Hello Again Blog....

Well now, who knew being a teacher would take up so much of my free time; Seven more weeks till summer! Anyways I haven't posted in a while because Ive been super busy and I know Ive already said that. Lets try this again.

As far as work goes I haven't gotten anything done in the past month, I'm just now picking back up with my new Air Brush and pushing forward on my Perfect Grade Alie Strike Gundam. The Gouf is still pretty much as it was although I did manage to find the chain I wanted for it on eBay and got that a few weeks ago, now it is complete! Other than that the only other things Ive gotten done is flat coating my RG Zaku II and man did that make a difference. Sealed all the decals in perfect, can't wait to post some pictures of that. I'm planing on starting a diorama also with the RG Zaku II and the RG RX 78-2 that I have yet to start building. So the next few months are full of some good Gunpla.

Like I mentioned last post I finished my spray booth and it is all set up and ready for use. Here are some quick pictures of it. I think after I bought everything it cost me around 40-60 dollars which isn't half bad in my opinion.

Anyways well Ill be posting back soon with pictures of my RG Zaku and also update on my PG Strike. Keep checking back and I promise Ill be posting more.

News From a Distant Land

New York was a fun trip, it was great to hang out with my buddy Lou as I rarely get to see him because of our schedules. I woke at 7, was on the train to meet up with him by 10 and was in the city by 12. As we got off at Grand Central we decided a quick trip to MoMA was in order so we stopped there for a few hours and took in the beautiful collection of art that they have. My personal favorites will always be the more classical pieces from the Impressionistic era such as Cezanne, Van Gogh, Monet, Surat and of course some of the other big names such as Warhol, Dali Duchamp and Mondrian.

Absolutely a great way to spend the early afternoon; having gone to school for art education I got a chance to show off my teaching abilities to my friend and give him some deeper insight on some of the art and artists.

After MoMA we took the Green track onto Canal Street  to get some Dim Sum for lunch and then we headed to the main attraction, the Elizabeth Center Mall.

Thats how it looked on my iPhone and heres what the entrance looks like. Honestly its a bit hard to spot if you don't know what the entrance looks like.

Once inside there is a plethora of Chinese/Japaneses goods but the stuff I was looking for is on the lower level. Down the escalator and around the comer we went until we found the store...

What you see there is a shot of the outside of the store; thats pretty much the width of the entire store. From what I've seen online the store looked much bigger than it actually was. Unfortunately the owner would not allow me to take pictures in the store so I took a quick look around and bought what I came for. For a small store he sure did have a bunch of kits packed in there; I saw most of the newer Perfect Grades as well as most of the newer Master Grade kits. He also had a handful of new SD kits, HG kits, Revoltech Figures, and the new Rodimus Prime Masterpiece Transformer. I didn't take as good of a look as I wanted being that the store was so small and there were so many people wanting to go in and out of it. I did however get what I came for and that is.....

The Real Grade RX-78-2 Gundam. I've wanted this kit since building the newer Zaku II Real Grade and I could not pass up the chance to get it in person. That brings me to something I found surprising, the prices at this particular shop were not bad, I only paid a few dollars more than the Yen conversion. The kit retails for 2800 Yen which is about 34.00 USD and I paid 35 dollars! I was a happy camper to say the least.

After our adventure at the model shop in the Elizabeth Center Mall we took a run across the street to another Toy/Model/Card shop. Their prices were a bit more expensive yet they had a much larger selection of Gundam and other Model kits but since I had already gotten what I had came for, we just took a quick look and headed on our way.

After the shops we did some street haggling, grabbed some desert at a Chinese bakery and headed back to the station. Over all it was a great day in the city and I hope to do it again soon (most likely when I can get my hands on the Real Grade Strike Gundam.

As far as my Gundam progress goes I got the water slide decals for the PG Strike in the mail today from eBay so I may be working on that soon, maybe put up a tutorial on how I do that. I also started cleaning up the waist armor pieces of the PG Strike for paint so Ill be sure to take some pictures when I do that. Like I said the other day I finished the Rifle for the PG Strike so I will be painting that soon as well and I just finished modding the shield of the Gouf Custom too so thats just about ready to be painted too! Lots of stuff to paint very little time to actually do it all.

Had to fill in the seam lines on the gun which was kinda a pain but it came out looking good. Only thing I didn't like about this gun was the little pieces you put in the front below the barrel. It looked to be some sort of grenade with some great detail but once you put it in it doesn't come out. I almost broke it trying to get it back out. Oh well...

The Gatling Gun for the shield already has the metal barrels modded which I did a few weeks ago, all I did was drill out some holes to put some hex screws in the shield.

I'll be posting an unboxing of the Real Grade RX-78-2 soon so check back for updates!

New York Bound

Tomorrow I will be heading to New York for the day with a good friend of mine. We'll probably end up going to MoMA and some other museums while we are down there and grab lunch as well. My friend doesn't know it yet but I have a secret agenda to head to the Elizabeth Mall on Canal Street to visit a store that is a secret to most Gundam Fans. The store specializes in all sorts of imported Chinese/Japaneses toys and models such as Gundam so I will defiantly be posting tomorrow to let you guys know the scoop on that store and how good the deals are.

In other news, I got my tax return and with some of the money I will be buying a new Air Brush and a few model kits I've had my eye on.

Thats what I've been looking at for the past few days now the Iwata HP-CS Eclipse and its actually what I've wanted for quite some time now. I had to make the choice between the Eclipse and the DevilBiss Dagr and all signs are pointing to the Eclipse.

Hopefully tomorrow I can sneak some photos of this place in for the blog. I know the shop owners don't like it very much when you take pictures but for you guys I will try.

Transformers....hmmm

So tonight I finally got around to watching Transformers the Movie. I have no idea why I waited so long, I mean it was an awesome movie. Leave it to Michale Bay to make it really melt your face off. So after the movie I decided to purged the inter-webs to see if I could find any Transformer model kits, to my dismay not many exist. This is probably because of companies soaking up the rights and such. Or maybe its just really hard to make a transforming model kit. This does bring me to something I have found, a kit that is coming out this year. The kit seems to have a prebuilt inner frame and the builder has to put on the outer frame (Much like the Gundam Real Grade kits I love so much). Seems like it could be interesting, if it can transform I may pass out.

Here are some of the released previews of the kit, from what I've read the kit is set to release in June of 2011.

Can't wait to see more from this, I mean if you though I was just a Gundam nerd you were wrong. I just love robots in general. Would that make me a robot nerd? Hmmm.

Anyways I know I haven't posted in a while, I am still slowly working on my kits; The Perfect Grade Aile Strike and the Master Grade Gouf Custom. Today I put the gloss coat on the white leg armor parts I painted last week and I also ordered the decals for the Strike off of eBay yesterday. I still need to get the decals for the striker pack and the SkyGrasper, they are a bit challenging to find.

You may be asking yourself; Wow you really are taking your sweet time with these builds Neil! My answer to that is; You are right and I have only one person (or thing) to blame.

Little Big Planet 2 is probably the most fun I've had playing a video game since Little Big Planet 1. I won't go too far into it but most of my free time has been devoted to that little guy. I mean how could you resist?

Anyways but I'll post more in the morning, I took some pictures of the work I've done with the Perfect Grade and the modifications I've done to the Gouf. Hopefully tomorrow I can do some more prep to the waist pieces so I can start painting those. Until then in the words of Charlie Sheen, May you always win.

Gundam News

So I did a bit of searching today to see if I could find any news on the new Gundam releases for 2011 and I stumbled upon some new pictures of the Real Grade Strike Gundam I have been talking about for the last few posts.

Looking at it, it looks as though the designer went with a similar design to the Perfect Grade Strike Gundam. It is really evident in the proportions of the model as well as in the legs and side armor. I am hoping that those side armor pieces will move like the Perfect Grade do (they have this cool side to side swaying motion when the leg moves). The Striker Pack looks pretty good, I'm pretty excited to see what it will look like with some color. All in good time I suppose, we are still a good month away from this release. If you look farther down the page you'll notice they put the weaponry which includes his Beam Rifle and with the Aile Strike you get the two Beam Sabers for the Striker Pack but alas no Grand Slam Sword....This is a bit disappointing. Moving on you will also see that the 3rd secret has been release which is nothing I didn't already guess, just another allusion to the Advanced MS Joint System that they have been using on the last two Real Grades. You can see they are showing the inner frame of both the arm and the leg, as they did with the shoulder joint and the waist. The leg does look to be a bit different although so I am still hoping Bandai has something up their sleeve with this one. Either way this is on my list for April so you guys can be expecting an unboxing as well as build for that model.

Another few releases look to be the MG 00 Raiser for May 2011, taking a look at the scans from the latests issue of Hobby Magazine... 

Looks like this ones going to look a lot like the Perfect Grade as well. I wonder if they will have any light up parts like the MG Exia Ignition Mode had. I know I saw something about it having the GN Condenser packs.  Lastly and what everyone seems to be astir about is the MG Epyon.

From what I hear this was leaked a few weeks ago with a silhouetted picture, much like what we saw when they announced the RG Strike Gundam. When looking at this model it looks to be a reworked design of the newer Endless Waltz version from the new manga. It looks pretty cool to me, I really dig the segmented leg armor. It will be interesting to see what the prototype will look like.

That seems to be it for news today, Ill keep you guys posted if I learn anything new. In other news I ended up going out today and staying out most of the day so I didn't really get a chance to do any painting. I'm hoping to start that tomorrow along with grabbing the wood I need to start building my spray booth. Ill post tomorrow with an update, until then.... 

Real Grade Aile Strike Gundam Secrets

So today I was surfing the web and I found the first two secrets to the new Real Grade Aile Strike Gundam were posted. I was pretty excited to actually get a chance to check these out being that the Aile Strike is one of my favorite.

So.....They are just showing me things I already know. Apparently from what I see the Aile Strike will have a similar shoulder joint as the Zaku II. The second secret looks to be a double joint with a hinge and a ball joint at the waist and hip. Third secret is only a day away, maybe they will tell us the next model is going to be made out of plastic! All kidding aside its good to have a little look at what to expect, I still am quite excited for this release.

In other news I sold some stuff on eBay over the week, Ill be using the extra cash to grab some decals for my Gouf Custom, and My PG Strike Gundam. I also managed to find some pretty good hands on eBay for Master Grades, they have fully articulating fingers much like the Perfect Grade hands. I'm pretty sure ill be trying these hands out on my Gouf Custom to see how well they work.

I may need to modify them with a few rare earth magnets, they do not look like they will have a peg.

Other than shopping around I haven't gotten too much work done on my models, I took a few days to work on some new drawings for an Art Show that I will be having with a friend next month. Trying to change my style up a bit so theses drawings are a bit different from my normal style. I would have taken some pictures of my progress but I don't want to give away too much before the Art Show.

So whats on the agenda for the rest of the week. Well I just finished up some prep on my PG Aile Strike Gundam and all the white armor pieces for the legs are ready for paint, Ill probably get around to doing it tomorrow. I also just finished putting some small hex head screws into the Gatling Shield of the Gouf Custom that I modified last post so I'm going to start getting the Gouf ready for paint (Just need to finish up the battery compartment). Lastly I just finished up mocking up the spray booth that I will be making with the money I got from my eBay auctions. Its going to be relatively small, just big enough for my models.

I'm excited to get some painting done tomorrow, its been about a month since I last got a chance to paint so Ill make sure to take some pictures of my work space and my equipment for the blog. So tomorrow Ill get some more pictures up, I'm hoping to get 20-30 posts in this month so I need to up my game a bit and stop being lazy....

The Truth Reveled...

So here comes a bit of my nerdy-ness...but this is what I made this blog for. So lets talk a little bit about Gunpla. For those who don't know what Gunpla is I'll make it simple, Gunpla is short for Gundam Plastic Models....or at least the Japanese like to think. Anyways, they are Japanese plastic models that I have grow very fond of making in the past few years. They can be very complex, they have great articulation and they are very detailed and interesting to look at. They come in a few different grades. 

• High Grade 1/144 Scale which range from 15-30 dollars, they are the least detailed of the bunch. The articulation is something of a cheap action figure. 

• Master Grade 1/100 Scale which range from 30-90 dollars, this is where I like to spend my money. They seem to have the best bang for your buck, great detail, great articulation,  and not too big. 

• Perfect Grade 1/60 Scale which range from 150-300 dollars. These are the most expensive yet the nicest looking. The detail and the articulation on these are absolutely amazing. 

• Real Grade 1/144 Scale which range from 20-40. The Real grade just came out and ill actually be able to show you one I just finished for a Gunpla competition. These are basically smaller Master Grade models. I like these kits so much I'm planning on sticking to these and Master Grades. The detail is amazing for such a small size and the articulation is unbelievable. The hands are almost better than most Master Grades with fully jointed thumbs, forefinger and the rest of the fingers attached like master grades with an extra knuckle joint. 

So those are your basic grade. Like I said my own personal collection which is quite small, only consists of a Real Grade which I just finished and two Master Grades. Here is the Real Grade I just finished. 

This is the Real Grade Zaku II Char's Custom Suite.  By far one of the most fun kits I've ever painted. It may look pretty finished but I still need to apply decals that I am waiting on and then a top coat of matte clear. I can not say anything bad about this kit, I'm going to write a review a little later this week. 

Heres a back shot of it. I did a lot of painting with this figure that I never though I could do on a 1/144 scale figure (About 5-6 inches tall). All the panel lines were painted in silver to match the box art, I did pre and post shading on the larger armor parts. Chrome on the thrusters and even painted the insides red. As I write I am trying to figure out how to let you guys click on my pictures to make them bigger....I suppose all in good time. 

So what am I working on now you might ask...well I have a few projects going. I'm working on a custom paint job for a Gouf Custom. I just finished installing the led for the mono eye and I will be prepping it for paint soon. I am also working on a Master Grade Aile Strike Gundam. I will post some pictures soon, let you guys see the inner workings of my painting operations. 

This year looks like its gonna be pretty good for Gunpla, I will make a post soon talking about this years upcoming models. I'm pretty excited for the next RG to come out, its going to be the Aile Strike Gundam. Anyways its 4am time for me to get some sleep...this blog stuff is fun...