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!!

Progression is progressive.

So despite the incredibly hot and humid weather, I really really really wanted to work on the resin kit and the next step was to start painting-SO IMPATIENT. While the parts did gets painted, the environment was killer on the spray cans; that and I was crazy intent on being as careful as i could be since I really didn't want any hiccups to go fix , which meant spray strokes.Lots of short spray strokes that probably didn't really paint as much as it made a mist onto the parts. It worked, but the killer part would be the environment meant I wasted more paint and more cans than I would've liked-BOO. That's what I get for being impatient.

I ended up using metallic black on the parts needing black instead of matte black, but I'm fairly pleased with the results so far. Of the two colors, the matte white gave so much more hell than the metallic black. White paint is already(or can be) really hard to paint with due to the properties and consistences most white paint have.(thats why when there are awful paintful apps on a toy that should have lots of white detail, bad white paint is sometimes one of the culprits,coughs*hasbro,coughs*marvel 3.75in figures,coughs*) I ended up using both cans completely,but the metallic black at least finished its job completely. Based on the work done with the matte white, I'm gonna need 1 or 2 more cans of matte white.LAME SAUCE.

So far, so good. Everything is looking smooth and painting is on tracks. No hiccups.yet.

These parts are going to need more matte white,ugh. White paint is such a pain!!!

ah, but at least metallic black never seems to give me problems. It usually always works great. One of my favorite paints to use ^^;

In other hobby work, I've been working on a custom effect part for my revoltech Jehuty figure. Namely, the burst attack.(I'd love a vector cannon, but that might require more work than I'd like right now) I've been recording most of the work on my youtube vids. If you'd like to catch any progress more upclose, check out the progress here. It shows the beginning, the ideas, and the change ups.so far.

Originally, I thought about using foil as a means to give more of a shiny gem-like effect to the burst ball. Didn't turn out like I'd like it to though...

Here's a test shot of the goal in mind. Yup, foil isn't workin for me like I'd hope. Time to try something else.

Here's another test shot of the goal in mind, though this is just a hollowed burst. Little plain, isn't it?

AND THEN, CHANGE UP. I scraped the foil and messed around with clear materials to make use of light sources instead. Sorta like light piping, I guess.

I like this a whole lot more than the foil...

Unfortunately, the material I used for that effect was nothing but clear hair gel (experimenting brings about weird trials). I'm currently working with clear resin and diorama water materials. Progress is slower than snail mail. That's it for updates now. More progress later.

So every Humpday, we have food night...

Not sure when it started, but it kinda unofficially just happened. Every Wednesday, me and a handful of friends meet at one of our homes and food night takes place. We all bring something(entertainment,food,drinks,anything) and then cooking,drinking, and catching up happens. Its quite exhausting after a long day at work, but its still kinda nice, so I still go every week. jeez, I must be some sort of a masochist or something,heh. This is some of the stuff that happened in the last few nights we've done food night.

Simple egg custard pudding...its just flan -_-...

I didn't know it though at first. I did it all from scratch though. making the caramel,the mix,the hot water and everything...for flan.d'oh.

Brisket tacos,yum. Sito bought a whole brisket & let it cook for 24hrs. so tender,om nom nom.

He also whiped up a tasty salsa verde. He did everything in minutes. It was delicious. Chefs really know their stuff. They can also be more messy than a tornado though,heh.

Do you ever just meet up with friends or family to cook or eat like some sort of big event? Fav meals?

Black Rock Shooter: the game-opening.

This has been out for a little bit, but its totally still worth posting and watching. Seeing it or hearing it totally psyches me up for the game. Check out the awesome opening movie^^



The game is just around the corner. Its set to release on the 25th of August and there is plans to have a U.S. port of the game which is amazing news!!! It won't stop me from pre-ordering the game though as I really want the White rock shooter figma to add to the rest of the collection of BRS figmas I have. Plus, it looks pretty wicked.



Aside from that, I do still intend to get the U.S. version for a few reasons:

1.Buying it helps the industry,obviously.
2.It also supports psp game properties specifically.
3.It helps the import market greatly.(ripping games is a big factor to why the U.S. doesn't see many psp game porting.)It doesn't mean things will change, but if opportunity comes for you support the cause, why not?

And in recent news, there's also gonna be a BRS Game ver. Figma! This.is.effin.bought...my wallet just doesn't know it yet.

Other hobby progress

Aside from my tekkaman resin kit work, I've been trying to juggle more kits at once. I figured this would allow me to accomplish more in a short time since I'm trying to knock some kits outta that mountain I call my backlog. Plus, I could really use the space as I still have plenty of new things coming in all the time, at least til september it seems. While I'm working on the tekkaman blade resin kit project, I've also been working on my unicorn and sinanju head bases. I still have some painting to go, but I got some quick builds and sprays done at least.

The other project I started working on is my custom Burst attack effect part for my awesome ZOE jehuty Revoltech figure^^

I got the basic design done and a first green coat done. I still need to start the inner resin texturing on the inside to give the "particle charging" look, then a few more different coats to give a cool gradient effect.

And on another note, I just read the Reycal Oricalcum manga. Twas pretty cool. I ended up trying to hunt merchandise down for it. Sadly, there doesn't seem to be much at all for it. I did at least buy the revoltech of reycal. Its a pretty cool little figure and it really goes for the whole mecha musume vibe, which is cool because I recently watch anime series, Infinite Stratos and really enjoyed the designs alot.

Aside from that, I also picked up another Jehuty revoltech figure so I can do something I've been wanting to do since I saw this figure-Dual blades!

Really liking the metallic paint scheme on this figure.

Thats it for now; More progress later on in a few days.

I'm diggin the look here.

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 ^^;

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^^;