Gundam/ Gunpla Discussion Thread

[West Kalmar]

Alright, I scoured half of this forum, and it seems like no one has made a thread focusing about this topic, so here I am!

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Gundam: A immensely popular TV series centered around Mobile Suit (Gundam) battles enjoyed in Japan and around the world. Originally conceived by Sunrise Productions®.
Gunpla: The mobile suit themselves made into a kit form, with gimmicks® and weapons. (Fake, of course) Immensely popular too.
Some of my builds:
RG MS-06F Zaku MkII
HGUC MSN-04 Sazabi
SD Gundam BB Sazabi
RG Zeta Gundam

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Visited by Reploid Productions theirselves!
Polling Results
Poll ended at Thu Feb 18, 2016 3:16 pm
HG/HGUC was the most popular with 5 votes, and a three way loss between SD, 1/144 No Grade, and 1/100 No Grade.

[Reploid Productions]

Oh... oh dear. *looks at her to-be-built stack* Um... You know, without, like, taking a full inventory on what I've built and what's in the TBD stack, I'm not entirely sure what all I have. Granted, the lion's share of my purchases were north of a decade ago, when the exchange rate was such that I could buy MG kits without breaking the bank, and I've since gotten much pickier about what I buy. Definitely prefer MG or PG kits these days.

Off the top of my head, I've got, either built or in the build stack:
PG Zaku II
PG Zeta
PG Wing Zero Custom
PG Strike Freedom (the only good thing to come out of Destiny!)
MG God Gundam
MG Sazabi
MG RX-93
MG Qubeley
MG Gundam Mk-II
MG Hyaku-Shiki
MG Double Zeta
MG Re-GZ
MG Wing, Deathcythe, Shenlong, Tallgeese
HG 1/144 scale Denbrobium
HG 1/144 scale METEOR
Most of the Gundam Wing suits in HG 1/100 scale from when I first discovered Gundam via Wing in the 90s...
1:60 scale Wing Zero

... and a fuckton of others. I really need to go through the stack, figure out what kits I really want to keep, and which ones I should look into finding new homes for, because fuck if I'll ever manage to build/display ALL of them.

[Strike Freedom gundam]

A gundam thread.

IM IN HEAVEN!

As of recently I've been custom building.
But here's my Gunpla.

Starting with my first to my recent.
Build Strike Gundam Hg
Strike Rouge. HG
Wing Gundam HG
Age Gen 1 AG sucked....
Try Burning Gundam.
Titan Gundam. HG
RG Strike Freedom Gundam.
Space Jahannam Klim Nick Use.
Destiny RG
Gouf R35

[West Kalmar]

Wow, you guys have built a lot of Gunpla, more than me, that's for sure. My cousin built a Miss Sazabi and a couple of Ver.kas. I've been eyeing a couple of Celestial Being mobile suits, they look pretty good to me. The Iron-Blooded Orphans Gunpla is way more overrated than people say.

[Reploid Productions]

Wow, you guys have built a lot of Gunpla, more than me, that's for sure.

In fairness, I'm going to hazard the guess that I've also got a head start on you by several years.

Am I the only one in here anal enough to go through and ink in aaaaall the panel lines on my kits? My 1:60 Wing Zero had sooo many bloody lines to ink in, omfg.

'Course, my single biggest "model" kit I joking call a 1:9 scale Cosplay Grade God Gundam a friend and I did for his costume for AX 2005. Though to this day I take issue with some of his build decisions, I think we coulda made that sonuvabitch look soooo much better than we did. Still stood out in a crowded convention hall; to the top of the v-fins, the costume clocked in at 7'4" tall!

[West Kalmar]

Wow, you guys have built a lot of Gunpla, more than me, that's for sure.

In fairness, I'm going to hazard the guess that I've also got a head start on you by several years.

Am I the only one in here anal enough to go through and ink in aaaaall the panel lines on my kits? My 1:60 Wing Zero had sooo many bloody lines to ink in, omg.

Is it just me, or are the lines on your Wing Zero a bit more darker? Because I use the marker and when I rub it, it comes off as a greyish shade.

[Reploid Productions]

In fairness, I'm going to hazard the guess that I've also got a head start on you by several years.

Am I the only one in here anal enough to go through and ink in aaaaall the panel lines on my kits? My 1:60 Wing Zero had sooo many bloody lines to ink in, omg.

Is it just me, or are the lines on your Wing Zero a bit more darker? Because I use the marker and when I rub it, it comes off as a greyish shade.

I blackwashed mine using watered-down Tamiya paint. Capillary action gets most of the pigment into the crevices, and then the rest on the high areas can be wiped right off. Takes forever though, I spent hours on the lines on that kit.

EDIT TO ADD: And rather than Gundam markers, I have some very fine point permanent markers and a very steady hand from animation classes in college that I could use on some of the lines.

[West Kalmar]

Im thinking of getting an Astray kit, what do you guys think?

[Reploid Productions]

Im thinking of getting an Astray kit, what do you guys think?

Perfect Grade Red Frame, seriously. One of the booths at Fanime had several fully assembled kits in their display cases, and the PG Red Frame was one of them. Gorgeous, beautiful kit, if I'd had the money to drop on both it AND the PG Strike Freedom, I would have. (Incidentally, it was seeing the assembled PG Strike Freedom kit that sold me on buying it.)

[Hanchu]

DOUBLE X GUNDAM

[Reploid Productions]

DOUBLE X GUNDAM

I can get behind that.

Something I would LOVE to see is a Perfect Grade Zeta 2.0. Don't get me wrong, the current PG Zeta is an awesome kit, looks beautiful when completed, super crazy detailed... but it is an older kit, released a hair over 15 years ago now. It's amazing and beautiful and super crazy complex to build... but because of the complexity of the kit (especially the transformation mechanism,) its articulation and posing suffers considerably, especially compared to far more nimble PG frames like the PG Strike, Red Frame, and so on. Other older PGs from about the same period like the RX-78 and the Zaku II suffer similar problems with especially dynamic posing, but the issue is especially pronounced with the PG Zeta since the wing and tail binders make it so back-heavy.

[West Kalmar]

Red Frame..... PG expensive, much? I can afford RG and HG/HGUC, never tried PG. I built an MG for my friend, that took a month to detail and build.

[Jetan]

I used to be both into model planes (also did a balsawood mustang which had tendency to crash on it's nose. The duck tape fix for the nose cone is not quite as snazzy looking as the black painted originsl, it turns out) and warhammer but then the interest sort of died away for years. Now I'm getting back into the hobby though and I actually have one gunpla kit I got maybe a year ago waiting to ve built in my storage locker. Have to get glue first though since any that I might still have laying around is bound to be a dried up blob at this point. One day...!

[West Kalmar]

Jetan, you don't have to use glue for Gunpla, it snaps together. You can use glue to bond it together, to make it more stable, however.

[Silverstom]

Hey, now here's a Gundam/Gunpla thread!
My builds:
HG Barbatos
RG Exia
MG Gundam GP02
MG Gouf
MG Ramba Ral's Zaku
Crap ton of more.

Hmmm... if there were a Gundam TV series poll, I'd vote for 00. Ok plot, nice Mobile Suits.

Bought that on a whim.

[Jetan]

Jetan, you don't have to use glue for Gunpla, it snaps together. You can use glue to bond it together, to make it more stable, however.

Interesting. How well do they stay together without it?

[Hanchu]

I know this is wierd question , but why are there no Gundam themed regions?

[Reploid Productions]

Jetan, you don't have to use glue for Gunpla, it snaps together. You can use glue to bond it together, to make it more stable, however.

Interesting. How well do they stay together without it?

Pretty well. I've never found glue to be necessary on any of the kits I've built, though I've sometimes used it just to be extra sure certain parts aren't going to work loose. The High Grade kits are pretty solid for beginners; reasonably nice detail and articulation, but not something that's going to take hours to build (unless, like me, you get anal-retentive about painting and inking all the panel lines. ) Master Grade kits are generally more complex, but with additional details and articulation; they take longer to build, but offer greater range of detail. Sometimes those will have assemblies that use screws to hold particularly important bits in place. Perfect Grade is where you can really sink a lot of time, as those are at a larger scale (1:60 compared to MG's 1:100 or HG's 1:100 or 1:144) which will often have tons of small parts, screw assemblies, and electronics on the kits that have lights in them. The directions are all in Japanese, however they're fully illustrated every step of the way and the language issue really isn't much of an issue. (Only time I ran into some trouble with language was the Perfect Grade Zeta, which has several different varieties of screws for different parts, and the illustrations alone weren't clear enough; fortunately I was able to use the magic of the internet to decipher enough to know what steps called for the small black screws versus the short silver ones or the long silver ones!)

Just curious, what kit is it that you've got?

[Jetan]

Interesting. How well do they stay together without it?

Pretty well. I've never found glue to be necessary on any of the kits I've built, though I've sometimes used it just to be extra sure certain parts aren't going to work loose. The High Grade kits are pretty solid for beginners; reasonably nice detail and articulation, but not something that's going to take hours to build (unless, like me, you get anal-retentive about painting and inking all the panel lines. ) Master Grade kits are generally more complex, but with additional details and articulation; they take longer to build, but offer greater range of detail. Sometimes those will have assemblies that use screws to hold particularly important bits in place. Perfect Grade is where you can really sink a lot of time, as those are at a larger scale (1:60 compared to MG's 1:100 or HG's 1:100 or 1:144) which will often have tons of small parts, screw assemblies, and electronics on the kits that have lights in them. The directions are all in Japanese, however they're fully illustrated every step of the way and the language issue really isn't much of an issue. (Only time I ran into some trouble with language was the Perfect Grade Zeta, which has several different varieties of screws for different parts, and the illustrations alone weren't clear enough; fortunately I was able to use the magic of the internet to decipher enough to know what steps called for the small black screws versus the short silver ones or the long silver ones!)

Just curious, what kit is it that you've got?

HG 1:144 M1 Astray from SEED.

[Reploid Productions]

Pretty well. I've never found glue to be necessary on any of the kits I've built, though I've sometimes used it just to be extra sure certain parts aren't going to work loose. The High Grade kits are pretty solid for beginners; reasonably nice detail and articulation, but not something that's going to take hours to build (unless, like me, you get anal-retentive about painting and inking all the panel lines. ) Master Grade kits are generally more complex, but with additional details and articulation; they take longer to build, but offer greater range of detail. Sometimes those will have assemblies that use screws to hold particularly important bits in place. Perfect Grade is where you can really sink a lot of time, as those are at a larger scale (1:60 compared to MG's 1:100 or HG's 1:100 or 1:144) which will often have tons of small parts, screw assemblies, and electronics on the kits that have lights in them. The directions are all in Japanese, however they're fully illustrated every step of the way and the language issue really isn't much of an issue. (Only time I ran into some trouble with language was the Perfect Grade Zeta, which has several different varieties of screws for different parts, and the illustrations alone weren't clear enough; fortunately I was able to use the magic of the internet to decipher enough to know what steps called for the small black screws versus the short silver ones or the long silver ones!)

Just curious, what kit is it that you've got?

HG 1:144 M1 Astray from SEED.

Oh yeah, you shouldn't need any glue for that. Maybe some paints to do detailing if you want, but definitely no glue needed.

[Jetan]

HG 1:144 M1 Astray from SEED.

Oh yeah, you shouldn't need any glue for that. Maybe some paints to do detailing if you want, but definitely no glue needed.

Cool. Still feels weird to me though. As for paints, I have quite many (the new GW paints suck balls compared to the older/middle paints by the way). I think I might even have some old revell paints left over from the model planes and tin soldiers, altough I haven't even touched those after starting to use acrylic paints.

[Reploid Productions]

Oh yeah, you shouldn't need any glue for that. Maybe some paints to do detailing if you want, but definitely no glue needed.

Cool. Still feels weird to me though. As for paints, I have quite many (the new GW paints suck balls compared to the older/middle paints by the way). I think I might even have some old revell paints left over from the model planes and tin soldiers, altough I haven't even touched those after starting to use acrylic paints.

I've been using Tamiya acrylics for years myself. Started out with Testors enamel only because that's what the local crafting store had, then I found a local hobby place that had Tamiya and I never looked back. That 1:60 Wing Zero I posted earlier in the thread was done with the Tamiya spraypaints; all metal flake and pearl white. Works great for that "shiny new mech" look, though I'd like to start experimenting with weathering techniques and battle damage. Bit leery about trying it and fucking up a kit that cost a lot of money though, but I think I've got a spare HG 1:100 Wing Zero buried somewhere in my build stack I wanted to experiment on.

[Jetan]

Cool. Still feels weird to me though. As for paints, I have quite many (the new GW paints suck balls compared to the older/middle paints by the way). I think I might even have some old revell paints left over from the model planes and tin soldiers, altough I haven't even touched those after starting to use acrylic paints.

I've been using Tamiya acrylics for years myself. Started out with Testors enamel only because that's what the local crafting store had, then I found a local hobby place that had Tamiya and I never looked back. That 1:60 Wing Zero I posted earlier in the thread was done with the Tamiya spraypaints; all metal flake and pearl white. Works great for that "shiny new mech" look, though I'd like to start experimenting with weathering techniques and battle damage. Bit leery about trying it and fucking up a kit that cost a lot of money though, but I think I've got a spare HG 1:100 Wing Zero buried somewhere in my build stack I wanted to experiment on.

GW makes washes (might be called shades these days) which are great for weathering. I've also just started using Army Painter quick shade which is also very nice, altough that might not be the best option for gunpla since it's best used by dipping.

[Zakuvia]

I think my name should tell you which models I tend to collect. By the way, Reploid, you're now my officially favorite NS mod. If I ever do something that requires banning, I will only allow myself to be banned by you. (that's how it works, right?)

[Jetan]

I think my name should tell you which models I tend to collect. By the way, Reploid, you're now my officially favorite NS mod. If I ever do something that requires banning, I will only allow myself to be banned by you. (that's how it works, right?)

"Ban me harder Reppy-chan...!"