Gunpla Building Community

This thing was a simple kit made into a beast with the way I went about layering blacks to get one that was slightly lighter than black-black and kept some of the metallic of the base coat. I'd have done another but it wouldn't go with what I have planned for it without the different head types for the V. Oh well, 2/3 done! This is my take on the Victory coloring for the Rear Shrike Corps from Crossbone Ghost.

My very first MG kit, originally built almost 20 years ago, newly repainted and equipped with the Seraphim binders and Neue Zwergs from the Effect Wings Snow White addon kit. Had to strip off all the original decals for the painting, but honestly the stickers hadn't handled 20 years worth of dust very well anyway. Also, the original hands were terrible at actually holding the buster rifles, so I put in some magnets to stick them to the forearms

Or, according to the manual "EAST INVINCIBLE", which is some jarring Engrish given how well translated the rest of it was. Now I just need Bandai to release a HGFC Rising Gundam so I can pose them together for the Sekiha Love Love Tenkyoken.

Bonus: Nobell Gundam on a horse

HG Zaku II C5 (bc I can't find a C6) for Font Baud in the Crossbone Ghost scene I'm now putting together.

I didn't like the greens used in the kit, so I grabbed some cans of Valejo Goblin Green and Russian Green. The grey's/blacks/browns were painted with Testor's Graphite Grey Metallic. The backpack was painted with Testor's Diamond Dust and given a couple of quick sprays of Ironlak Black Techie, for texture. Bc this is the only suit of the 3 that's "old," I used an acrylic Satin topcoat to give it a fuller look compared to the X0 and V that will accompany it.

Since the Zaku is the only non-combatant in the 4-way fight of Crossbone Ghost, I grabbed a box of Build Hands Round. I was a little surprised when I got them, as all the small, medium, and large options were noticeably different in size from the hands included with the Zaku kit. In the end, I went with the medium, as they were closest (smaller, but still closest.)

Link to some more photos (bc I can't seem to be able to get any Lemmy client to let me upload photos into a posts body): https://imgur.com/a/yieFt17

Messer Zwergs are from the Effect Wings Snow White addon kit. The paint mixture I used ended up being more blue than I expected, but all in all it still turned out pretty well.

Bonus: there's something not right about this Snow White, but I can't quite put my finger on it...

More photos: https://imgur.com/a/qggitCt

What doozy this one is! The build was great! Took me forever but that was on me.

In my now-fashion, I gave it a coat of paint, this time in more places than I usually do. Every piece of the internal frame got painted this time around. I did not paint the yellows bc it's an iconic color to me and I haven't found the right metallic yellow (I don't want gold) yet. I also used a few glitter coats of differing glitter fineness. The finest one was used on the yellows as a light coat to give it some shimmer. I actually really wanted this puppy to shimmer. I used the medium fine to spray on the psycho frame pieces, as well as on the funnel stand segments closest to the flying fins, and the coarser glitter spray on the segments closest to the stand. I was hoping to kind of recreate the summer trail left behind psycho controlled funnels. I also got some of the newer style LED pucks for MG so I decided this guy should have one!

Some things I noticed when building this big boi:

Articulation is awesome!

The few color changing stickers were a very welcome change to the foil stickers of HGs. They were super sticky and pliable. It found it to be no problem using a lil extra thumb force to get a lil stretch on then in areas they didn't quite reach far enough. I also didn't realize they were even part of the kit until opening it, so I ended up painting the light grey ones to match the light silver I used.

These suckers are not built to hold 6 funnels on one shoulder without great care. If 6 fins are on the backpack and it's placed on the stand, it leans lol it's not a snug fit to the back/backpack from the stand.

I did get the P-Bandai double funnel set to go with this (I know I didn't config the Nu for double fins on the backpack, but I like that cool sabre 😎) and the dang fins just don't want to stay shut enough to keep the lil effects in place (as seen in the gallery)

The double fin set also came with 🥁🥁🥁 an exact duplicate of the stand included with the Ver.Ka 🤦‍♂️ SoI guess I have a spare now 🤷‍♂️

Overall a great build! Now it's time to move on to the HG "scene" from Crossbone Ghost I've been planning!

Or as my wife likes to refer to it, the iPhone Zaku. I didn't seem to run into the same build issues that I did when I built the OG RG Zaku II, which had me belly crawling on the floor to find spring-flung beads and supergluing the leg spring mounts.

However, the pauldron sticker with the blue stripes was abysmal trying to get it to match the opposing and ever changing radius curves. The sticker was never going to lay flat. Luckily, there was an unused logo that matched the one on the stripe sticker, and I had a bottle of acrylic paint that was bought to paint rocks, and had also been recently used on some Warhammer minis that matched the color pretty spot-on. I ended up freehanding the stripes. It isn't perfect, but it definitely looks better than the sticker did.

Rear view:

I already posted a pic of this in a mostly completed state alongside the Kiryu, but this can now be considered actually done. Mostly just a straight pallet swap (blue > white, red > blue, yellow to red), not including the stripes and shoulder armor. The stylized RX-78 emblem and the star field are actually custom decals I printed onto blank water slide paper, and I'm really pleased with how they turned out. Not pictured is the core fighter, which has also been pallet swapped. At some point I'll do a resin cast of the MG 3.0 core block and sitting pilot figure and replace the core fighter with them so that I can have the core fighter out on display too. Aside from that, probably the only other thing I might do is tint the beam javelin effect parts pink.

Aoshima's Type 3 Kiryu Kai Eva-02 color version, with a partially finished MG 2.0 Gundam (repainted in the American Type colors) for comparison. Since the Kiryu normally just has uniformly silver armor all over, to get the Evangelion style coloring a lot of pieces were pre-painted on the runners. Which is nice in that it saves me the trouble of painting it myself (or gods forbid, applying giant stickers to recolor pieces), but unfortunately it does leave nub marks. Build complexity isn't quite at MG standard, but there is enough of an inner skeleton that I would still rate it as more than HG. Price is a little steep, being more in the high end action figure range than what would be expected for a comparable Gunpla, but all in all I'm pretty satisfied with the kit.

This model is kind of special for me. I spent several months in Korea last year on an extended work trip. I got to go to a Gundam Base for the first time and knew that I had to get at least one Gundam Base limited model as a souvenir. Among all of the MG size and translucent models I found the one Gundam that I enjoy with my HG/RG mono-eye loving heart. Of course, they released the GBK-20 two months after I got back to the states, but alas.

The model build was pretty standard fare for an HG. The Caletvwlches were more involved than I expected, each of the 3 being a whole sprue worth of parts unto itself. Getting the dual-handed hold on the dual blade S mode was difficult enough that I almost gave up.

It doesn't look like this community is properly federating to my new instance, so here be a test post of the first MG I built many many moons ago. I coated every piece in Future Floor Acrylic and it was very very glossy when fresh. It's lost some of the shine over the years but thankfully there's not much yellowing.

This is my very first Gunpla and I have some opinions :D

I loved building it, it's a very cool puzzle and once I got in the flow, it was great.

The arms are kinda bad, one of them doesn't extend fully and I don't understand why as it's identical to the other. The hands are awful. Everything else is great, the legs in particular are incredible.

Panel lining with cheap acrylic paint diluted with water and dish soap works very well, and since the paint doesn't adhere completely even when dry, it's very easy to clean.

It's... flimsy. Very flimsy. I don't know if it's this model in particular or if all Gunpla are like this but posing it is more stressful than fun. The arms and the shoulder armor in particular pop off constantly, and I had to glue the crest because it kept flying off.

Now that Im in a new place and have new shelves, I thought it was finally time to bring home the rest of my HG collection from my office

Gundam Epyon (Sturm und Drang unit), with decals and topcoat applied. What I really wanted to do was to have the Epyon hold it straight up with both hands, like the He-Man pose, but alas the wrist articulation doesn't support that pose.

Fun fact: the tip of the tail is actually in one of the holes in the base plate, acting as a brace to keep the model from tipping backwards.

Ended up securing the A5 piece of the Sun Rings with some twist ties, and they're holding very well! I'm calling this one done ✅

Finally got my Maxter in the mail. I can honestly say that there is nothing more American than wearing football pads while shooting sixguns from a surfboard. Of course he looks great fighting against his little Rose friend.

Not mine, just sharing. That's some damn fine shot composition.

I kinda wish Lemmy had polls right now. With my spare A5 almost in my hands I'm looking forward to the next build, but I can't decide if I should start a HG Zaku/Ghost/Victory moon fight scene or the ver.Ka RX-93 with double fin funnels. A poll would make it so much easier to quickly get the opinion of my fellow builders! Oh well, I'm still interested in your opinions! Which do you think will be cooler or more fun to do next?

Decent build, all around. If I had one complaint, it'd be the clamps holding the feet to the surfboard. The clamps have a single peg at the back that go into the grooves on the board, which allows for some fairly dynamic poses, but they're at risk of popping out if the Maxter gets jiggled too hard.

I might keep it like this, or I might switch to having the armor blasting off as well; haven't quite decided yet.

The RG is an old build, and the NG is positively prehistoric. It's amazing how far the engineering has come in the past... math... years... uhhhhhhhh...

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Got this thinking it was an HG kit, and opaque (Amazon seller had an incorrect listing.) Turns out it's not HG. Reminds me of the couple of no grades I've got.

Overall cool, and only one unused piece, but hard to keep the legs on. The translucent plastic feels pretty brittle and the stress/sanding marks are seemingly impossible to get out.

If I knew more about the specifics of this kit before buying, I probably wouldn't have. But I did, I built it, and Domon spent long enough for his brother. No need keeping them apart now!