You may have noticed a pattern over the course of the last two builds. I started building both of these kits months ago, then put them on ice for one reason or another, then finally got back to finishing them now.
And these aren’t even the first times this has happened this year! For example, I’m pretty sure the Razor Crest sat unfinished for at least a year. And looking at my workbench, I count approximately seven - seven! - kits that I started and then stopped.
There are a few common causes for this behavior:
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Sometimes a given kit needed a lot of detailing work, be it painting, seam line removal, or applying waterslide decals.
I like doing all of these things in a small number of long sessions, rather than a bunch of short ones, and for one reason or another I haven't often had the necessary time or energy. So I'd put it on ice and look for something easier.
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On a similar note, sometimes I've actually felt intimidated (and/or exhausted) by the prospect of doing all this work.
In either case, the result was the same; I'd put it on ice and look for something easier to work on.
- Sometimes I got Gunpla ADD. A newer, shinier kit showed up and I'd get distracted by it.
Now, I didn’t plan to go back and finish these kits. It just kind of happened naturally. But I’m certainly not complaining. There are a bunch of problems with starting and stopping builds like this:
- Parts can get lost when they're rolling around loose in the box. Granted, there's an easy fix for this (that is, putting them in a plastic bag), it's easy to get lazy when you don't expect the kit to get shelved again for a half year or longer.
- When I look back at the old work-in-progress photos I took for these builds, I often forget what observation(s) I wanted to make. Similarly, if I wrote a draft of the build post, I discover that my earlier opinion on the model and the build doesn't match up with how I feel right now.
- When kits go unbuilt, I start feeling the weight of Gunpla Guilt. But I think leaving them unfinished makes me feel even worse.
- Sometimes I forget what plans I had for painting and detailing, or forget about which parts have or haven't been finished. The kit gets built, only to discover too late that I didn't implement the original vision I had in mind.
All of which is to say that it’s better to get these knocked out sooner rather than later.
Looking forward, I don’t see myself finishing all of these builds before moving on to new stuff - some of them are so early in the process that they’re practically unbuilt. But at the very least I plan on finishing one or two more (Unless I don’t. You never know when Gunpla ADD may kick in).