End of October update

This month has pretty much been all about the HLJ contest entry, and I think the enthusiasm I have to move onto the next project has been somewhat of a driving factor in getting this 1/144 TR-1 Advance Hazel completed..

In my haste, as the WIP will describe over on the HLJ social media channel I have made one or two mistakes, though the results are looking adequate to good at this stage so no major stresses.

The next project is undecided as yet, I was going to move onto a bit of a practice session with the AGE kit Zedas R, which would be quite a quick build judging by its low number of runners but in both the calling of the uncompleted FAZZ, and the inherent need to build something from Gundam Seed Destiny (which I am currently watching through again at the moment) are getting in the way. On top of that.. I really would like to have a bash at the Victory.. and the Stein. Decisions decisions. I think ultimately, with my trip looming on the horizon I will opt for a quick HG, which is the Zedas R. Mood may change.. my Facebook update will indicate which path I have chosen.

Be sure to tune into the Gunpla Fixation google hangout which has moved to this coming Saturday, which I believe will be broadcasting around 4pm PST, roughly 9pm GMT (I think) - times will be confirmed on my facebook page. Hosted as usual by the venerable Jiminboo, and co-hosted by myself and the almighty bearded one Justinius. As well as the usual workbench based topics and some awesome special guests, we'll be having a lively chat about this years GBWC and it's divided attentions on top of our usual community-based topical discussions.

In the coming week I should also be making a return to YouTube, with a personal update on all things GundamUK. Not made any videos primarily as not a lot is going on other than the HLJ entry.

Finally, entrants into the Level-Up! Competition have been gathering pace, great to see so many WIPs on the go and I am entirely pleased that everyone so far has been supportive of its theme. I am seeing some great work so far and although it's going to be hard to pick out winners, it'll be a pleasure to see such amazing works of art. Prizes are still in the pipeline. More on this later :)

You can see all the entries over on the GundamUK Facebook page (in the level-up contest entries picture album) and you can click here to be reminded of the entry rules. Only 3 months left so time is ticking!

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:

Getting back into the swing

I did not actually realise it had been over a month since I wrote on this blog.. well, quite a lot has happened over the past month as you can imagine.. followers of gundamUK will know of course I have recently had a new addition to my family, a little baby boy named Ibuki who is both awesome and amazing simultaneously. Now at 4 weeks of age he is rapidly gaining weight, crying a lot and making burble noises as babies too. The good news is he gets on with his brother, and most importantly is not stressing out mum too much.

Anyway, enough about life and babies, let's talk about more important things like mecha modelling!

Currently modelling...

I have been steadily working on the master grade FAZZ (Full Armour Double Zeta) and completed the de-nubbing and initial assembly. I have now got as far as disassembling the main cannon (which is flipping hooj), priming it up, and today completed painting the metallic elements. Video wise, I may perhaps make a couple of longer vids rather than a series of short vids.. this way I can edit it all down better to make for better viewing. That and I have plans for a couple of other vids over the next couple of weeks, but you can always keep up to date with my progress on the FAZZ on the gundamUK facebook.

Mecha lounge Giveaway number flipping 2, is association with the brilliant gundammad.co.uk.

In other news, myself, the Mecha Lounge community and gundammad.co.uk have collaborated on a prize-give-away. A simple compo in which all you need to is post "shut up and give me gunpla" on the thread of the same name on the Mecha Lounge. A winner is shortly to be announced (tomorrow in fact) at random who shall receive a smashing 1/100 non-grade virtue/nadleeh combination, which is a much sought after model for me in fact and one which I shall be begrudgingly shipping to our random winner. The response to this has been pretty phenomenal, and although it did encourage the 1-post-and-fuck-off-never-to-be-seen-again types it is my hope we have encouraged some new memberships to our ever-growing and awesomely super community of Mecha Modellers. Stay tuned for yet more give-away's. Damn we're generous folks.

Short vid here on that:

The CHAOS group build draws to a successful close

Yep, the winners have been announced right here, and I must say I was thoroughly impressed by the level of entries we had. Made it incredibly difficult to judge as you can imagine, but it was a lot of fun. Here is yet another vid featuring my gawking face telling you all about it:

And lastly... Justinius Builds Music-themed contest. Holy shit I placed second!

Yeah! I know! I could not believe it either! This bit of news has most certainly brightened an otherwise dingy weekend. I was so genuinely impressed by the whole concept of this compo, and upon seeing the other entrants I was sure there was no chance I would even place in this, but I came second with my brightly coloured Boards of Canada jesta, which Justin mused about making him want to drink a can of sprite.. I can see the logic in this.. lol. Special thanks to the Justinius Builds channel for running such a superb compo that I thoroughly enjoyed participating in. I can't wait to get my prize :)

That's enough rambling for now.. more bloggy-type nonsense coming back soon.

Justinius Builds - Music Theme Contest - My Entry

I finally completed the 1/144 HG Jesta "boards of canada" custom, did not take that long and managed to squeeze in a few bouts of painting and detailing in between preparing for our new arrival in a weeks time :)

A few things learned from this - Do not use black to preshade bright colours, especially yellows.. it took 3 coats of yellow resulting in a little thickness to the coat to cover the shading effectively - up close it's still looking a little mottled but overall it fits in OK. I remember reading some advice from fellow youtuber jiminboo on a comment on another video saying you should never use black - serves me right for not paying attention!

Here is the video for the entry, of course you can view all the pictures on the GundamUK site (Which I might add, the site revamp is now almost 90% completed, more news on this later).

Stay tuned for some more blog entries soon, my next project is going to be BIG.

Later!

The GundamUK collection sale!

Some of you may know that we are expecting our second child this July (exciting.. mortified.. happy.. scared.. lol). Some of you may also know that my better half is Japanese, and of course it would be marvellous if we could afford to go to Japan later this year and take our new addition to meet his grandparents in Saitama. With this in mind, I have decided to have a huge blow-out collection sale of many of my rare Gundam and mecha-related items, and I would so much prefer that these go out to members of this awesome community before it all goes onto ebay. 

So, I have now put up a list of items, and pictures on my GundamUK facebook page, so please head there if you are interested in purchasing a nice little rarity!

the site is

http://www.facebook.com/gundamUK

The list will be active for a couple of weeks, and anything unsold shall be going onto ebay. If you have any questions or queries, do feel free to PM me on facebook via the GundamUK page!

In other news, I am still in the process of making up the HG Jesta for Justinius Builds contest, seam line removal has just been completed and I should be getting it primed during the week. I will hopefully find the time to make a vid on it, but its hectic at the moment as we prepare for our new arrival!

Thanks all :)

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 :)

Gundam F91 - WIP#1

I started this one around 3 months ago, assembled, cleaned and de-nubbed but have only now got around to painting it.. partly because I wanted to do a good job of it :)

Started out with the inner-frame parts of the legs, the intention being to have it mainly in metallic blue, and some parts in gold/silver for a little detail. So far I have done all the main painting, and all that remains now is to gloss coat and panel line.

Here are a few pics of the work so far:

F91, preassembly, 3 months back.

There is also quite a long vid for you to gander at here:

More soon!

HG Gadessa - WIP#3 - Completed

The Gadessa is now complete! Took a little work to complete those buggered up prongs, but I was quite pleased with how well I managed to scratch-build those prongs. Its a little dodgy and wonky in places but you would have to look quite closely to notice the defects.. and it would have been nice to add a metallic detail part here and there.

All in all, I think the model turned out well although I could have possibly spent more time working on the details - the thrusters for instance I could have masked off and added a gold metallic effect on. On retrospect, I think the emerald green and gold would have been a nice combination.

Here are a few pix of the completed model:

..And here is my final (and very short) WIP video on youtube:

HG Gadessa - WIP#2

I was aiming to conclude this model this weekend but as fate has it, I ran into a little bit of a problem...

The 3 "prongs" that attach to the main weapon were all painted up in gunmetal, with a coating of clear black (as I felt most of the gunmetal parts, after priming were a little too light) were masked so I could paint the inner "rail" yellow. Unfortunately  I masked way too early and did not allow enough time for the acrylic to fully cure.. as a result, after painting the mask the paint peeled off along with the masking tape, leaving a patchy, horrid finish. Needed to all be stripped off, and started again.

Anyway, I decided to dunk all 3 parts into lacquer thinner - massive mistake . after a few mins an icky, sticky ness appeared, and as I wiped off the excess it was very apparent that the plastic has melted real bad..

As you will see in the following vid, I had to scratch build the prongs all over again...

Apart from that, the main model is looking good. The panel lining turned out good, if a little dirty and some finer details have been added. Now all it needs is a gloss coat, and its more or less done.

Completion hopefully next week, I just need to figure out a mechanism to attach the prongs to the main body of the weapon.. I don;t think I am doing too bad considering its my first ever time I have had to scratch build parts!

A video of this weekends exploits right here:

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:

Plans for 2013

Hey all, following my recent review of everything that went down in 2012, I thought I would share a little with you of what my plans are (gunpla wise) for 2013.

On my shopping list I am looking at getting:

The Rosen Zulu, despite is apparent sticker hell. 

The Zee Zulu

This will complete my neo-zeonic Zulu style collection I think, having already built a Geara Doga and still having the Angelo Sauper custom Geara Zulu.

I will also be getting this:

The Kotobukiya type 48 Kagusuchi-Kou Frame arms. If it ever comes off "back ordered" on HLJ.com. It is my intention to use this for the chaos GB as my entry in the ground forces team :)

Which leads me neatly (without mentioning the 50 odd other kits I may be getting, not forgetting the Nu-gundam of course) onto one of my main plans for this year, and that is to better my modelling skills by attempting my first diorama. 

I have not really avoided making one as such, just due to time and space constraint I did not really deem it necessary to do, but with this group build starting off I thought I should step it up a little and challenge myself with something a little more advanced. Planning is in progress, and updates will of course be shown though the youtube channel, or on my facebook page. There will also be a WIP thred started in the lounge when work starts. 

Anything else? Well, I will also at some point, perhaps in the latter half of this year (after the arrival of our second child due in July) be getting hold of a resin kit, preferably a 1/60. Again, purely to challenge myself and push my current skills to their limits and hopefully beyond. I think there will be tears.. :) 

And so begins a year of more learning, cock-ups, triumphs and breakages. My passion (obsession) for this hobby thankfully persists and with more discoveries of kits and imaginative creativity from the community around me I am sure it'll persist for many years to come :) 

Straight up start to end build and paint of the Rick Dias MG coming soon, this Sunday I think. 

Have a good one everyone!

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.

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.

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 :)

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.

Marasai Custom

I was perusing my collection of odd crap left over from old kits and chanced across some nifty little bits to create something unique - this will be the 1/144 Marasai Devastator custom!

I may actually attempt.. although its been many, many years to do some sketches of my ideas and share these with you. If I remember. WIPs for the Zeta 2.0 starting soon for the summer war contest.

Later.

1/144 HG Hi-Nu Gundam

A couple of weeks spent on this one on and off. Although I am not entirely happy with the result its still OK. The greys turned out a little too dark for my liking, but the deck tan grey was a nice offset and added a little variety to the model. Panel lining was a little hit-and-miss this time. I am getting better, but a fault in the gloss coat unfortunately resulted in some heavy blotching - especially in the binders. Lessons again learned :)

Some pics: (bizarrely to the side..please tip your head. Thanks blogger!)

1/100 MG Full Armour Unicorn

Finally, completed. I say completed, I omitted various dry-rub transfers from the final kit due to the fact they were infinitely irritating to apply. For this kit I used mostly Gun metal and white Tamiya acrylics - a little Alclad II for the thruster parts - mixed a little flat base clear with red to create the "ceramic" looking inner-thrusters in the base jabbers massive boosters. Several hours of decal marking.. a couple of topcoats to make it look more sparkly, some decidedly dodgy panel lining (yep, still need some work on building this skill, the main element being patience - rushing it really will yield crap results) and et viola. Pix below.