Real Grade Zaku!

Hello all!
Over the course of a Saturday evening I decide to build one of my Real grade Zaku II models. The Zaku II with the distinctive red colour belonged to Char, full details of the mech here:http://www.mahq.net/Mecha/gundam/msgundam/ms-06s.htm

Any way, for the build I decided to copy Elvin's idea of using the hanger bay bases as a backdrop, but for this I needed more people for the crowd.
Cue this: 1/144 scale people!

The figures are of a soft plastic (maybe silicon or vinyl) so I decided to stick them to little bits of left over pla-plates so that they'll stand by themselves. 

 Here's a couple of close-ups:

 The hanger bay in its original state for my Real Grade Gundam.

 Time for the build!!!!!
Starting from the bottom up - the build was supervised by Char himself!

 Start of the leg build up to the hip, the internal frame isn't the normal plastic but a softer plastic used for the RG internal frames.

 Armoured up for the first leg, crowd is starting to build.

 Same pic, minus the flash.

 The side links for the legs, using metal beads to detail it up, I used the sets bead for the 1st and last beads on the spring and the rest are metal. The metal beads are slightly smaller than the set beads, 2 set beads are the same as 3 metal beads.

 Again, minus the flash.

 Second leg made: Crowd is building.

 Hip skirt build and being transported to the mech.

 Slowly does it!!!!!!!

 All attached safely!!!!

 RG Gundam is getting interested in the build

 Less blurry pic

 Chest part built again with metal beads, same as the legs!

 Gundam is getting nervous with the new mech.

 Arm built.

 Shield built. Gundam getting to a better position if there's to be a fight!

 Second arm and head on!

 IT LIVES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 OOOH, my axe!

 Axe vs Beam Rifle.

 Aaaahhhh, right so. need better weapon.

 HAHAHA Bazooka and Beam rifle vs beam rifle

 Evenly matched! Let battle commence!

 Posing for the camera, get my good side!

 Close up of the gun.

 1/144 tanks.

 Fight! Or check out my ass.

 Ass, minus the flash.

 Ammo!!!!!

 1/144 HG vs RG grade

 And again minus the flash.

 Side:

 Back:

 Shield Side:

 All done!
Thanks to www.gunpla.co.uk for the quick delivery of my detailing part!!!!!!
My next build is another RG grade Zaku, but this will have metal thrusters, more metal beads and decals. OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! 

InstantMold and a WIP Tyranid!

I'm back! With an article! Text and Pic heavy for those on low-bandwidth.

Ok, so I bought this stuff called Instantmold from ebay. Here's a pretty picture of it!

Here's two links: one for the product from collminiornot.com (http://www.coolminiornot.com/shop/tools ... -mold.html) and the other is a review from inquisitorlordaki.blogspot (http://inquisitorlordaki.blogspot.com/2 ... -mold.html)
Its a reusable material that you can use to make molds of your item and then recast it. I'm testing it out with a warhammer 40k part now, just waiting for the greenstuff to cure. Pictured is the set with 3 large blocks, I got the set with 6 smaller blocks, however the smaller blocks can be mashed together to make the bigger block.


So far, I've had mixed results. I'm not using a container to hold the mold in place, merely wrapping it up in itself and pressing the item in. This is causing 'layers' to form in the mold agent. And after 12hours the layers are peeling from each other which is a pain as the item might be molded into 2layers.


Anyway, I made a test mold from the tyranid Mawloc head carpace piece just with those side tubey bits. The mold wasn't easy to mash into a blob from the block and had hard parts in it. Figuring the water wasn't hot enough, I dumped it into a cup of boiling water and that worked fine.
Here's some pictures:

New blocks

 My Stock piece

 Green stuf added to the mold.

 Finished piece, straight from the mold.

 Stock piece, first and second casts. Not bad.

As you can see, I was able to make two casts from the mold. The second cast wasn't as good on the little stubs, probably because of the bending I did to get the first cast out. By the way, the casts are made from greenstuff.


I've then threw the mold agent into hot water and and now trying to make gundam hands as a test as they are more complex and are multiparts. 
Here's some more pictures

They are setting now, but as I'm away this weekend, it'll be Tuesday before I can see how this works out with the two press molds. I'm not holding much faith in my skills (these are my first casts ever) so I'm going to be trying them again. Just looking at them now there's a lot of flash greenstuff, the items I was making a mold of don't appear to have been pressing in right so details are lost and the top and bottom molds seem to have slid in opposite directions. But this is all part of the learning curve.


OH, here's some WIP pictures of the tervigon based on the one here:http://darkfuturegaming.blogspot.com/2011/05/arachnarok-tervigon-conversion-painted.html

Tervigon Vs Carnifex (Just to show some scale)

Rant - Has Games workshop gone too far?

So Has Games Workshop gone too far?

Games Workshop have over the last week or two made two rather large announcements, both of which have made their customers very angry indeed.

The first announcement was the new terms and agreements between the company and 3^rd party companies in the EU who sell on their products.

Basically, GW have told the independent sellers that they can ONLY sell to EU customers. That means that Australia, Canada, South America and America can’t buy from Independent stockists for a lower price that set for their own countries.

Now this doesn’t affect me, but it does affect many people all over the world.

The second announcement was that the old metal figures were being pulled and a new material was being introduced. The new material was supposed to have a more stable price than Tin (which was used as part of the metal figure). This stabilisation of their costs should have meant that the new ‘Finecast’ line should have been cheaper if not the same price as the old metal one. However GW have increased their price.

This also has angered customers.

And in a way, I’m pissed off too. First off, how can GW do that to their customers abroad when they can’t offer the same service themselves that the independent stockist can? Internet means fair and international trade. GW seems to be stuck in a time warp. And dictating who Independent (INDEPENDENT) stockists can sell too seems to counter the global harmonization that’s happening. I say if someone was to bring them to the EU court they’d be told that they can’t dictate who the end purchaser is if a third party seller is involved. And how are they to know who the independent stockist is selling to anyway?  

And secondly, we are in a recession, less and less people have disposable income and many as giving up their hobbies to survive. GW doesn’t seem to notice this and have on cue every year, increased the price of their products. Sheer madness.

GW has made alot of people very unhappy.

I only got into this hobby less than 4 years ago and I’m thinking that it’s time to slow down on my expenditure on GW products. Alot.

Just get a few terrain pieces, finish off my Grey knights, Space Marine and Tyranids army and leave it at that.  No new armies for me!

Anyway enough of ranting. Must build something!

Whats a guy to do!

I picked up the Grey Knights codex for the Warhammer 40K game.
Reason was, I already own a dozen or so of the metal Terminator models as part of an Inquisitor army and wanted to stay up to date with the options and rules for a Grey Knight only army.
Only problem is, Gamesworkshop have brought out new plastic models. And I want!

Basically, if I were to expand my army I would need (like) to get the following:

1 Storm-raven flyer (52euro).
2 Dread-knights (42 euro each)
3 Terminator squads (30ish euro per squad)
3 Space Marine squads (30ish euro per squad).
2 Rhino tanks (35euro each)
1 Crusader tank (50euro)

That brings the cost of a new army to over 400euro.
Ah thanks but no thanks. Even with buying in the Art'n'hobby shop the cost would be over 360euro.
May look out on ebay. Or kibash, or cry.

Damn GW for having such nice looking models!!!!!

Catching up

Hi all,

Been quite a while since I last graced this blog. Sorry about that.
I could say that I hadn't the time to update, but that isn't really true.
The real reason is that I've been unmotivated to post.

Its just the end of winter here. Days are getting longer and the mornings are brighter. This is a good thing. I work shift work, 8am-4pm on one week, 4pm-12pm the other. And over the last few months that meant simply, I go to work in the dark and return home in the dark. And I really don't like it.
During the times when I'm home and its dark, all I want to do is crawl onto my bed and do as little as possible - often resulting in many hours on the web randomly doing nothing. Other times, it would result in my watching of DVD boxsets that I have. I recently finished 'Dark Angel' and the 2009 remake of 'The Prisoner'.

So, whats going to change now that the light is starting to win over the dark?
I actually built a few models just this very week. The RG grade Gundam, The HG Unicorn (which I may at some point mod and rebuild for better movement). I snapped the HG grade Serpent, Tallegesse III, Shelong and Heavy Arms together.

All going well I'll have posts about each of them. Hopefully I can get my cameras memory card back so I can have lots of photos for the posts.

Until then, be safe, be seen and read on!

My first complete Kitbash

Had started this model off last year, but never completed it until I read about Gundamguy's (www.gundamguy.blogspot.com) competition. SO nows its finished!
A custom colour scheme and all. Please excuse the quality of the photos but my memory card is not in my house so I had to use my phone.
I'll list the parts used and you can c&c all you want! Oh, the scale is 1/144 and I hand painted the model, hence the untidiness and yes, I know that there's seamlines, but I'm not all that fussy about them myself.

Head: Exia NG (Gundam 00)
Body: Impulse HG (Gundam Seed Destiny)
Waist: Impulse HG (Gundam Seed Destiny), Strike Noir for ass thrusters (1/100Gundam Seed Stargazer)
Legs: Impulse HG (Gundam Seed Destiny)
Arms: Impulse HG (Gundam Seed Destiny)
Shoulders: Epyon NG (Gundam Wing)
Shoulder Guns: I think their from the 1/100 Strike Noir kit.
Beam Saber: Hilt is from the Impulse, the beam is from the wing of the Strike Noir.
Hand Gun: Kotobuyiko(?) M.S.G. weapons set.

Crater: Games Workshop Crater kit
Misc: Dead gundams.

Hello to all, a Happy New Year to you!
5 days into the New Year. I'm a little bit late wishing you a Happy New Year, but its the thought that counts. Isn't it?

Anyway, this post is probably going to be random as I'm just typing it out, no thought going into it at all.

Ok, here we go.

So.... the recession, killing anyone else's hobbies and dreams?
Due to the recession, large clunks of my pay packet are taken off me before I even get to see it due the complete ineptness that is the Irish Government. But however you look at it, I only really have myself to blame really. During the 'good times' when I was earning a decent wage, I made little to no attempt to save any money for the in enviable rainy day, spending the cash on DVDs, cds, alcohol, nicknack's etc. It hasn't until the start of the recession that I started collection warhammer 40k, the occasional Star Trek ship and restarted my Gundam collection. (maybe I'll talk about the recession more in my next post).
Why so late in my life (I'm 26 next birthday and the recession started 3ish years ago).
Well, the 40k came about from a friend of mine from work (who has since become my supervisor at work) who was trying to organise a gaming night. It lasted about 6-7months, meeting on a Sunday evening. We started playing Heroquest, an excellent game if you can pick up a copy. After a few months of that, we moved on to Descent and then finally......Space Hulk. Not the new version, the classic 1st edition. It was so cool! I was hooked! After playing it a few times, the group drifted apart (as all things do) and it wasn't until I was in my local art and crafts shop (Art'N'Hobby), that I saw them selling 40K models. I picked up a packet of Space Marine Terminators (if memory serves) and that was the start of that obsession!

Ummm.....moving on I thinks. I like Star Trek, the series is good, easy to sit down and watch, easy enough to pick up. And I do like the simple yet sleek designs of the ships. They just seem to glide through space. (Yes I am a Trekkie, just don't tell anyone! Please!?!)

And Gundams...... I do like gundams. I first saw the gundam as a TV series on Toonami (again if memory serves). It was New Report Gundam Wing - AKA Gundam Wing. It was around that time, that I picked up some of my all time favorite anime series' Cowboy Bebop, Outlaw Star, Neon Genesis Evangelion and Martian Successor Nadesico. Unusally for a TV series in Ireland (especially one from Japan that wasn't aimed at kids to sell toys), the local toy shops were selling the model kits. At the time I only picked up a few 1/144 models and 1/100 of Wing. It started a collection that continues today in two regards: all but 3 of my collect are 1/144 scale and I'm trying to collect the entire Wing set!