Ryu Rai Kai!

Zeta MG WIP Part 5

A little progress, painted up the weapons now and have added a little detail into them. I must admit to being a little disappointed with this build.. I just wish I did not rush it as much as I have. However, I must persevere and continue onwards. Once these parts are complete, I'll be painting and weathering the base. I will then be assembling the parts was chunks (arms, legs,  backpack, torso, head, weapons, shield  and giving them all a top coat, then 2-3 layers of gloss before doing (and in some cases re-doing) the panel lining. Then its onto the decals.

Heres a pic of what I have done today:

A few tiny hand-painted details if you can see.. :)

On another note, Have today done a little update on you tube, just to show my new work area set-up really, and my new portable spray booth which is awesome :)

Later!

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.

The September 8th Update

Time for an update! yes. With the completion of the Palace Athene (that I was very proud of) I am feeling a little more motivated and have decided that my next build will be my favourite ever Gundam, the F91. Its been sitting on my shelf for some time now as I kept putting it off until  felt I had the necessary skill to make it look as good as I want it to. I am certainly more confident now in what I do, but I will however be taking my time as the last thing I want to do is mess it up. I will not be adding any extra detail or panel lining as yet - I'll probably save that for the 1/144 Geara Zulu. I bought a whole stack of detailing parts from Kotobukiya so I will be making use of these to make the Geara Zulu look even meaner. I am also thinking of either a shiny metallic fire burst paint scheme.. more on this later. WIP vids will be up soon. Oh, and before I forget, I must mention my new airbrush. I got a lovely mid-range Iwata neo and gosh what a difference it has made to my airbrushing.. 100% recommend this if your like me, looking to take that next step up in airbrushing. Love it.

Iwata Neo

Kotobukiya detailing stuff

My new toolbox! I outgrew the last one..

Some other news, my good buddy gunplabuilders has been busy on the youtube of late telling us about the exciting GNN news he intends to do in the future. I think this idea is great as I have certainly found there is no "community" type news item channel on youtube for gunpla at all to my knowledge. There are lots of great modellers and people out there actively contributing to the community and supporting its growth who would happily contribute. Fingers crossed this idea takes off, its got my support for sure :)

I have also launched recently a facebook page, here I will be posting picture of my completed work and generally commenting on what I am doing. I would really appreciate it if you can give me a like, if I can get at least 50 I will be chuffed, I think I am at 8 now which is a good start :)

I have been using the fantastic IFTTT to link all of my social media to make things more easily update-able and interconnected. I am also in the process of migrating the content of this blog to a fully-fledged website. It's been in planning for ages but I have never had the time to actually do it. For those of you who don't know I am a web designer by trade although you would not think it looking at my blog :) The idea is it will be more or less the same content as it is now, but I may add a gunpla shop depending on how well I can negotiate with a supplier.

Anyways, thank you for reading and that. More soon, and your support much appreciated :)

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!

Palace Athene HG WIP 1

Hello! Yep, I have started on the Palace Athene as it has been sitting around gathering amounts of dust upon my shelf. I have also begun a vlog WIP for this high grade Bandai 1/144 scale mobile suit, of which you can view below or on my youtube channel, cleverly linked it to this very sentence.

As you will see from the below vid, not really much happening that's all that exciting, other than the usual tedious monotony of cutting and sanding parts :) I am in process of thinking about the colour scheme, edging towards the pale blue / yellow combo.

More soon :)

Zeta MG WIP Part 3

Quick one this, not to dissimilar to what occurred last time :) Completed the legs, added 2 coats of gloss in preparation for panel lining and detailing. Painted the body, waist and head now, just need to assemble and gloss coat that. More soon :)

Zeta MG WIP Part 2

Moving onto the legs now, have primed and base coated. Have also buffed up the glossy coating on the arms to prepare for the decals to be applied. Not terribly exciting at the moment but slow and steady :)

I have also decided to re-panel line the arms - mixed the enamel too weak resulting in a bit of a faded grey panel line in the shoulder vents. Not good. I'll probably finish up base coating the entire model, apply a gloss coating, then do the panel lining for the whole model to keep it consistent. I'll also be hand-painting some detail here and there. Got a nice plan for the lower leg too - Will probably do this next.

S'all for now.

Zeta MG WIP Part 1

So, here we go with the Zeta v2.0 Master Grade 1/100 for this years Summer War competition from the Gundam Eclipse forum!

Trying something a little different this time. I have fully built the kit (which looks awesome) and am taking one part at a time to paint. This weekend, after spending each weekday this week snap-fitting I have been working on the arms. Used my usual aqua colour base coat - and realised for the first time it is actually white! lols. The last 2 models I have used this paint on, the finish has come up a kind of murky clear - turns out I was not stirring it properly.. oh well.. still looked ok.

Spent all day today priming and adding the base coats for the arms. Using the same tamiya acrylics to make sure the colour is nice and consistent. Here is how far I have gotten so far:

Some parts base coated, some primed needing a base coat.

Snap-fitted bits, separated by how they will be built.. 

Admittedly, I am a little dubious about building this MG in this way.. but we will see how it turns out. I will be trying out a new gloss coat too to enable easier panel lining. I also have some super decals from Samuel Decal to apply, so gotta make sure its shiny enough.

More on this soon. Maybe tomorrow.

Later.

Random update

Hello, me again, well.. who else would it be, unless it is a proxy of me and I have died, and the proxy is utterly convinced it is me. Next, I am working on the Zeta 2.0 (which I am also entering into the Summer War competition on the gundam eclipse forum), love this MS design. The epitome of 80's gundam goodness in my opinion. It will be a straight-up OOB paint with a little difference - I am going to add a nice masked paint effect on the legs, not sure quite what yet. I will be doing this one nice and glossy this time too. So far, I have cut the runners and sanded down. I will be assembling first, and base coating. More on this on the first WIP coming up soon.

In other news, I have added a new light to my workspace. An awesome little low-power strip light. Only 10 squids off ebay, total bargain. Have done a little rearrangement too to create more space on my PC desk.

I am also planning to spray-paint a large board previously used underneath my spray booth for a spacey backdrop. Will update when I do that too, although it will not be all that interesting.. the eventual plan is to make a bit of a diorama. Thought will be going into this over the coming weeks

More later.

Marasai Devastator 1/144 HG WIP Part 5

So, It's finally completed! 5 weekends of work done. Added another clearcoat, but as the model was still in a porous state paint wise, I decided to weather it to take advantage of the texture. Went relatively well, but made a crucial mistake by not remembering to add decals first! Decided it would probably be best to just leave them off in this case.. otherwise it would mean a ton of work adding a glossy coat to allow the decals to set.

So, all in all I am pretty pleased with the final result, another vid below showing off the final parts. a few pics too to show in more detail. Super thanks to everyone who has been supporting my endeavours as always, you are all individually awesome. More soon.

End of June update

As you can see from the below, have been mostly working on the Marasai devastator custom, which is turning out ok and has been a good learning experience, especially in terms of detailing and masking.

Have also been slowly snapping off parts, cleaning and sanding from the Zeta 2.0 MG kit I have decided to enter into the summer war competition being hosted by the gundam eclipse forums.

2 more runners to go and were ready to build.. err...baby.

A couple of purchases from the HLJ sale, a Geara Zulu HG and a Rick Dias MG. Both suits I am a big fan of, especially the Dias as it is simply so different from other MS'.

Looks like a fucking nazi death machine! I will not however be adding swastikas. That would make me a racist.  

Quattro Vajeena's AKA 4 Fannies Rick Dias. I have a cartoon man crush on him. 

In other news: Nothing much really! I am about 30 eps into Victory Gundam, which is turning out to be better than I thought it would be to be honest.. would be good to see more anime set around the UC 120 ish period. Although the BESPA MS' do look a little weird with their huge bug eyes.

On another note: I have has some difficulty of late with a very popular supplier of after-market decals. I received the complete wrong one's I ordered... To be nice, I decided to keep the ones sent, as I can use them for other projects as this supplier had only charged me for these particulars. The supplier, who I might add is on the other side of the planet to me, requested me to ship them back, and payup the difference for the ones I had actually ordered (which would work out about the same as the ones I incorrectly got int he first place!). I think that's out of order.. you don't ask your customers to pay up for your mistake right? I took the piss a little, but then (quite kindly I think) shook it off in good humour, and requested he send me a new invoice for the decals I wanted. That was 3 days ago without response.....I'll give it 3 more days at the most...

More soon.

Marasai Devastator 1/144 HG WIP Part 4

I can't believe I have spent 4 weeks building this.. although to be fair I did lose yesterday to tiredness and last Saturday I was doing other stuff, so realistically its been 5 straight days or so..

Continuing the video thing here you go:

Looking to complete this next week. All that remains is some final detailing, panel lining and top coating. Can't wait.

Marasai Devastator 1/144 HG WIP Part 3

Just a quick one to let you know my WIP for the devastator Marasai, gotta dash.. :)