Hurricanes and gundams and woo!

Well, here on the eastern shore (as well as a large portion of the east coast I'm sure) we've got a hurricane rolling in, which to me means I won't be able to properly work on my Kshatriya as I would like to, but that's life, when all this blows over (har har) Hopefully it'll still be nice enough outside for me to finish priming my Kshatriya and prepping the rest of it for airbrushing. so until that happens, I suppose that project is on hold. but on another note, I went ahead and ordered my first.... Perfect Grade! I also decided to do something a little different with this blog post, and I'll see how this works out vs. how I've been doing blog posts and go with what works best. As it stands now, I want to record a video and upload it to youtube, with a link to my blog and that will contain the video as well as some pictures of my work in progress, or my finished model.

Nothing's set in stone with that yet. Just experimenting with something a little different.  So weather and work aside I haven't gotten any work done with my Kshatriya besides priming all the pieces to the first leg and seperating everything by color for convenience. So for the Perfect grade, I've only finished the inner frame to one arm, I'm working on the second right now, I plan on fully constructing the inner frame before adding the outer armor, for that I think I'm going to panel line everything and add decals, then a layer of flat topcoat to eliminate the plastic-y shine from everything, and i think i'm gonna gloss or semi-gloss coat the inner frame, then stick everything together.

As far as modifications to the kit are concerned, I think I'm only going to change the LED in the eye from green to yellow, other than that the kit is exactly as I want it. anyway I think that's enough text for one post, time for a couple pictures!

Until next time!

not too much going on this week HG Jesta!

I prepped and painted the other Kshatriya arm today, no pictures of that though, would make the post the exact same as the last ;P although I cut all the leg pieces off the runners and they will be primed here in a few minutes. But I did build my HG Jesta that I got for my birthday this week, it was basically a straight build with a tiny bit of detail. namely I put silver behind the visor so it looked a little nicer. anyway, pictures!

And here's a random picture of a dwarf I drew at work. yay boredom. haha

RG Mk.II Titans ver. Complete!

I finished up my Mk.II Titans ver. and today in the mail I got a package that I've been wanting since I decided to get back into gunpla :D

my rg's sitting on my worthless cd burner from the late 90's woo!

I fell in love with all the pictures of this kit i saw when i was getting back into gunpla. the actual suit design, the weapons, the display stand, everything about this looks magical. once I finish all of my unicorn gundam kits, I'll probably knock this out. I'll have to order a couple of paints for it. :)

Kshatriya update 2, Arm, Music, sushi and more!

Alright gonna mix things up a little bit this time and see what happens. First, a japanese sushi place opened in my town not too long ago, and I finally got to go with two of my good friends, and it was pretty good. I wound up getting some volcano rolls, but I skipped on the Pain fried rice...

Next up! I ordered some packages (one last month that finally showed up, and one from last week)

Last week I was derping around on amazon and wanted to buy another kit to add to my backlog (like i need to do that) and decided I wanted to go back, and get a wing kit.  I've already got the Heavyarms EW in my backlog. so now I'm going to be adding the Wing Gundam EW to that as well. and I think this will be the first to tackle after i knock out all of my HG unicorn gundam kits. But the wing gundam (i don't remember if it was the HG 1/100 or the regular HG) was my first gundam kit, so naturally I'm pretty excited to revisit this, even if it isn't the same one. it'll be nice to see how it's been updated.

My other purchase was the 1/144 mechanical hands from hobby base, that I ordered from HLJ about a month ago. I actually forgot that i had ordered them. so when I got to my moms and had a package, it was a pleasant surprise. I ordered 2 sets, even though I'm not entirely sure what i want to put them on yet. I think I'll put one on my HG unicorn mode unicorn gundam, maybe i'll stick the others on the RG titans MK II.... we'll see.

Lastly before the Kshatriya update. I was sitting around thinking about it. and while I love building Gunpla, or models in general, I consider it almost a form of art like drawing or writing, or anything like that. but i think my favorite form is hands-down music. I love music more than anything out there, and I'm curious what other people are into musically. So firstly I'll leave a link to a Spotify playlist I've created. there's obviously more than 25 songs I listen to when I build gunpla, but I guess I just wanted to give a taste of the music that I'm into, and I welcome anybody to build playlists and share them with me, because I'm always looking for new music to listen to, but I guess music is such an inspiration to me, I want to see what music motivates, or drives you. so please don't hesitate to make a little playlist up and leave it in the comments here, or on reddit or on facebook or anywhere you can contact me and I'll do my best to check it out!

My gunpla spotify playlist!


Now on to the Kshatriya and MK II pictures! they're kind of light this time, I haven't had a ton of time to put into my builds this week. I finished the right arm of the Kshatriya. I'm off tonight so I'll be prepping the left arm for paint and when I'm done with that I'll probably knock one of the legs out on the Mk.II but we'll see where I end up. :D

I tried filling the base with a gundam panel-lining marker but it didn't seem to like the surface, even though the paint had dried several days. so I went with a light panel wash, I'll probably have to lay another layer on top to get it as bold as I want.

Next is the right arm, I went light on panel lines here, there's one or two i need to hit before i can call this piece 'done', mostly the bicep aarea and i'm still not sure if i wanna highlight the pieces that stick out of the shoulders. 

and for the titan i slapped the decals on the leg while hanging out with some friends one night and stuck it next to my dwarf figure I use for tabletop gaming ;P

anyway, sorry about being so light on content this week everybody. It's been one of those weeks. hopefully i'll be able to churn out something exciting for next week!

First actual Kshatriya WIP!

Alright, well I've been hard at work, (both at my actual job, and at this) I think I've figured out how to properly mix paint, once I actually figured out how to get it set up and running properly, I haven't had much problems with the airbrush, outside the actual learning curve associated with it. That said I think so far this has been a good project to learn on. It has a good mix of larger parts, and smaller parts, There are a few opportunities to use different colors, so I've gotten some experience in cleaning out my airbrush properly. another important lesson I feel like I've learned is patience. even moreso than with the unicorn gundam. I like to let the paint dry at least a full day before I start touching and messing with the pieces. typically I'll come home from work around 7-8am (I work graveyard shift) and I'll paint a few pieces, and then head to bed. when I get up I'll maybe knock a couple others out until all my little clips aren't vacant. For this project I'm also doing it one part at a time.

I started with the torso, I went through the instructions. I test-fitted each part to see how it worked in conjunction with the other parts, then i disassembled it and put each part on a clip, and strategically placed it on my little foam block. I primed the pieces one at a time using spray cans, and then after that dried I began to use the airbrush. Finally once everything was done being painted, I hand brushed details (the crest on the front of the cockpit, and i did some half-assed panel washes) I think that's how I'm gonna continue with the remainder of this project as I've already worked myself into a nice little groove and I think I'm working at a pretty good pace.

anyway, enough rambling, onto pictures!

This is easily my favorite part of the whole build so far. as soon as i saw this molded in green, I knew what i wanted to do with it. So I painted the entire part gunmetal, and after it dried a couple days, I masked off the pipe and painted the rest green (i think i used olive green for this part)

this piece was a test of my patience as well as a test of my hand. you can see i still have a little touching up to do. but it came out a lot better than i thought it would. so there's that.

i am incredibly happy with how this looks all put together. it's like i can really see all of my hard work and time. 

out of this. the only bad move i think i made was the yellow bits on the back. i might paint over those in green or black or..any color that isn't yellow. or maybe i'll go over it again and smooth it out some and tidy it up. I haven't decided yet.

the next pieces in the build are the head, and i'm going to knock out the first arm/shoulder. so expect to see that hopefully next week. :) another thing i've been working on is my RG Titans MKII. I don't remember where i left the last blog post off, so forgive me for any resposted pictures.

RG Mk II while i wait for my next project to dry.

Okay. well I started 2 new projects. both are 1/144 scale projects. one being the Mk II Titans ver. real grade kit, which since I started building, I have been taken by this kit. I really like how they get you to build the frame first then add all the armor, And I really like all of the little details on the frame, which I have been hand painting, and my other project, which will be my first airbrush kit. and has been going pretty well so far, my 1/144 HG Kshatriya. PICTURES!

aaaaaaaand the kshatriya!