Updates-a busy IRL, spoiler to some of my fun...

So its been a few months(probably a lot longer actually) since I last updated. Sorry for the lack of activity going on here. All my work has been crazy hectic. IRL is seriously not to be trifled with,heh. I'm juggling work at the comic shop, running the vending machine business,planning the big group trip to New York for NYCC/NYAF in Oct, prepping for a big move into a house after the NY trip, trying to squeeze some semblance of a social life and not disconnect myself from friends and family, and then of course time to myself for downtime(anime,movies,reading,music,hobby work,etc.) Lots of stuff going on. Not to mention all these frickin pre-orders I have at AmiAmi. Hopefully, that won't come back to bite me in the butt.

Anyways, definitely don't have alot of time in the day for the last item on that list. Heh, my documents on the PC is full of checklists,planning guidelines,and the sort. Its the only way I know to keep everything(on my mind or not) organized to make sure everything gets handled. So much stress, its ridiculous. Luckily, I have food,booze, and a few few low maintenance lady friends to help de-stress(for the most part,ha)

As for the blog and other things, I devised a schedule as well to help things progress (another set of guidelines/schedule? for serial,yup. Besides, I'm all about the progression of things,yo.) I'm gonna try and squeeze at least 3 posts here a week and at least one youtube vid a month. Its still hard to set up, but I'm gonna give it a shot. I have more than enough material to post about so I shouldn't have any trouble finding stuff to post. Its just the time aspect, but thats just another opponent to beat down and curb stomp with time management^^;

Since I can't work on model kits, I'll COOK!

Well, good news is HLJ received my package and is sending it back to me (postal tag!), but I gotta pay for shipping which is reasonable. Right now, I just want my friggin joints so I can get back to work on the tekkaman blade resin kit.

Between waiting for parts and also waiting for my PS3 to get repaired, I have watching anime, practice guitar(right now, I'm just trying to increase my dexterity and skill. God, I hate practicing scales.), work on other kits(though I still need paints or parts for most of them so that doesn't leave much room for any kits to straight build-lame), or study more kana.( I can now read "The very hungry catapillar!" Its a kids book...it took me a month.)OR....I can make food and stuff my face! And so I did.

Tonight's dinner- MISO RAMEN. Its no Momofuko's, but it was pretty tasty. Maybe next time, I'll try adding some tonkatsu.

The nights here are starting to get chilly so Hot ramen and tea is hella good ^^.

Saber just randomly appeared...

Saber: "GIVE ME SOME OF THAT RAMEN OR I'LL EXCALIBUR YOUR %$#%$ carcass!"

-_-"...

What kind of food do you like making or eating in chilly weather?

I guess I should go study,practice, or find a kit to work on. Hopefully, I can get back to work on the resin kit before all my posts become strictly food posts.

Random Foodie Post!!!...and update.

Y is for Yay and for Yakisoba; ergo YAY for Yakisoba!!!

Got lazy and hungry and had a craving. And its been a while since I've cooked. I usually overdo it when that happens ^^;

Not exactly traditional yakisoba, but tasty enough on the nom nom meter ^^

Then again, like I said- I sometimes overdo it,heh. So it better be tasty since there's plenty more.

If only I had a case of Sapporo or and nice pot of tea, my night would be perfect.

And in other news, much much sadder news, My PS3 has finally passed on. Do not shed tears though( My manly tears will suffice) for it has gone to a better place- Sony heaven.

Where everyone wins, where big businesses make over excessive crap tons of money and continue to make nice things,but over charge,BUT! it matters not, for it's sony heaven so the consumers have more than enough money.(plus its an effin heaven scenario- everyone's supposed to be all win-win,right??)...That, and I just shelled out $129 to get it fixed. Considering my PS3 was a first gen 60gb, its specs are way better than any new unit(plus backwards compatibility rocks!) I even bumped up the hdd up to 500GB. I didn't have a warranty(not that matters since its not covered anymore anyways.) so paying $129 to continue having awesomeness is a small price to pay. Hell, they know it too. Its $99 to get a new $120 slim PS3 instead of fixing my unit or replacing it. 6-8 weeks is a long time to wait, but it'll be worth it. BUT, I'll never forget you, my first PS3! {Insert lame music ala titanic style or something}

Oh, and I still can't continue my resin kit since the freakin Postal service sent my joints back to HLJ! Due to some wonky circumstances involving their held time and conflicts with the recent holidays, they sent it back. So lame. So now, I gotta send HLJ an email and hope I can just pay for shipping again(which really really sucks) so I can get my damn joints I already paid for. Til then, no progress. Hopefully, all the shenanigans won't take forever and my next post will be full of AWESOME. Til next post,later.

P.S.-Go enjoy some yakisoba.and get me a bottle of sapporo while you're at it ;)

Tekkaman Blade Resin WIP - 1

So I totally couldn't wait and started work on this on Monday. My poor keroberos revoltech had to sacrifice his joints so that blade could get jointed. Its alright though, this is just til the order of revoltech joints arrive via mail. Man, Hand drilling all those holes were a real pain. Since the original design called for basic ball joints and ball pegs, some pre-planning on how to make everything fit just right had to be done. Nice thing to be noted, is all the parts aren't just separated for detailing, but also for painting. All the red pieces are separate so when it was casted, it could've be done in color! There's a few places here and there needing putty so I'll have to pick up some green stuff at work tomorrow.

Aside from that, This has been a very rewarding build so far. I like the previous incarnations of Tekkaman Blade's figures and model kits, but most of them have all been following the more streamlined "suit" look from the first series. This design probably fits some of the designs from the end of the first series and the whole second series(OVA). It does what TF Classics did for the original G1 TF designs- it maintains the aesthetic charms and themes and adds to it. With wicked mecha style: long imposing proportions,harsh & sharp lines/angles, and intense details building on the basic look. The Armor plus figure is nice, but if this was a figure with that kinda price tag, I would've bought it without a second thought.

I'm slightly intimidated to paint this actually. I'm worried the paint job won't do this design justice. Still gonna try, but I am worried slightly. Unfortunately, I'm outta spare black revoltech joints so this will have to do til the package arrives. I even paid for EMS this time to get it here faster.Crazy, right?? Thats the AWESOME that is Tekkaman Blade. More WIP updates later!

Nothing Glued yet, but things are starting to come together already.

Head sculpt looks great. Lots of small pieces,too.

The iconic torso design. Putting this together made me think on how the joint placement and what to inprove on an actual revoltech tekkaman. If they're making revoltech Muv Luv and Z.O.E. , there's hope, right???

Look at the details! Frickin Awesome. The normal design is just basic panel lines.Bunk that, Raised cool sculpt FTW!

Mecha proportions indeed. Fit a human leg in that?Psssh...

Since I haven't started actually gluing parts since nothing's painted yet, some parts were just taped temporarily or placed carefully into position. Having some trouble with that breastplate, blade?

Had enough joints to pre-joint another arm. Looks like it'll have to rest on that stand til more parts come...

Its really starting to come together. I can't wait for it to get done. I'm so geekgasming over this. So cool.

OMFG- Tekkaman blade GETTTOOOO!!

So work was quite slow(ish) today, what with the superbowl and all. The best part of my day came in the form of an unexpected late christmas present, the Space Knight Tekkaman Blade - Full Action Resin Kit!! Sound Familar? It was on my Want List post I did a while back. This thing is hella sweet! Its my first real resin kit and I'm so excited, I wanna start working on it now. Too bad I'm in the middle of working on a backlog right now. Currently working on a simple build of the 1/144 new hguc gouf custom and I'm still working on the rg inner frame. I'll get there eventually. One kit at a time. Besides, I still need some paints and airbrush stuff. I wanna do this right. Its gonna totally be my masterpiece ^^;

Not alot of info out on the web for this guy so I guess I'll just help things along with this post and some pics. Check out the details below.

This thing just screams horribly awesome.

Tupperware. The Ultimate in Resin Protection.

Awful xerox copy looking instructions. Luckily, most resin kits don't really need em.

Plenty of pieces...

Details are ridiculously amazing.

This thing demands the best work I can give it!

heh-In yo face, B-club manipulators!

Zebraman 2 viewed. now where's my tokusatsu merchandise???

So I finally cracked and watched the zebraman 2 film. For those not familiar with Zebraman, its an awesome Tokusatsu film by fav director, Takashi_Miike. First film got good ratings on both the tomato meter and on IMDB. No word if a U.S. dvd release for the 2nd film will occur anytime soon so I'll have to settle for the original RAW dvd. Too bad no one's fansubbed it yet. Guess it'll be at least another few months(hopefully??) before I can really appreciate the takashi miike jokes and dialog. Regardless, I totally cracked and watched it; not sure if a subbed dialog will change my views, but until I have it(or improve my translation skill^^;...so behind studies), I won't give a review or anything til then.

If I had to give an impression right now, I'd say that Zebraman 2 is alot like Iron Man 2: Entertaining, but not as charming as the first one. Not that its bad or anything, I still enjoyed viewing what I did see. With that said, I'd like to say that despite being a toksatsu ZEBRA hero, I'm totally diggin the designs. I liked the designs from the first film and Zebraman 2 totally stepped up for the costume design. Remember, when you were a kid watching bad batman films,but thought the batsuits were so badass? Nevermind batnipples and the lame script or any of the other semantics-the thought was, "cool superhero costume." A grown man dressed as a zebra themed hero can't be worse than a man dressed as a bat. Cool is cool. And I think Zebraman is effin BOSS.


With Japan's very big Toksatsu genre from kamen rider,godzilla, to numerous others, there's been tons of great merchandise. from statues,busts,RAHs, Bandai released figures and more, I have one question: WHERE'S THE ZEBRAMAN MERCHANDISE?? For anyone who's a kamen rider fan and collects figures, you know what the designs are and how that translates to figures. Look at the design of a recent kamen rider, Ryuki(or Dragon Knight for the U.S.)



This is the overall basic design of Ryuki.Not bad. Now look at another design of Ryuki from The SIC line...



Similar,but more detailed. I personally prefer this look.

Thats what Zebraman 2 did to the look of the first Zebraman designs. Below is the only merchandise of Zebraman I could locate. Very impressive indeed. Very detailed. Think of the possibilities with a figure!! Hell, even Batman and Spiderman got the SIC treatment.(yeah, they're bigger than zebraman,but dammit, they already got tons of merchandise.)










Anyways, if anyone knows of any additional merchandise for zebraman, let a guy know! We'll finish up with some trailers from the films and some pics.Enjoy and if you're interested and haven't seen it, check it out ^^. Til next post.


P.S. - Happy Lunar New Year! year of the Rabbit yo.

Kamen Rider Ryuki pictures from HobbySearch
Zebraman bust pictures from GunJap blog
Zebraman film pictures from Gonin Movie Blog

Finally! End of 2010 Loot. and WIP progress

I've been waiting for one more package for the last 2 1/2 weeks, but its here now so that means all the loot for 2010 is now complete for me- yay!

I would've done a christmas haul, but thats not really impressive and a total loot post sounded better.

Not the most impressive haul, but still tons to enjoy^^;

The 00 qan full saber add-on.(still need to buy hg 00 qan.couldn't resist; those clear green bits are awesome!)

BRS special edition Bluray/dvd set.comes with nendo petits and artbook.pretty sweet. the speed paint in the special features is simply amazing.

FMP full bluray collection.When I have time, gotta regrind through all of it.with tons of snacks & drinks of course.

And muv luv alt. takemikazuchi 00r model kit. Mitsurugi meiya's personal unit,yeah!!!(was also the last package I was waiting for,heh.)

More Plasmo goodness:

HGUC 1/144 gouf custom(this thing is crazy sick!can't wait to build!)

RG 1/144 Char Zaku. Real Grades are amazing. still need to finish the rx78.

Digimon Reboot Omegamon.Need I say more? its effin omegamon(or omnimon)! Gonna do a full paint run on this baby.so it won't be done anytime soon unfortunately.

HGUC 1/144 Sinanju. Aside from small gimmicks like the shoulder shield clamp or the beam tonfas being omitted, this kit is a mini mastergrade. the gold trim will be a pain, but so worth it.

And of course, gotta get the sinanju head base for my brand spanking new sinanju kit. looks to have some nice internal details to paint.

I love painting and puttin the work into making these models more detailed and awesome,but this totally isn't helping the huge backlog...

Yay, someone saw my want list post! Blazblue artbook from P@nD@.mucho gracias,yo! and to Sp1t3 for mediating things so I could have this awesome artbook to replace my old one. It kicks the old book's butt by miles.(still need to get the Uk limited edition of the continuum shift.want that noel nendo)

And someone from work got me a tonberry plush for christmas.it can protect my artbook,heh.

And kudos x100 for kaiyodo re-releasing all the gurren lagann revoltechs! And I already pre-ordered the remaining ones from hlj. Can't wait for them[>.<]!!!

Now that the loot posting is done, I can get to the WIP progress on the RG rx78-2.

Currently painting inner frame's mech details. gonna use copper,gold,and silver.maybe some gunmetal,too.

I'm trying to really show the inner frame as it was meant to be shown. Lots of promo pics show the under frame or "skeleton frame." The real grade is supposed to be a pg/mg in 1/144 scale. That includes an inner frame which shows off mechanical details. Just showing the base frame doesn't do this nor does it take advantage of the molded details of multiple pieces included in this model.

This shows most of the additional parts that can be added to make the inner frame much more "fuller." Here, the inner frame resembles old mg frames alot more with how the frame gives the overall shape of the ms without actually having armor on it. The mg rx78 frame didn't really have an inner frame for the head so this matches up pretty well so very cool.

These calf leg parts were the only parts so far found that had mechanical details,but couldn't be seperated from the armor in front of it. Still, some nice details that would otherwise be ignored with the base frame and would be covered up with armor and never showed off.

Note: I totally painted the calf detail with the wrong gray. It dried alot lighter than I wanted. Gotta look for darker shade later.

And while I was painting the copper pipes around the legs, one of the ankle guard frame pieces got into the paint bottle. lost lots of paint to fish it out. Got some discoloration now from the clean up now as well. lame sauce. I guess I gotta paint the ankle guard pieces with the gray I'll be using on the calves...as soon as I find a dark shade I like ^^;

Well, thats it for updates for now. Work was slowing down, but there's been a recent management shift at my store. and the new boss is completely incompetent.scratch that. He's an incompuCUNT employee. He's only gonna be there til a replacement for him is found. Who knows how long that'll take to properly train someone capable. He's at our store cuz he sucked at the flagship store and lost them lots of money. why he wasn't just fired-no clue. Anyways, I have half a mind to just take over for him just to get em outta my store. That or I'll have to clean up his messes and "backseat" manage the store and make sure it doesn't tank. Either way, doesn't look like I'll be enjoying that non holiday downtime just yet.

I'll try to update more on hobby work, but no promises. Least not til this management issue is handled.Til then, Later everyone!