Archive for the ‘Modeling’ Category

Chemistry wins again

Ugh.

Okay, long story short, I have had zero luck building this little kit. It’s a BB Strike Noir Gundam by Bandai in my custom color scheme (Strike Blanc? Infinite Pinkness?). It was about $9 from Hobbytown, if memory serves. I like to go full-throttle even on these dinky models so I filled all the seams and glued all the fixed joints. I really wanted it to kick ass.

It didn’t.

Here’s the Cliff’s Notes timeline:

1 Preshaded the helmet way too early, forcing me to mask off large portions of the face that I’d already assembled and painted so that I could fill the seams and repaint. The masking tape pulled the paint right off those areas.

2 Had to repaint the shoulders due to bad planning (like the helmet), but did not fully strip the previous coat of paint. Left texture on the top edges where I fixed the seams. Sanded like a mofo*, repainted 3x, finally was satisfied.

3 It fell off the drying mount. The whole thing. Major dings to the torso and helmet.

4 Enamel panel line wash failed completely. Attempts to clean up actually stripped the basecoat in those areas. Had to bathe the entire torso and legs in a Simple Green bath and start from scratch.

5 2nd time around on the torso was great. Preshading went off without a hitch. This is arguably the best the model ever got, before –

6 It fell off the drying mount again. This time I made no effort to fix the nicks that the impact produced.

7 Coated it in Future in prep for the panel line wash (take 2). The wind blew over the drying mount, and I instinctively caught the model — embedding giant fingerprints in the gloss coat**. But by this point I was starting to get beyond caring, so I waited for it to dry and gently wet sanded the fingerprints out.

8 To avoid a repeat of #4, I used acrylics for the panel line wash. It didn’t work great, but it worked, so I was happy. Better than panel lining with Microns, anyway.

9 Applied ill-advised custom decals. The UN one looks okay, but the 99 is more like 9   9. Don’t know why I thought that was okay at the time.

10 Flat coated the model to seal the decals and kill the sheen. This was the crowning horror. When the laquer-based matte spray hit the panel lines, the wash ran everywhere(!)  covering the model in the large puddles you see in the annotated photo in the header.

I actually don’t understand why that happened — the wash had been dry for 24 hours. I guess I should’ve hit it with another coat of Future before I applied the matte spray. Or used ink instead of acrylic for the wash…or something. I dunno.

I could go back to square one at this point, but I’m not going to. I’m DONE with this model. I’ll keep it around to try new techniques (this is a great candidate for pastel weathering — something I’ve been dying to try), but otherwise I’m writing it off.

Goodbye, Strike. May flights of smudgy angels sing thee to thy rest… On my shelf.

^{Above: Paintjob #2, just before the 2nd panel line wash. The torso hadn’t hit the ground a second time by this point. Still a couple nicks on his face from the tape disaster and the first fall, but otherwise sitting pretty. You can see some of the subtle preshading here on the torso and wings.}

^{Above: Panel line wash#2 and post fall #2. Exposed plastic at the top edge of the left wing is visible. Acrylic is so fragile.}

^{Above: Panel line wash #2, and post fall #2. You can see several dings in the finish on the torso, and the tips of the wings are showing exposed plastic. Also some nasty pooling on the waist armor, but I was willing to live with it.}

^{Above: Flat coated! Oh, and ruined! Notice how the panel lines on the wing were exempt from the reaction? I don’t know what that means either.}

*Mofos being known for how much they love to sand.

**Because I was using my Giant Hands that day, you see.

I love you, Hobby Link

My new kits arrived!

I’ve been too busy with work and side projects to start on any of them, and I’m busy finishing up another SD Gundam (Strike Noir), but I’m psyched. I’m going straight into the Gurren Lagann kits the first moment I get. All the effort is in the painting on those; there are only 2 pages of instructions, and one of them is a picture of the completed model.

Anyway, we’ll see how that goes. My BB Strike Noir is turning out a lot better than my last model, but it’s still not that great. I’m hoping I’ll have some better methods down by the time I work my way up to the Valkyrie* and the Vic Viper.

*Yup! Got a replacement!

You gave me a Hobbyfrown

Dear Hobbytown,

Your employees told me that this kit, in a series of kits you currently carry, was discontinued. So I ordered it somewhere else. Magically, it was not only not discontinued, but cheaper through the other store.

The workers who helped me were very nice when they didn’t sell me anything; don’t get me wrong. But seriously, if you a) have things in your store that I want or b) you can get them, I will buy them from you before I go anywhere else. Scout’s honor.

And if I was a boy scout, that would actually mean something. Just know that if a Scout dies because I have to shop at another store it’s on your head, Hobbytown.

Getting better at the “not destroy” thing

There are two things I should get out of the way right now so we can move on with our lives together:

• I love giant robots
• I like making plastic models

Read the rest of this entry »

I am a crappy modeler

Hasegawa makes some really nice models. The quality of the molds are excellent and the scribing is really good. I want you to know this.

I have (had?) a beautiful, 1/72 scale plastic model of the VF-1A Super Valkyrie featured in Macross: Do You Remember Love that I bought when I was still living in San Francisco. I kept this model in storage for about 6 years or so, waiting for the moment to come when I would be a sophisticated enough modeler to really do it justice.

I am still waiting for this moment. Read the rest of this entry »