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Painting parts the same colour is boring! Esp whey you have to do it several times in order to get a good finish! And that’s where I find myself with C.C. Although things have progressed a little further that that now, but in my sheer boredom of painting large pieces white and then white again, I decided to start on WildFalken which I bought from orbital Manga on Saturday.
Then I started thinking, just how quickly could I finish a kit and give it a full works in terms of a paintjob?
Then answer, Less than 1/2 a day. Or more precisely, I began working on Falken at roughly 5:30pm on Sunday afternoon and finished at 1am Monday morning. So that’s 7 1/2 hrs, factoring in points just as having a meal, reading manga while waiting for paint to dry, working on C.C simultaneously, etc I’d say less than 5hrs of work.
The result?
For those who do not know where this gorgeous mecha is from, this is WildFalken from the Super robot wars series. It made it’s debut in SRW alpha 2 and has since been seen in SRW alpha 3, Original Generation 2, OGS and OG Gaiden. It’s one half of a pair with WildWurger forming the other half (Yes, I have Wurger too) and is Piloted By Seolla Schweizer. The 2 are designed to work in tandem, with Wurger acting as short/mid ranged attacker and Falken providing long range support.
But enough of the history lesson, More pics!!
Way back in 1996, Sonic team released a peculiar game on the now defunct Sega Saturn. That game was Nights into Dreams.
The game centered around 3 characters, the titular nights, Claris Sinclair and Elliot Edwards and revolved around a fairly simple premise of collecting blue orbs in the stage in order to free a captured orb called an Ideya and bring it back to the start of the stage. The game was on rails and played on a 2d plane in a 3d world.
Capable of dividing opinions quite strongly, the game encouraged repeat play and high score collecting in order to improve and progress (the final stage was only unlocked when the played obtained at least c grades on the preceding levels). Nevertheless, the game, like many Saturn classics, has many loyal fans who hoped for a sequel someday. That sequel is Nights: Journey of Dreams.
Although I was very slow on the pickup for the first game (I initially hated it), after a few plays I began to understand why it was so highly regarded in some circles so the news of a sequel of the original for the nintendo wii was met with (mildly cautious) joy. It would not be a stretch to say that the announcement of this game was a major factor in my decision to get a wii in the first place. So how does it fare?
Not too well…
Several Sites have already pointed out that a teaser trailer for the upcoming second season for Code geass has made it’s way onto youtube
Looks pretty good and a fair few people are already salivating over it. Myself? Well, I intend to watch it but it’s taken a distant second to a rival show which will be shown during the same season (though not necessarily the same time slot).
You may have heard of it, it’s called MACROSS FRONTIER!!!!!
Another new season is here so I thought I would just post my watch list for this season as well as the impromptu awards for last season!
The Awards!
Best Show: Minami-Ke
No outright winner this time round and the shows were more contested but none really hit the high point like Gurren Lagann did before it.
Minami-Ke wins overall simply because it was consistently fun to watch.
Runner up: Bamboo Blade.
A while back, it was announced that a new Super robot wars game was in development. Dubbed Endless frontier: super robot wars saga, it was going to be unlike any SRW game before it. It was going to be a more traditional RPG like game using characters from the Original Generation universe (or rather, the originals from the SRW compact series) but in a completely different universe. No mecha piloting (although some will be present as allies or enemies). Oh, and there’s some genderbending going on too as the Exellen character is now male and Kyosuke is female.
So far so Meh. but then we found out that Monolith was developing. Those who made Xenosaga and NamcoxCapcom? So what does this mean?
Yup, we get KOSMOS and the 2 original NamcoxCapcom characters Reiji and Xiaumu in the game. Now it’s gone from “meh” to “sort of want.”It hasn’t totally convinced me yet but I think I’ll be keeping a closer eye on this game from now on.
Unfortunately, with the addition of KOSMOS, it seems unlikely that this game will see a western release now as the Xenosaga series are the property of BandaiNamco, so any Western publisher who wants to release the game will need to pony up more cash to get permission. Unless, BandaiNamco decide to release the game, but they didn’t bother with the SRW: OG games, we had to rely on Atlus!!
Japanese import sites ahoy!
Well, I did say that I would give an update, not that there’s much to update at present.
The parts have cleaned, sanded and primed, as shown in the above pic. For some reason, this process took an insanely long time due to various mishaps when priming. Word of advice: Always pay attention to the distance between the part and the Primer can when spraying. I had to redo the primer 4 times because i kept putting the parts too close to the spray which resulted in air pockets and craters in the finish. so you don’t get a smooth finish which really shows up after painting. Just to add more problems, the only way to remove them is to sand the paint off after it has dried and spray again.
Painting has begun but I’m dragging my feet a little because the figure doesn’t stand up by itself!!! As a result, I’m waiting for a display base to arrive so I can fix the figure when the body and legs are completely done. Otherwise, I’ll just have painted parts floating around my workspace with nowhere to put them. The base should arrive soon so then i can go full throttle on the painting, not that there’s any difficulty in this kit, it’s mostly just 1 colour afterall…
In fact, maybe I’ll do another one on the side…
Buying figures and kits used to be easy… It used to be that I would see one kit and it would almost speak to me. It would block out all the other figures and kits of the same character and would be “the one”
Even figures released after wouldn’t quite match the one I originally picked. A good example would be bubbas bunny haruhi. When I first saw that, I went all out to get one and even after seeing such kits as CobraKais rendition, I still thought that the bubba version was better, despite it being less dynamic and interesting. It just had that magic touch.
WHAT HAPPENED TO THOSE DAYS???
Case in point, Vispo has shown a near complete version of his Gurren Lagann Yoko (post time skip) on his website. And it looks impressive to say the least!
I do believe that this feeling building up inside me is… Desire! And this is AFTER I bought the kotobukiya resin kits!! My rules of kit buying are falling apart before my eyes!!!
Still, I’m not sure if the “vs tepparin” Yoko is better than this one, which makes it even worse. Why can’t we go back to the old days where there was the “one for me” feeling instead of cheating and getting several dozen kits of the same character? Guess I could try and sell my Vs AntiSpiral kit after I’m done but that makes me feel dirty, and I don’t think i’d get a good price for it. orz
More pics of Yoko can be found here. His Asuka Racing ver2 also looks sweet but I think the original is better
Yay, my first full post of 2008!
Not really much to say at this point, other than a quick post to display the kits and figures I received around the Christmas period
So, that would be a
- 1/100 Alteisen
- MG Destiny gundam
- MG unicorn gundam
- 1/35 Lancelot
- Yoko “vs Tepparin” ver
- Yoko “vs antispiral” ver
Alongside my kits from way back at wonderfestival, my “to do” list looks something like this…
C.C is represented by a photo as she was taking a parts bath at the time (hint: I’m working on her now!)
So, during 2008, I hope to work steadily and finish FOUR of the above!!!
Ok, pick yourself up from the floor and I will explain my reasoning. Last year, I finished a total of 3 kits. Bunny Haruhi, Getsumento Heiki Mina, and Strike Freedom. Admittedly, bunny Haruhi did take much longer than any previous kit and i did take an extended break after completing her but the grand total is still only 3.
I’m not sure how regularly I will be able to work on my figures this year so I’m simply hedging my bets. I could realistically say i could finish 5 or 6 kits but you never know what may happen so I’m playing it safe. That way, if I do manage more than what I set out to do, I can feel pleased with myself!!
I should really buy fewer kits before my build list gets out of hand, but with winter wonderfestival next month and 2 more figures awaiting shipping, I think it’s a bit late for that. I recently purchased a rozen maiden set from e2046 during their sale, mainly as a way to test the quality of their recasts. I’m also interested in their “gathering” series as everyone raves about them, I’m interested to see how one of my works stacks up to theirs in my critical eye.
In any case, lets start the way we mean to carry on. At the time of writing, C.C is cleaned, sanded and undergoing priming so look forward to progress reports soon!
