Gundam

Gunpla Chronicles 6 - Kampfer Part 2 2016-09-13

For a number of reasons, this build is taking longer than the last one. One of those reasons is that the Kämpfer isn’t color accurate out of the box. Take a look at these images.

See the orange thrusters? The orange on the legs? Turns out that none of that is made out of orange plastic. If you want them to look “right”, you are going to have to paint. Since I don’t have paint or the necessary equipment, I tried to get clever by using colored Sharpies. I had great success using Sharpies on the antenna of the EZ8, and research indicated that they were considered OK for doing minor touchup work. Alas, it wasn’t meant to be.

Gunpla Chronicles 6 - Kampfer Part 1 2016-09-11

Last post I posted a teaser of the Kämpfer’s arsenal, but refrained from going into any detail. It would simply cause that last post to run to long. So let’s start fresh. Be warned, it is still going to take a while.

The first thing I built was Kämpfer’s most iconic tool, the chain mine. I built it while watching several episodes of Gundam 0083, and it took up the entire night all on its own. The reason is that the chain mine is made up of thirteen separate mines, each of which is made out of two pieces. That’s a lot of snipping, trimming, and sanding. Here’s what it looks like once it is done:

Gunpla Chronicles 6 - EZ8 Part 3 2016-09-05

With the EZ8’s torso, there was less snapping of things together, and more plugging of pieces into one another. That might not sound like much of a difference, but it is. The final product looks much the same as any other Gundam torso, but it was a weird way to get there.

One nice thing about the torso is that it feels - how should I say it - robust. The skirt armor is big, but not too big, and it feels sturdy. Some delicate panel lining rounds out the finished piece.

Gunpla Chronicles 6 - EZ8 Part 2 2016-09-03

The EZ8’s head is tricky. It has tons of panel lining grooves, and one look at the manual shows just how much great detail you can get out of it if you ink it properly. Trouble is, it’s so small. Somehow, whether due to the markers, or my own skill, it came out well (who am I kidding, it had to be the markers). I’m not going to assemble it until it is painted, but I can’t help but feel like the final product is going to look almost Real Grade quality.

Gunpla Chronicles 6 - EZ8 Part 1 2016-09-02

Ok EZ-8, let’s do this.

The first thing I noticed is that this kit has the fewest amount of runners of any I’ve built. I’m guessing that unlike the Tryon-3, this model isn’t reusing runners from an older kit, and that this is a more accurate depiction of the piece count for the average High Grade. Thankfully, I’m not too worried about piece count anymore. It’s quality that matters.

Gunpla Chronicles 6 - On High Grades 2016-08-30

Once again, I learn something new every time I build a kit:

I swear the Gundam Markers look like they have the exact same tip as my old marker, but my wife disagrees. She thinks they have an even finer point. I guess I’ll find out soon enough.
Whenever I talk of High Grade kits, I always refer to them as just that, High Grades. But online, that’s not the way it works. Sometimes a person will say “HG”, but other times they’ll say “HGUC” or “HGAC”. I finally figured out that this is referring to which Gundam universe the kit comes from (HGUC being Universal Century, for example).

Furthermore, this isn’t just a parlance made up by the fans. HGUC, et al is an official branding. Specifically, the HGUC brand is part of a multi year effort to come up with High Grade kits for almost every single mobile suit to show up in the UC. The line officially began in 1999 and is still ongoing in 2016. And while I can’t speak for the very oldest HGUC kits, my research suggests models from the the last few years have drastically improved compared to older HG’s, with articulation and detail that was once impossible at the 1/144th scale (at least until Real Grade kits showed up). Looking at these two kits, the Kampfer is from 2008, and the EZ-8 from 2013, and based on their reviews, I think they both fall into the new era of awesome HG’s.

If you’ve built any Real Grade kits before, you know that they have their own unique branding (ie. their boxes, instruction booklets, etc all have a common visual aesthetic). The same thing is true for the HGUC line. The boxes use the same fonts and and style, as do their instruction booklets. In fact, these may be my favorite instructions yet. The cover on both booklets shows a nice closeup of the kit, with a bunch of technical specs (in English!) listed down the side. Height, weight, reactor output - it’s all that wonderful minutiae that only a model kit fan would care enough about.

Both booklets also have lots of close up photographs of different parts of the kit. This is extremely helpful, as the photos show you how Bandai decided to panel line the model, something I find helpful in improving my own skills

For arbitrary reasons, I decided the EZ-8 gets built first, so that’s where I’ll pick up with in the next post.

Gunpla Chronicles 6 2016-08-29

It’s been almost a year since my last model kit build, and I’m ready to get back on the horse. Last time I promised myself I would try a Master Grade next. That …. didn’t pan out. Turns out I still can’t find one.

It is infuriating, really. Before I got into this hobby, it seemed like everyone I encountered who was into it was building Master Grades. For years I assumed it was kind of the standard. And lo, when I went to gundamplanet.com in search of a my next project, what did I encouter but the following description of Master Grades - “Gunpla mainstream. Very detailed …” If I was wrong in my assumption, I certainly wasn’t the only one.

Where did you all go?