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Hey all!

Been awfully quiet on the painting and modeling front for like two years it seems. With no one to really play games with my urge to build or paint models has fallen off.

About 6 months ago I got a sick and twisted idea into my head to watch all of the Mobile Suit Gundam series and let me tell you there are a lot of episodes to get through and a lot of different timelines.

One of the great things about this is that I started to get the urge to build models again. Well, wouldn't you know it, Bandai has these amazing plastic models of most of the mobile suits from the shows. I've built a few kits already that I'll get uploaded as I start to finish them. But we don't want to see things that are finished right? No, of course not. So I'm going to start with a kit I picked up on Friday as a test run of more advanced modeling techniques. We're used to these with wargaming models, but just priming, painting, adding waterslide transfers, but I've never done it on a kit that I wanted to still be movable after I'm finished painting.

Without further ado, I present the HG RGM-79N GM Custom. This is a variation on the generic mobile suit see in series like Mobile Suit Gundam, Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam. This one is specifically from Mobile Suit Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory. This kit was suggested by the massive gunpla thread over on 4chan's /toy/ due to the complexity of the kit, the number of pieces, posability, and the fact it's a high grade that comes with transfers. So here's everything all laid out ready for building.


If you've never built a Bandai kit before, this is what to expect. It's all colored plastic so that when you're finished you get something similar to the image on the front of the instructions. The instructions are not in English, but thankfully they're fantastic images with numbers that are in English.



Torso is complete, it was a few pieces, that I neglected to take pictures of as I built them XD.


Head is attached, but it's missing the face piece at the moment. That's a clear piece of orange plastic that I don't want to have to paint later, so I'm going to keep it off until the head is painted.

The final few pictures are just to show how the skeleton on HG kits are. These are simple pieces that are generally an upper arm, lower arm, and some covering armor pieces. Higher grade kits (Master, Real, Perfect) tend to have full internal skeletons, but I've yet to really build one yet.


The two grey pieces here are the inner workings for the elbow joint. As you can see in the next picture, There is an armor piece that slides on top of the arm, and for the forearm is a two armor piece that will sit on the grey pieces, and the roundish grey piece at the bottom is a flexible type of plastic known in the Gunpla hobby as polycaps these are used for joints, or pieces that need to move. So that piece is going to be the wrist joint.


So the hand is just two pieces of plastic, the hand and wrist and the back of the hand. The wrist joint slides right into that polycap and has 360 degree movement so it can hold weapons or post.

Well that's all for now, I'll have more updates soon!

That's a good start. Keep it up.

Neat!

Very interesting to see how these things come together. i mean I know I have your Turn-A here and can look at that, but I dont think you can beat seeing a kit in progress.

So you mentioned painting.... What are the plans for that?

Got a little work done last night (the left arm assembled).

As to the paint, I'm thinking of a camo scheme.

Though I do really like the AEUG color scheme here


Though it would require me to paint white

It's been a little quiet on the Gundam front, but I've been slowly working on the GM Custom.

Just going to give you the quick rundown of the major points left in the build.

Legs, showing some of the articulation.


Legs on the waist


Full body


Gun assembly


Shield


RGM-79N GM Custom, fully loaded


Next I'll start to figure out how I want to paint it. There's two ways I can do this. I can start to disassemble it again and get it down to the frame as much as possible. This will let me paint the frame where it will and will not show so that once it's assembled again, it'll be painted. Or I can paint it how it is now, but that means that I'll probably have to add some brush on primer to make sure I can get those joints taken care of on the frame.

Sorry I've been quiet all month, got the kit primed which is a boring photo, but painting has begun!

I love the GM custom! One of my all time favorite designs.
Here's mine with a custom paint job to match my GM Command.


To anyone sitting on the fence, Gundam models are just a joy to assemble. There's nothing quite like it from other hobbies. The big models from GW or PP just don't compare to the level of detail and ease/fun of assembling. But I'm gushing.

Awesome! I'm glad to have found someone else that likes gunpla kits on Dakka. It's part of the reason why I started this blog.

That's a nice scheme on that GM

 Alfndrate wrote:
Awesome! I'm glad to have found someone else that likes gunpla kits on Dakka. It's part of the reason why I started this blog.

That's a nice scheme on that GM

I'm a huge Gundam nerd. When I lived in Japan, I bought many kits because they were so cheap there. A 1/100 scale Turn A for $30? Yes please.
And the pose-ability of these kits makes large models from miniatures games look like cavemen designed them in comparison.

Oh man I'd love a 1/100 Turn A!

My buddy Ramos Asura is going to be painting up a Turn A for me in WW1 British tank colors. I got to see the basecoat last night, but so far no pictures on his blog.

I really should take more pictures of my Gundam collection.
I stick mostly to Universal Century, but have a few outfliers like Gundam Virtue from 00, Gundam X and Heavy Arms...even though I detest Wing.

 MWHistorian wrote:
I really should take more pictures of my Gundam collection.
I stick mostly to Universal Century, but have a few outfliers like Gundam Virtue from 00, Gundam X and Heavy Arms...even though I detest Wing.

My collection is mostly UC. But I'm inadvertently collecting 1 from every series I've watched, except for stuff from Gundam Unicorn. I bought the Kshatriya because it looked cool and is huge for a 1/144 scale kit, Banshee Norn from Unicorn because my friend went to Japan and grabbed me that kit for my birthday, and Gundam Unicorn just to round out the crew.

I'd love to see more of your gunpla collection.

It's been a little over a week. Painting continues to be slow, but I've got the painting "done"



I need to do some detail painting, and hopefully find a part for the foot piece that flew off and disappeared on my carpet :(

Once detail painting is done, I'm going to seal it with a nice matte varnish so I can do panel lining.

Okay!

Sorry for the radio silence, been pretty busy with life lately. I uploaded these like two weeks ago but I'm now just getting to the thread update. There's more photos in the Gunpla Gallery but these are a few of my favorites. The white balance is a little harsh on the photos, I'm still trying to get my camera to not take potato quality photos.

Need more gundam in your gundam blog, instead of basic mobile suits.

Nice! Although for a truer build, GMs are more properly made of pure explodium.

whalemusic360 wrote:Need more gundam in your gundam blog, instead of basic mobile suits.

I agree, but I think the next two kits I'm working on are not Gundams, and the next two after that are Gundams, but they are not standard looking Gundam kits.

aka_mythos wrote:Nice! Although for a truer build, GMs are more properly made of pure explodium.

Zeon scum?

Quick update:

Took to practicing my panel lining on some kits I had already assembled and most likely will not be painting. Panel lining just brings out some of the detail.

The panel lining on these kits is unfortunately harsh and stark as its black lining on white paneling (for the most part). I'm trying to get more colors so I can do softer lines on the whites.

Gundam Airmaster from Mobile Suit Gundam X


Build Burning Gundam from Gundam Build Fighters Try (based on the Burning/God Gundam from Mobile Fighter G Gundam)


Gundam Barbatos from the currently airing series Mobile Suit Gundam Iron Blooded Orphans


RX-78-2 from the original Mobile Suit Gundam


There you go Whale, actual gundams on the gundam blog

Yeah, Gundams. I did enjoy fighter, even if it was a bit more ridiculous even for a Gundam series.

Gundam Build Fighters and its sequel are kind of ridiculous. It's a fighting tournament like G Gundam except that it's people fighting the Gundam model kits...

That's...even weirder.

Overall, a great update, Alf

I really dig the Build Burning Gundam... Particularly like the large clear parts on the armor.

Reminds me I still have to finish my RX... And then figure out how I want to paint up my Barby XD

Another Gunpla fan on Dakka is cool.

I like black panel lining on white, the harsh contrast works if you're going for an anime look or you're going to weather them and need the panel lines to stick out under grime.

Oh man, I like your Rick Dom

Needs moar Wing Zero. Just saying.

 Alfndrate wrote:
Oh man, I like your Rick Dom

Thank you. There is a Beargguy on the way.

Why's that EW Wing Zero have a big ass hammer?

 whalemusic360 wrote:
Why's that EW Wing Zero have a big ass hammer?

I don't like the look of the gunpla beam sabers so I built some alt weapons out of option parts from Kotobukiya. The hand is also custom and fully articulated so I can fit it around any weapon I want (currently using the big sword that's pictured on its base). Still haven't gone back and painted this beast yet but I'm thinking it should be black.

 Alfndrate wrote:

Nice smooth colours. Did you brush paint or airbrush it? I brush painted the Zaku that's in my painting thread but some of the joints got fouled with paint. I think the next one I build will be painted on the sprue.

I used an airbrush, and lots of masking tape to keep the lines as crisp as possible.

Also, sorry for lack of progress, I've been doing a lot of prep work for GenCon, so I haven't had much time for Gunpla.