Color experiment

After laying out the balance tasks at hand for the blue frame, I doubt myself I can finish them by next Monday.

Last night all I have acomplished is some gold parts only. The rest of time I m documenting the colors spray that I have got. Saw someone doing that on the net and I copied. Good method is meant to be followed anyway.

I'm making this note on my daily commute to work and home. These are 1 of those times of day I can't work on anything else except to wait for my transport to swerve and sway it's way till my destination. Daily 2 hours that is. Transportation is such a torture and simply waste of time! But till we obtain the technology of instant teleportation, we can't do a thing about it.
Side tracked as usual, time to fall back.

Tamiya mica blue did not turn out as metallic as I've hoped for.



Cobolt blue is lighter than I've known it to be!



Damn the base coat is making huge difference here. I applied a base coat of mr surfacer 1200 on the spoons if you would like to know.
Here comes the clear blue on silver coat.





I find tamiya clear blue is bluer than mr color clear blue.

Time to try out the new clear blue on the silver parts.

If it doesn't work I'll try mr color metallic blue or mica ...

Moving forward

The last Exia photoshoot seems to have spurs me forward.
I finally open up the Blue Frame Astray box, remove the runners from their plastic wrappers, pick up my cutter and ended my long break from Gundam making.

I started cutting out the feet pieces and assemble them for test fit. I usually don't follow the instructions from page 1 to final. Especially when I need to apply paint job, I hate to be forced remove stubborn parts which was in the way and risking me breaking it from the removal. And thus, took me about 2 nights, longer than usual to fix up the inner frame to get a feel of the kit.

The inner frame amaze me. It is quite different compared to that of Strike Gundam and Exia . The arms parts are actually capable of "curling" up which I have not seen in other kit. The hand bits is the same as exia's. Which means I have also cut them up into seperate fingers. There is great deal of fine paint job for the hands where as exia is zip, nada.

I am inspired Mr Kawasaki, the Gunpla Meister, blue frame build. I will be adopting his color scheme and hopefully achieve something close.

As of this writing, all the parts already have at least a coat of paint. I've finished up 3 cans (partially used) of color spray and just restocked yesterday. This spray cans are getting too costly. I yearn for an air brush for so long, let's see if I can make it happen this year!!

I wished I could get this build done by my birthday which is next week only. Finger cross.

MG Exia - Trans AM mode - Photoshoot

I thought I would never get this done. I finally bought the SB-700 flash unit . Time to have fun with it !!

From TransAM Exia !

From TransAM Exia !

From TransAM Exia !

From TransAM Exia !

From TransAM Exia !

From TransAM Exia !

From TransAM Exia !

From TransAM Exia !

Stay tune for the next photoshoot ! MG Strike Gundam + WISP !

Gundam 00 - Awakening of the Trailblazer movie review

By now, there are plenty of reviews about this anime movie out there already.
Most people find the plot unsatisfying. Some even thought Gundam 00 series should have ended at season 2. In this movie, Setsuna barely killed a number of "evil" mechs and his dream gundam - 0000 Qan[t] is like what ??!! I was already quite displeased with Gundam 00 Qant's design,  and find it not worthy of successing 00 riser . But in the movie, Setsuna barely fire a single shot with 00 riser before it was torn apart ! Not the most satisfying plot I must say.
This is the first time a Gundam story is dealing with alien. Unfortunately this frontier has long been discovered by Macross, so it is not so much of a new concept. Shape shifting metallic lifeform which aims only to assimilate other lifeform (Star Trek - Borgs ; StarCraft - Zergs etc etc . . . boring ). Perhaps the revenge of Ribbon Almark's Ghost or even a Negative Veda system can be more interesting . But I suppose in making this movie . The plot suffers a very huge constraint.
I feel that this movie is made to sum up the grand vision of Aeolia Shenberg, the visionary whose theory formed the back bone of this series. At the end of season 2, his grand vision of human evolution via GN particle has been realised in Setsuna who has managed to become the first true Innovator.
So what is the purpose of achieving that ? World Peace ?
Go meet some aliens !
Nah, aliens just came knocking at our doorstep.
As Macross backbone story has stated , human technology revolution broke through when an Alien space ship came crashing into earth. So it seems meeting alien is key to our next evolution.
The ELS - Extraterrestrial Living Metal Shapeshifter came to meet earthlings from , er , Jupiter . Funny, seems they are teleporting in from other part of galaxy they could have choose to warp in nearer ?
Our beloved alien appears in funnels shaped metal shards which loves to fuse with anyone with heighten quatum brain wave. Worse is they don't talk and they have to take on the human shape of Ribbon Almark ?
No wonder our heroes are petrified.
I think that most people are pissed about the abrupt ending and worse of all it is not concise .
Atleast Neo gets to kick Agent Smith's ass before sacrificing himself to end the war .
Setsuna ? Happily teleported to ELS's homeworld with buddy Tiera Erde aka portable VEDA in his very very under use 00 Qan[t] and all is happily ever after . . .
It just make it seem that all those who sacrifice earlier is for fun ?
Well, what can I say ? Seems like movie has very tight time constraint that they could not bother to explain how well the life goes for everyone after ? Much like Lord of the Ring ?
I still don't quite understand why the movie name is dubbed 'Awakening of the Trailblazer' . Perhaps Trailblazer means the constant pursue by the ELS projectiles into one long line , zipping wherever the Gundam  went until they got blasted by huge laser beam ?
Though the movie soundtrack is not bad , I still rather in love with Yuna Ito's - Trust You ( Gundam 00 season 2 ending song ) Just a personal preference.

No progress

Time really flies these days. Feels like I made my last post a week ago and now its Xmas 2 days later .
My Grand Mother passed away.
3 weeks ago.
Just last week we buried her ashes in my Grand Father's tomb and finally they are reunited .
I wasn't very close with my grand mother .
We don't live together and we had language barrier.
Yet her passing on is still a big deal to me. Enough to make me turn vegan for 2 weeks.
We all knew its inevitable. Stroke fell her 6 years ago.
She should have gone then. Yet her life force fights on.
Half the brain is dead . There is no way she could function as a normal human being any more .
Yet she lives on. Until 3 weeks ago.
Whether we like it , we bound to face death at some point .

For now, Gunpla might just not be important anymore .
I din even touch Starcraft 2 .
What exactly is a hobby that really free you of stress ?
May be I just don't have the mind set for anything at the moment.

Virtual On - Raiden - Phase 01

In my humble opinion, Virtual On is the best mecha vs mecha arcade video game to date. I believe it is my obsession with this game that my friends actually chip in together and bought me the twin joy stick meant solely for this game for my birthday. At that time it was a revolution for SEGA in this aspect of robot battle as the control actually make you feel like you are a Gundam pilot for awhile (mechwarrior just don't cut it as , hey , you don't see any pilot controlling Gundam using keyboard and mouse , do you ?)
Yet, Virtual On has only 1 measly follow up sequel and it certainly ended just there.
(Mech Warrior atleast made it till 4 ? This world is just NOT FAIR !)

I bought 3 VO kits a decade ago and only manage to complete 1 successfully ( VO - Viper ). VO - Temjin ended in utter disaster and some how it broke the continuity of completing the last kit, VO - Raiden .

From WIP - Virtual On Raiden

I have this kit assembled long long time ago but not painted, nor applied the decals. It is just standing there gathering dust in my previous cupboard.

This round, I decided to use it as a "test bed" for practicing a new paint sequence which I have not tried before.

I wanted to get a chrome metallic blue colour which is probably different from the stock metallic blue offered by the Mr Color series spray paint. This may be the combination which I would like to apply on my Gundam Astray Blue Frame in the end.
Behold, my blue Raiden !

From WIP - Virtual On Raiden

The paint consist of 4 layers sprayed in the order : Surfacer > gloss black > chrome silver > Clear blue . I have to wash the kit first , very very thoroughly.

From WIP - Virtual On Raiden

From WIP - Virtual On Raiden

From WIP - Virtual On Raiden

Now I am done with spray painting and the next step is to hand paint the rest . Crap! I ran out of Steel color spray ! I wish to get a air brush soon , but sigh , that will be a whole new challenge altogether .

MG Exia - Trans AM mode - Phase 03 Final

Holy crap, it's November already ! 2 month since I last entry about the MG Exia.Actually, Exia has been completed and putting on display for a few weeks already, just that I have been so lethargic to do anything these days.

I am a man with many hobby but only finite time. There are so many things that I wanted to do, so much I wanted to learn and so much more I wanted to achieve but there is only 24 hours a day and I can't do anything without sleep and energy. Sigh. May be I can only truly involve in Gunpla after I retire ?

Anyway back to Exia . . .

From WIP - MG Exia - Trans AM

The "pink pearl"

The thing about buying special coated Gundam kit is that you probably think it saves you the trouble of painting it and achieving the effect yourself. And you are probably right. Assembly the kit , apply the labels , clear coats and its done !
Yet by not applying the manual paint job, there is no way hiding surface defects and the nip marks. Although I tried the water sanding technique, the result is not far from the original state. It is more of a technique to repair scratches than to really make it more shiny.

From WIP - MG Exia - Trans AM

Why did I get a special coated kit?

The reason of getting this special coated kit is that I feel I can't get the right mix of color combination if I'm going to paint it myself. Yet after completing this kit, I can't help thinking I should probably get the normal kit instead.

From WIP - MG Exia - Trans AM

GN Swords

Exia specializes close quarter melee combats. It is armed with 2 dagger GN swords, 2 beam sabers, 2 beam daggers and 1 gigantic GN sword ( prominent in the below pic ). That is the biggest design contrast in Exia design. The mecha is thin and slender yet its right armament seem to fell out of proportion. But that is the biggest allure in Exia's design. The depiction of small character wielding huge weaponry seem to be dominating Japanese pop culture. Unlike the American counter parts where heroes are normally muscle pack with or without multiple guns , Japanese prefer slick slender looking character wielding a huge sword , guns , whatever bad ass looking weird stuffs.
Seems to depict the notion of "strength is not seen from without , but within".

From WIP - MG Exia - Trans AM

After thoughts:

This might be the first and last time I get a special coat kit.
I still have a titanium coated MG RX-78 Gundam in my cupboard but seeing how much they are selling locally, I decide to keep it as collector's item.
Time to move on with my other kits . So many more to do . So little time . Yet even more exciting kits are coming out !

From WIP - MG Exia - Trans AM