Through the Looking Glass

And so, what it my main project at the moment? This…

Ignis from Cerberus Project. You know? the one which Yamato has recently announced that they were going to make into a PVC kit?

Man, I still remember the hard time I had trying to find one of these babies after last years summer Wonderfestival. Had to pay a pretty penny for it as well! And now it’s coming out as a cheap PVC… orz

well, good luck to them. They’re probably going to need it (yes, I am a little bitter about the announcement. This is the first kit I have bought which has been (or rather will be) converted into a PVC figure, which lowers it’s overall value). The pic above shows the model after pinning and most of the flash removed and sanded out. There are some seam lines left which will need to be taken care of, but cleanup has been pretty good this time round.

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Those of you who have been reading the blog for a while now (or could be bothered to look through the archives) will know that I have a resin kit of the Knight of Gold from the Five Star Stories. I’ve had it for quite a while now but never really got into building it for several reasons;

1) it’s ridiculously complex! I have said this before put the number of parts to this kit vastly exceed any and every other kit I have in my collection. In fact it has more than the next 2 combined!

2) a lot of the parts are very small and still require cleanup. The resin used also isn’t the best and is quite brittle, thereby increasing the chance of a major mess up which cannot be fixed.

I basically got around the problem by getting an abundance of (misplaced?) overconfidence now that I have 4 more kits under my belt. I also decided to try and break it down into smaller projects as opposed to one long, continuous one like I normally do. So I’m going to do the legs first and then lower and upper bodies separately and eventually build it up instead of doing a complete pre-build and painting the whole thing in 1 go. It will allow me to focus on a small bit at a time and, hopefully, stop me from getting overwhelmed.

3) But the biggest issue was that, with a name like “knight of gold” you would want it to be, well, GOLD!! But as I explained with my lancelot, the actual colour of gold is really REALLY hard to get right!!

But using the information I was able to gather when I was mixing the gold for the lancelot, I was able to mix a colour I was happy with. And it only took a year to work out the solution to the problem. What does it look like?

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Despite Code Geass R2 being inferior to Macross Frontier in pretty much every respect *dodges thrown projectiles* it did get me in the mood for a Geass related model. So I dug this one up and finished it off over the long weekend.

Presenting the “white death.” 7th Generation Knightmare frame, Lancelot!

I bought this kit a while back (before Christmas) so I’m afraid that there’s no float system included in this release. Having said that, I will openly admit that I hate the Float pack!! As a practical tool it’s useful but it’s so damn ugly!!!! But I guess it would have been useful for certain photoshoots.

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My model building came to an abrupt halt yesterday when my airbrush broke. You heard right. It broke…

The nozzle which forces the air/paint mix snapped off as I was trying to unscrew it for cleaning, rendering it unusable.

I’ve already bought another one but it’ll take a few days to arrive so looks like I’m back to twiddling my thumbs and playing metal gear online till it gets here.

At least I can take the opportunity to upgrade my airbrush. My, now dead, old faithful was a sparmax DH-125. A gravity fed double action airbrush which I bought in a set with a sparmax compressor when I was last in Hong Kong. Pic below. RIP…

Not being well versed in the names of manufacturers of such tools, I had no idea who sparmax were. But a quick google search shows that they are a Taiwan based company which specializes in budget tools. You can check out their website and have a look. For those interested, my compressor is the TC-501

THe DH-125 is a really cheap airbrush (if you can find it) but it served me well for 2 years. The airbrush/compressor combo set me back just over £100 and you can probably find this airbrush online for around £20 or so. You can do quite a lot with it but we’ll see how it compares to my new one when it arrives.

Here’s a pic of the complete set

For those who have never used one, I guess I should explain some of the terms I used above.

Starting with the airbrush, A gravity fed airbrush is one where the paint is stored above the main body, hence the name as gravity is used to force the paint into the main chamber as opposed to suction feed airbrushes which store the paint in bottles underneath and allow the pressure difference when air is sprayed out to suck the paint into the chamber. My DH-125 had parts which allowed for both but I stuck with gravity fed as it’s easier to clean.

Double action refers to the lever (or trigger depending on the airbrush type) which controls the air flow. For my airbrush, you pushed the lever down to start the airflow and then pulled it back to mix in the paint. Hence, double action. The double action airbrushes allow for greater control over the amount of paint which goes through.

And, of course, there’s the compressor. After speaking to a couple of would be modelers who were considering buying an airbrush, I was amazed to find that they were looking at the actual airbrushed but completely forgetting about the source of the main component of what makes them work, i.e. the AIR!!!

Compressors are somewhat large, heavy and noisy devices which provides the airflow to carry the paint. I wouldn’t recommend ppl to get one unless they plan to paint a fair few kits in their time due to their costs as well as the points mentioned above. My compressor has helped me get through 10 kits so far with a lot more waiting in the wings so, for me, it was a wise investment, but it won’t suit everybody. An alternative is to buy compressed air cans from model shops but they tend to run out very fast so are only good for one model, possibly less.

My current sparmax still works luckily, so I can use it for my new airbrush when it arrives.

And what is my new airbrush? An Iwata Eclipse CS. It was recommended by Cody Kwok on his site and given that he is a fantastic painter, I reckon he knows what he’s talking about. I bought it off ebay for £63, which is quite a bit considering what I spent on my set initially, but contrast that to the retail price from some websites (£115) I think I got a pretty good deal out of it, even if it is second hand. There are some real pant-staining priced airbrushes out there as well. One really has to wonder if there is a need for a £230 airbrush (remember that you will need a separate compressor on top of that).

In any case, my new Iwata airbrush should arrive by the end of the week and I can pick up where I left off after a little test run. If any of you have any questions about the topic of airbrushes, feel free to ask and I will try to answer with my limited knowledge and experience.

I believe that a fair few visitors to this blog actually came from Figure.fm so you probably already know the news.

Danny Choo has decided to pull the plug on the figure.fm page and move the community over to his main page.

While I must admit that I disagree with the decision, I do understand the reasoning behind it.

I joined figure.fm a little over a year ago and it was always nifty seeing everyone elses purchases and it provided me with a good place to post my completed works and get opinions from people who had similar tastes to myself. In that respect, nothing will change with the move, but I will definitely miss the layout and general interface. It was slow to post but having large(ish) pics in the main page before going for the full sized ones. The new thumbnails are a bit too small to get a good idea of the figure.

Guess all this stuff is something to get used to. Is is true that the blogs and figures will get more exposure on the main page so I hope that the new visitors find something they like on my blog but I will always look back on my figure.fm days with fondness.

Farewell Figure.fm. You departed far too soon…

Yay! She’s finished!! Another one to add to my completed list. I present Yoko, 21 years old!!!

This post may be a bit on the long side as the final part of the building section will also be included. For those interested, earlier posts can be reached here:

Part 1

Part 2

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I’m sure that the world is pretty well aquainted with the fact that Europe is pretty much considered the toilet of the video game world. We usually get things much later than everyone else, we get charged more than any other region and ports were, until recently, pretty damn shoddy.

You would have thought that things would change eventually, with the big companies admitting that Europe is becoming more and more important in terms of global sales. But then there came the announcement for Rock Band.

For those of you who don’t know, in the UK, the game is still yet to be released even though the game has been released in the US for ages. Not only that, the game will initially be a 360 exclusive with wii and PS3 versions being released “later in the summer,” code for “September, if you’re lucky!” Coupled with this is the RRP. £50 for the game on it’s own and £130 for the instrument set, with no bundle for the 2 together!!! So thats £180 for the whole thing while over in the US, the full set costs around £85.

Luckily, even the retailers realise that this is a really dumb idea and have created their own bundles and lowered the prices themselves. I mean, Who the hell would want to buy a game which costs more than a freaking console? But the main kicker for me was the “summer” release date for the PS3 version. Having seen the 360 version fail numerous times at the play.com live event last month, I was not willing to risk purchasing gear which could mess up anytime in the middle of a song. Add to that, the RRP and I decided to import a PS3 version as a big F*** you to EA europe and Harmonix for thinking they could get away with that kind of pricing. 3 extra songs don’t come even close to compensation.

And I got it yesterday!!!

Yes it’s awesome. And yes, I didn’t save much in terms of overall costs when compared to some UK deals (in fact I paid a bit more at £160. mostly on shipping) but it was the principle of the whole thing!!

I spent a little more and got (arguably) the superior version, or at least, the most reliable one, several months before release and EA Europe won’t see a single penny from me!! It’s chump Change I know, but I wish that other buyers would rise up and kick them where it hurts them most, their wallets and send out the message that they took things WAAAY too far this time!

They claim that the price is fair due to VAT (17.5%), and manufacturing and delivery costs. If that’s true, then give us a break down and let us decide if it’s fair. As it stands, it looks to the consumer that they’re taking rip-off to a whole new level.

For now, I have rock band, the whole set faster and cheaper than the UK RRP and can buy DLC from the US site. I’d say that’s pretty damn good. so I’ll say this one more time just to make myself feel better…

F**K YOU EA!!!

*rant over*

Man, has it really been 2 months since I got this figure? Looks like her re-release has come and gone as well…

In any case, here is the first Shuraki Figure, Mishiro Akatsuki (and despite the name, I’m pretty sure that she can’t reflect beam attacks off her skin)

I’ll keep the review pretty short as pretty much everyone has Mishiro by now and there are already good reviews available.

One thing I will note, however, is that, despite being a second run of this figure, all the faults and imperfections which were noted in earlier reviews are still present in this one. You would think that Goodsmile would try and resolve some of these issues…

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Bit of a mixed couple of days. As noted on several blogs already, it seems that the last 6 minutes of the next installment of Code Geass was leaked to the public.

According to bandai, it was an error which occurred while they were testing out a part of their bandai channel streaming system. Luckily, for all the Geass fans, it doesn’t seem that it has affected the broadcast schedule so ep 3 will still air this weekend, with only a few minor things spoiled. For example, Rollos Geass is time freeze.

Aside from being a pretty big hax, I expected something like that since watching Ep2. Afterall, a geass does not affect the actual user but allows them to influence others. A geass also doesn’t have any effect on anything mechanical so when the Vincent showed off it’s “teleport” maneuver, the first thing I thought of was “The World,” The stand of the main antagonist in Jojo’s bizarre adventure.

Afterall, it makes more sense that a geass could affect a person and cause him to stop moving temporarily as opposed to a whole knightmare frame teleporting to a safe distance.

And in other news, the next Super Robot Wars game has been announced!!! YAY!!!!!!!!!

Dubbed Super Robot Wars Z (no word if it stands for the last letter of the western alphabet or zeta yet), The game will most likely be the last game for the PS2. Rather fitting considering SRW alpha gaiden was also one of the very last PS1 games to be released.

I’m also glad that they stuck with the PS2 as I would be rather annoyed if they jumped on the wii bandwagon purely because it was the “in thing” like some other franchise (yeah I know they cited high development costs as the reason for jumping ship but then please explain to me why they would start developing a heavily online focused game like monster hunter for a console with by far the worst online system?).

Series confirmed for this outing are:

Overman King Gainer (karaoke, standby!)
The Big O (Woo!!)
The Big O Second Season
Zambot 3
Daitarn 3
Xabungle
MS Z Gundam
Char’s Counter Attack
Gundam X (YES!!!)
Turn A Gundam
MS Gundam SEED Destiny
Mazinger Z
Great Mazinger
Getter Robo G
UFO Robo Grendizer
GOD Sigma
Sousei no Aquarion
Eureka Seven
Orgus
Baldios
Gravion
Gravion Zwei

I’m probably in the minority here, but I’m looking forward to beating Shinn to hell and back. I don’t have any love for Kira Yamato but damn I hated Shinn…

And, unless realize comes back as the theme for the seed units, the King Gainer theme is going to be played on a loop while I play!! I mean, come on!!! It’s one of the greatest OPs ever!! It did the “dancing anime characters” bit long before it was considered “cool” in shows like Haruhi and lucky star.

More screens can be found

here

here

here

here

here

& here

And now we return to what the blog was initially started for, MODEL KITS!!! It’s been several weeks since my last update on the progress of Yoko so if I didn’t have something to show for it, it would be safe to start worrying…

So she’s starting to take shape now. The jacket is giving me a little difficulty as I can’t quite get the colour right. But I think I’ll be able to nail that soon.

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