Welcome to my site and please excuse the mess, i'm redecorating. A couple of weeks ago i came across some pictures of the Kotobukiya armoured core model kits and fell in love. Having been building and customising gaming miniatures for a long time, i immediately thought of how i could customise and paint these beautiful mechs.
...after more searching i found DC23 and his blog.
His photos show more or less exactly what i was thinking of doing. I was sold, to find out there was a community already doing this made me happy. Then i found the Gundam kits. Gundam, as far as i know, is not very big in the U.K. Sure, people know about the show, and to a lesser extent the kits, but i'm yet to find anyone actually building them and certainly not to a high standard (i'm waiting & hoping to be proved wrong!).
I know Gundam - the show fairly well. I like anime and i remember watching some gundam wing and g gundam when i was younger. I used to scour 2nd hand video stores for Anime on VHS and Patlabor, Fist of the north star, starblazers, battle angel Alita and the ghibli movies were all fond memories.
I have to admit to not being a massive fan of the Gundam series, it was never one of my favorites and as such i know little about it. Despite that, i was desperate to get my hands on a couple of kits to see what i could do with them.
Alot of things about the Gundam Hobby seem alien to me but also alot was exciting. I am very experienced at working with metal and resin, i very rarely use an airbrush and i'm used to handpainting models and painting very small details. So basically i'm hoping to get more use out of my airbrush but also bring some of my experience at painting and sculpting on small miniatures to the much larger gundam kits and see what i can do.
I want to include as much handpainted details as possible, blended shading, sculpted details and the battle damage and weathering that i have got used to adding to my models. I'm not really into the 'action figure' side of things so beyond being able to hold a dynamic pose i don't care how much they move and in some ways the 1/144 scale appeals because they seem like more of a blank canvas. They are lacking in detail so have good potential for customisation and are smaller and so more realistic candidates for handpainting.
I am awaiting delivery on a few different kits which i will talk about when i recieve them. Some are 1/144 some 1/100 and so far 1 MG which i am very much looking forward to testing my skills with :).
Today i recieved my first 2 kits and i will talk about my first impressions of my first ever gundam kits.
So here they are:
A 1/144 Gundam Heavyarms
Skill level 1. Not a great design. This one seems very simple, and will probably be the first kit i build. Having had no experience at snap-fit kits it seems a good one to start with to get an idea of how they work and what sort of thing i can expect from the more difficult kits.
And a HG Seed Freedom Gundam.
He has a nice design and looks like a half decent kit. Hoping to do a really good job of this one. Both of these kits were cheap buys off ebay and not exactly my first choices but they will still make very good experimental kits to try out some techniques on, as well as trying out a few of the products i have (sprays, inks, powders etc) to see which works best.
I'll still be trying to make them good and if they turn out well they might get display bases, but i also don't really mind if they go wrong. Better to make mistakes on a £2 crappy kit than a £50 mg, right?
So i open the heavyarms.
Instructions in japanese of course, but illustrations are clear and look pretty easy to follow. Stickers... eeuugh, they go straight in the bin. i'll be painting those details. Not really a big fan of decals either, not really had much fun with rub-ons but waterslides are ok. I'll be handpainting what i can, but appreciate that decals can be useful and will probably use some.
The sprues, or what i believe are called runners. Coloured plastic. I like it in the sense that i helps with construction. Some of the flashing/mold lines are shocking, but some are actually not too bad. I suppose it's about what i expected for a cheap kit. There's not really that many parts so it shouldn't take too long to put together.
I'm going to have a look in the freedom box and see how it's different....
remembering to pack all the heavyarms bits back in it's box (dont want to get the runners mixed up already!) i open the freedom...
Opening the box and seeing the colour photos on the manual is already a thrill!
and... english instructions. It seems to make very little difference at this point, the pictures are the same and i can see myself relying on that more.
Lots more parts in this box despite being the same scale as the heavyarms. I suppose that's what happens in the 8 years of kit development that is the difference between these 2 boxes. Much more detailed parts, much cleaner casting - the difference in quality between these kits is obvious even to a Gundam novice like me.
So i will start on the heavyarms and post again when i know more.
Thanks for reading :)
