On Monday I shared with you a highlight video of all the gaming moments from my Twitch stream for the month of August and I mentioned that along with the gaming, there was also some modelling as well. Let’s talk about that!
In August there were two models I built on stream, fewer than other months but a couple of times I had to be out on the Friday or take a break for various reasons, such as the trip to Kitacon and last week, when cleaning and reorganising my work-space became a priority, as it was frankly a mess.
So the two models I built were one Gunpla I had my eye on for a while, its box almost taunting me from the other room, where I keep all my gunpla kit boxes (mostly because of space), and the other model was an action figure in model form and while I’ve already built one before, the Kamen Rider Faiz action figure, it’s still very strange for me to see action figures come in sprues and with a little manual to build them up–and often a nauseating amount of stickers.
The Gunpla Model I built was the Mega Size (1/48th scale, around 35cm tall) RX-78-2 Gundam. If you’re not up on your Gundam lore and unit numbers, RX-78-2 is the original Gundam from the 1970s series Mobile Suit Gundam and perhaps one of the simplest models to build, no matter the grade or scale. Even the Perfect Grade version is apparently quite simplistic from what I hear, and that’s saying something because Perfect Grade models have hundreds of tiny pieces and incredible articulation.
I loved building this model. It’s simple, gigantic and it does some really creative stuff with the sprues, such as giving you two copies of the sprues with the arms and legs pieces and instructing you to join them, their pieces fitting perfectly with their mirrored counterparts and removing the need to slowly and intricately building each part of the arm. It’s quick, it’s easy and it’s extremely clever.
While the model is complete in terms of just building it straight from the kit, I’m planning on turning it into the Amazing Red Warrior Gundam, something that will involve not just some custom paint but also some original parts created using polystyrene sheets and blocks. Should be a lot of fun.
The second model, the action figure, was for one of the main characters from one of my favourite anime of all time, Tiger & Bunny, a series about a city where people have superpowers and some become superheroes that compete on television for the crown of King of Heroes. Each of these heroes has corporate sponsors, product placement obligations and in general have all the things you usually expect from a NASCAR driver. The series stars veteran hero Wild Tiger and his partner Barnaby. Sadly, I couldn’t get my hands on the Barnaby figure, but I had the pleasure of building the Wild Tiger figure.
It’s a pretty decent build, with the only annoying part of it being the extreme abundance of stickers. At times it made me wish some of those had been built using pla plates (polystyrene sheets) instead of stickers, since it would have made the figure look much better and also becauser some of those stickers were minuscule, making it extra challenging to put them on properly.
This Friday I’ll be tackling not a new model but one of the existing ones, priming it for paint. The model will be the Gelgoog Commander, piloted by Char Aznable and which I built on the Gunpla Builder’s Association monthly event stream. The original kit is salmon coloured and I hate that, so I’ll be giving it a bright red makeover to look closer to something Char would pilot!