Gunpla – My First Build!

I mentioned some time ago that I wanted to do some arts and crafts, with an eye on doing models. Well, I’ve finally done so and constructed my first Gunpla!

What is Gunpla? The word itself is a portmanteau of for “Gundam Plastic Model,” which is pretty self-explanatory. Using these kits, you can build most of the vehicles and robots found in the many Gundam animated universes.

For more details, keep an eye out on GeekOut South-West, where I’ll soon post a primer on Gunpla!

For my first project, I chose the Freedom Gundam from Gundam Seed, one of my favourite series. In terms of difficulty, I didn’t wat something I could just put together with a few pieces, but something more involved, with assembly of the inner skeleton, outer layer and decals.

I decided to buy a Master Grade model, the scale of it 1/100 of the Gundam’s supposed size, making the end model roughly 18cm high. It’s also an Extra Finish model, with plenty details and decals to go with it, and that’s without considering the myriad of tiny parts you have to keep track of when working on Master Grade Gunpla.

Below you can see some photos I took from the build, on different levels of completion.

I enjoyed building the Gunpla mode and I can’t wait to do the next one, another Freedom Gundam but a newer generation model released in early 2016, with extra details, pieces and more mobility for some cooler poses.

I’m still learning and want to get much more proficient in building Gunpla out of the box before I attempt my next idea: custom builds. I already have a Decepticon Gundam model idea. I’ll take a model, sand the colour off most visible pieces and repaint some of them in the Decepticon purple and add the faction’s icon to others.

And I have other, secret projects to work on as well, but I can’t talk about most of them, as it would ruin some big surprises. My biggest project, and which I can mention now since it’s not going to happen for a while, is a Perfect Grade (1/60 scale) RX-78 Gundam with weathering and combat damage. I already have the poses in mind for it. But PGs are the most challenging models to build and very costly, so I won’t be doing that one until I’m more confident in my skills!

Now here’s a question. Would you like to see build videos of my working on the different pieces and constructing these models? How about building streams? Does that sound like fun? Maybe if it’s live you can tell me about mods you’d like to see me make to the Gunpla.