Some hobby progress...

Lately, the weather doesn't help with the painting, but here's some of the progress the last few weeks. Since the weather has been crappy for airbrushing and spray cans (that and I'm out of Tamiya Flat White and hobby shops are out. And I am don't like to mix paints ever since the "incident"). Since the tekkaman blade resin kit had to be put on the back burner, I decided to work on a simple kit.

Thats where the Digimon Reboot- Omegamon kit came in. I snipped and cleaned parts long ago so that made the prep and assembly a breeze. Still, this kit screams to have some metallic paint work done to it and me being me, I couldn't resist ^^;

I eventually gave in and started using part of my bathroom as a spray booth since it has a fairly powerful fan to suck up all the nasty fumes and such.( clean up still sucked though!!!) I eventually went back to work on the resin kit as well, but still couldn't work on the whites so I ended up working on some of the other metallic colors since I was in a "metallic mood."

Hopefully, the weather will clear up soon( and my local shops will restock paints) so I can get back to finishing up these kits. Jeez, I've had the Tekkaman Blade kit for since last year and I've been working on it on and off for a year! Talk about snail speeds, BUT. I. FINISH. THIS.

Kotobukiya Fate Stay Night Saber kit Unboxing

So I received a package from amiami yesterday. I haven't had anything in the mail for me in a while. That's always a nice thing after a long day at work- goodies in the mail ^^

Its my highly anticipated Fate/Stay Night - Saber model kit by Kotobukiya, and with good reason. I didn't originally plan on doing a post,video, or anything for this unboxing, but after cracking open the box and skimming through it a bit- totally had to do it. Its not often I see a kit this thought out and modeler friendly.(Well, I say that now based on current impressions, but I still haven't actuallly built it yet ^^; Don't let me down!)

Like many Kotobukiya model kits of late, a simple but nice picture of featured product-in this case, Saber about to lay waste to some unfortunate servant with her trusty excalibur.

Cracking the box open, nothing super eye catching yet...

Then we see the water slide decals. Yup, water slides. How very "pro" of you, Koto. Wait, nevermind that, those are full piece decals for the Avalon Sheath! HOLY... That's actually pretty cool. If I had to have some decal cover a piece that had all these curves and such, I'd rather have a dry transfer or water slide over a lame folding sticker any day. Good show, Koto ^.^!!

Manual is simple, but effective. Pretty standard-featured shots(above), decal guide, color guide, and the step by step instructions.

I was fairly pleased with the decals. Now- MY MIND IS BLOWN...Kotobukiya has been known to set some pieces up pre-painted, but this. THIS, is all kinds of amazing. The paint apps on this sheath is immaculate. Great details. AND, its not connected to a runner so it just needs to be assembled. The decals seem unnecessary now unless you plan on painting or maybe a mistake is made. I still appreciate both efforts regardless. Moving on...

Here, we see some armor pieces, and more pre-painted pieces. The armor pieces look decent, but I'm seeing some nasty mold flash on these pieces. It looks like I may be doing a quick paint treatment on the armor pieces. Maybe silver leaf or some buffing metallizer steel. The pieces look big enough to make easy work of the buffing.Somthing to think on...

The blue bits for the collar already have the gold trim on them already. Not as amazing as the sheath and upon close expection, the pieces could use another layer of gold here and there. A quick out of the box build though, seems like it would look great so far. Too bad I'm such a stickler for lame tiny details,heh. The breastplate here has a nicely painted saber servant rune on it. Too bad the piece its painted on has some bad mold flash.LAME SAUCE. But, this is why having those water slides is awesome. I can paint all the pieces and use the decals instead of having to paint everything back on-yay!

More shots of the armor pieces up close. There's some nice details here. A good metallic paint scheme will definitely make the details "pop" more.

AHH, MOLD Flash,ahhH!!! I'll deal with YOU later...

Tons more pre-painted pieces. The dress parts all have the necessary trims on them and are all separate. Like the hoi hoi san kits(also by Kotobukiya), there's pre-painted face parts for different facial expressions. And if you'd rather make your own, you can paint over the pieces and use the provided face expressions decals in whatever fashion you'd like.

Personally, I think I'm fine with the provided parts as they are. I may gloss coat the eye parts to give a wet shiny look. I haven't decided if I wanna paint over the actual face plates with maybe a two tone scheme to highlight skin tones or not. More to think on...(man, those face plates without eyes are kinda freaky,bwah, shudders a little*)

And here we have some plain parts that make up the very few poly caps this kit contains and some of the appendages.

Yay, more pre-painted parts! Excalibur's looking very nice. Both of them,heh.
Here's a closer look to catch some more of the details.
This is the runner containing more parts for limbs, and the under dressing on Saber. It looks like an offset white so I most likely will spray some matte white over all the pieces.

And of course, Saber wouldn't be Saber without her battle ready bun style hair. Nothing to write home about, but I see the ahoge and side bangs are ball-jointed so it has articulated hair similar to the hoi hoi san kits. I'm thinking two tone highlight for the hair. blond and maybe some auburn brown to really give the face character(considering the head is a big focus point on this kit, seems like the thing to do.)

It's pretty interesting how the base style model construction of the hoi hoi san kits really lended to the design style of this kit. I was really expecting to do some extensive trim work for this kit, so I was extremely and pleasantly surprised at how much work kotobukiya put into this kit. I'd be very interested in seeing what other characters could be made using this model base. A black rock shooter full action kit would be awesome! Anyways, moving on...

So all those runners to make a full action "D-Style"( I say d-style since the proportions aren't traditional chibi style and kotobukiya also makes a model line dubbed "D-style" with these kind of proportions. )Saber model kit. Not bad. And it seems fairly modeler friendly so if you're not too picky, you could do a straight build and still get a pretty nice looking saber. This'll be a nice addition to add next to my saber nendo. Too bad I can't start working on it right now since there's other kits needing to be completed first. CURSE YOU, Backlog Mountain!!

Tekkaman Blade Resin WIP - 2

I haven't really gave this kit the much needed attention it deserves, so I recently remedied that. I finally got around to sanding all the parts I've primed so far and did some putty fill-in as well. Later on, I also check out some of the part-swap areas and worked on the custom joints for those pieces as well. Unfortunately, I don't have a lot of room to do a full body test fit for everything(plus I have tons of tiny frickin pieces to work with as well), but I'm currently working on the big parts and the main body. all the other parts are really just accent pieces to do later.

Also, if I haven't mentioned it enough, this kit's parts separation is amazing. Maybe, too amazing...nah. I just had a small hiccup for a second. This kit's been separated for easy paint app work, for every separate piece. I thought for a moment that I found something I'd have to tape down or possibly hand paint. Nope, not the case. Turns out the shoulder armor pieces were done correctly. My own model kit totally punked me,heh.

After sanding and joint work, I did test fit #2. Everything seems to be doing well. So far, so good. After this-another priming run, then its off to start the first actual paint treatments. When I'm done with that,tighten joints and general re-enforcement. Hopefully, the next update for this won't be another 4 months,heh ^^;

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.

August 29, 2009 - New airbrush mix ratio-successful

New airbrush ratio test worked out well and now I have the visor piece ready for my vf-25f model.yay,now I just need to mix up a purple tint and I'm set.

August 29, 2009 - 1/144 Linebarrel WIP progress update.

Almost done....