Gunpla Chronicles - Tallgeese Legs (and feet)

I decided to go with the Tallgeese over the Maganac as the next build, so let us get cracking.

Here are the runners:

We have 12 in total, which feels a bit low for a Real Grade, but keep in mind that some of these are big and crammed full of pieces.

Also, I very quickly learned that the white pieces do have a glossy appearance out of the box. That is extremely cool, and I will stick with my original plan not to topcoat them.

Here is the instruction booklet:

I am only showing it because I forgot how much I love these Real Grade booklets. Multi paged, stapled, nice quality paper, and they don’t try to cram as many steps as possible onto a single page:

For grins, I decided to use a random number generator to determine the order in which to build each section of this kit. Here is what it came up with:

• Left leg
• Backpack vernier 2
• Shield
• Left arm
• Chest
• Backpack vernier 1
• Feet
• Right leg
• Gun
• Waist
• Head
• Right arm

Left leg it is!

The legs are one of three body parts that use an Advanced MS Joint part. In this case it is just a simple, pre-assembled hinge:

As with all Real Grades, this kit has a lot of decals:

A few of these attach to the inner frame of the legs. They are the shiny foil type, and I learned (or perhaps was reminded) that you do not want to clear coat these, as they will lose much of their shininess:

Furthermore, normally I am a “put all the stickers on” kind of guy, but maybe not with this kit. The reason has to do with the aggressive use of red decals. I suppose they stand out more on white, but I feel as if they make the final model look too … busy, I guess.

Instead, I decided that I would use some of the red decals, but only in select locations, where I felt it may look appropriate. Elsewhere, my plan was to cut out the red parts and apply only the black/grey sections of each sticker. This could go terribly wrong, as doing surgery on decals with a hobby knife can easily destroy them (or cause them to fly away). I decided that if I lost enough of them, I would simply give up on the endeavor. At this point, however, the plan was working.

As for the glossy white pieces, the panel lines wiped off easily, so I was not left with dark stains everywhere. Whether the panel lines will hold up (and not wipe off) without topcoat I cannot yet say.

Here are all the leg pieces in total:

Under Gating

The Tallgeese boasts a feature called “Under Gating”. No seriously, it is a feature. It shows up everywhere in the manual:

Anyway, this is my first time encountering it. Typically, model kit parts are attached to their plastic runners along the sides of the part. When you clip them off, it often leads to nub marks which can be difficult to clean off. Failure to clean them up and/or paint them can lead to very visible blemishes on your model.

“Under Gating” is a process in which the pieces are attached to the runners at points which will not be visible when the kit is assembled. Here are some photos to help explain:

Notice how this attaches on the “inside” of the piece, which will be flush up against another piece on the kit. If there are nub marks here, you will not see them.

On the other hand, on the more traditional runner above, the connections run along the side of the part. Cleanup of nub marks is required in this case.

The reason Under Gating is promoted as a feature of the model is that it costs more to manufacture runners this way, so only certain kits get the special treatment.

Personally, I do not think it helped me at all, at least with this first leg. The nub marks ended up being in some very tight and/or non-straight sections of the leg armor, and on more than one occasion I carved too far into the plastic to clean them off. For the next leg, I plan on clipping as close as flush to the piece as possible. Maybe that will help.

Building the wrong Leg

Once I finished the leg, I realized I built the wrong one. So now the build order is officially:

• Left leg Right leg
• Backpack vernier 2
• Shield
• Left arm
• Chest
• Backpack vernier 1
• Feet
• Right leg Left leg
• Gun
• Waist
• Head
• Right arm

Can’t Dance Without Feet

As I was finishing assembly of the leg, I noticed something else. Take a look at these instructions:

It looks as if the front leg armor has to lock into place within the foot before snapping together. That means I need the feet complete if I am to do this properly. So now the build order has to change again:

• Right leg
• Back Vernier 2 Feet
• Backpack vernier 2
• Shield
• Left arm
• Chest
• Backpack vernier 1
• Left leg
• Gun
• Waist
• Head
• Right arm

Feet

The feet are, thankfully, easy to assemble. They use another one of the three Advanced MS Joint parts, which is basically the entire inner frame of the foot:

Every fiber of my being wanted topcoat these, but I know from experience that the paint can cause joints to stick together so tightly that moving them can cause pieces to break. I did, however, paint them gold:

Anyway, here are all the parts that make up both feet:

Not a whole lot to deal with to be honest. Throw it all together and you get this:

With this completed, we can no finally assemble the leg properly:

And my is it bendy:

At this point, I think it is time to wrap this post up. Back when I was first building Real Grades, I used to break the build up into multiple posts, but once I switched to High Grades it became overkill. The more experience I got building, the less I had to talk about making mistakes/using new tools/learning new techniques, and since the High Grade builds were simpler, there was less ground to cover. As a result, I migrated to doing one post to cover the entire build.

Now that I am back to building a Real Grade, I once again find the need to split the process up into multiple entries. The Tallgeese does enough things different and new to garner discussion. I am more experienced now than I have ever been, yet I feel like I have just as many new observations and challenges to talk about as when I was a newbie. This kit is taking me back to my roots!

Other Thoughts

• For the last few builds, I have proceeded to topcoat all the pieces of the inner frame. I know this may sound silly, since you rarely see the frame parts on a finished kit. However, when I do see them, I hate the contrast between the nice matte finish of the armor, and the plasticky, toy-like sheen of the frame parts. A quick shot of clear coat is all that is needed to “take the edge off” so to speak, and I find that it leads to a much more consistent looking model. The only problem with this process is, well, a lot of problems actually. For one, frame pieces are tiny, and there are a lot of them, and I only have so many alligator clips to use for drying. This puts a natural limiter on how fast I can build. Furthermore, since the pieces are small, this process can potentially waste a lot of paint. The solution would be to spray down multiple pieces at once, but I find this to be too difficult to be worth it. And as I mentioned earlier, spraying them down after assembly is a death sentence.
• I considered painting all of the yellow parts gold, but I figured that may be too fancy. I think I will paint the chest vents gold, but that is it.