Mecha Meister Me

more on the spiral flow

2009-06-29T14:22:00.001-05:00

Another L-Gaim kit!

2009-06-27T23:58:00.003-05:00

I haven't put a new post up in quite some time, so here's a little item I've been working on. It's a kit of the Spiral Flow hover bike thing that Daba Myroad rides in L-Gaim. You should DL L-Gaim if you hain't seen it, for it is teh win of classic old school anime styling.

This is a fun little kit that is gonna be a real bear to paint properly. All sorts of nested parts, and of course they couldn't nest in a way that would make them easy to paint. I'm glad I didn't try this kit before discovering Parafilm for masking.

The first video shows the application of a very small decal, the second shows a rough test fit of the main kit parts.

At this point I've got some of the detail and innermost parts painted, but mostly I just have the part interiors "blacked" so that all the openings in the finished kit don't look trashy.

The clips are in HD - a first for me - and you'll really get more of what you came here for if watch them at full res.

A-Taul from L-Gaim from Start to Finish

2008-12-23T21:18:00.005-05:00

It'll take you a little over a half an hour to get through these, but I found out how to embed them in high quality, and they're all edited and stuff, so I imagine it could be time well spent if you like this sort of thing.

They pretty much speak for themselves...

Brocken Labor WIP to completion

2008-10-24T13:09:00.005-05:00

I hadn't been doing much modeling for a while, and that had to change.

I dug out an old Patlabor kit that I picked up cheap at a Convention years ago. I didn't want to instantly burn myself out slaving away at an L-Gaim or FSS kit, so I went for something simple.

I didn't do any modifications other than weighting the feet with birdshot - no flying poses will ever be done with this guy.

Mostly I didn't even bother to chop registration pins as I was putting this together. I glued the facing edges of parts that would form seamlines as I snapped the kit together and that worked pretty well for later smoothing those lines.

I really had fun with airbrushing this kit. I made my first significant attempt at shading, and layered multiple shades to get what I think is a very nice depth to the finish.

Here are 4 videos of the process:

Here are a couple of finished images

If you'd like to see more, you can look here.

detailing my new bike

2008-04-14T08:35:00.005-05:00

Pictures are way too big right now, I hope to fix them later. Sorry.

I bought a new mountain bike last week. Just an "entry level" Specialized, and it was last year's model (that kind of consumerist stuff cracks me up) so I got a nice deal on it. But beggars can't be choosers and it's basically got a boring black and silver paint job, so I thought I'd spice it up a bit with some Five Star Stories related detailing. Going through my reference books, I thought I might do a V-Siren Prominence deal on it - all that orange, gold, and black would look awesome.

But alas I have neither the time nor the skill necessary to tear down an entire bike to do a full repaint at this point in my painting and biking career.

Didn't want to do a Vatshu scheme, mainly since I've seen it done before.

So then I checked out the Phantoms, and the Mighty series because I knew there were some black mechs in that territory. I decided on the Hydra Mirage.

I love the AKD cross, and I think serpents and wings are very appropriate for bike details. My son was also born in the Chinese Zodiac year of the snake/serpent, so I get a little homage to him in that way too.

So far I've got the cross and serpents done.

Here's how...

I spent the first evening just doing drawings. The serpents were the hardest to replicate, but I'm glad I invested in a copy of Knight Flags when it came out several years ago. Those huge (roughly tabloid sized) volumes from the Characters series are excellent for detail and color reference.

I wasted a bunch of time imagining that I could save time and effort photoshopping and/or illustratoring the images and then getting vinyl stickers printed. I guess it was a learning experience, but the main thing I learned was that I'm better with analog art supplies than with digital ones. So airbrushing the designs was going to be the way for sure.

But how to mask for such complicated designs???

After searching around town for airbrushing frisket film, and then I lucked into finding this stuff:

I have to say that I am exquisitely pleased with how it works (it could be a little cheaper, but oh well). I don't know if it would be as fantastic for smaller projects, but for this it was amazing.

I did the AKD cross first, and after a number of false starts (do not try to cut out a design and then apply the cut film to your surface, you must apply the film first and then cut and peel the areas that will take the paint) I finally traced the shape onto the film with an opaque paint pen (Sharpie wouldn't stick to the film well and the transparency of the ink made it impossible to see the cutting lines), applied the film and then cut out the design. I'm glad I used a simple design to start with, it lowered my level of frustration considerably to make mistakes that each took a relatively small amount of time.

I sprayed a layer of Testors base white lacquer so the cross would pop nicely. Then I mixed up a custom color from Testors Gloss clear coat, Pearl-Ex Super Russet pearl powder, and a drop of Mr Color red and sprayed that over the white. I think I went a little heavier with it than I needed to, but after letting it cure for an hour or so I cut around the design so that the edges of the paint wouldn't tear and flake, lifted the making film, and gave it a final gloss clear coat.

Good enough.

On to the snakes.

With this design I discovered something amazing about this masking film: it sticks firmly onto inkjet printer paper so that one can very readily trace any printed lines, and then the film lifts cleanly off the paper without peeling shards of paper up and with full retention of its ability to adhere to the glossy surface of the bike frame.

This process yielded the following result:

Then I carefully cut inside the traced lines with a sharp hobby knife and peeled up the areas that needed to take the paint. I went much lighter with the paint this time around, mainly because I didn't want to have to cut around the design before lifting the film. The mix was simply gloss clear lacquer and Pearl-Ex antique gold ( I accidentally lied about the paint in the VO narration) sprayed at low pressure - around 10 PSI I think.

Here are two videos showing the result:

And a few images:

I'll try to get the wings on ASAP.

Modifying the Claws on a 1/144 Mobile Kapool

2008-02-17T12:49:00.001-05:00

Smoothing Seams and Priming the D-Sserd

2008-01-18T21:57:00.000-05:00

Pretty much self-explanatory thanks to the voice overs:

Some still images of it at this stage here.

Molding and Casting the Santa Claus Ornament

2008-01-13T17:42:00.000-05:00

I managed to get my ornament resin cast and it made for a gift that was very well received.

Here's me smoothing the clay that fills the space between the original piece and the mold box that I built of Lego Blocks. With the clay smoothed out, the negative space in the box will be filled with Room Temperature Vulcanizing mold-making rubber.

This one actually has voice over narration that will explain the mold box a bit.

This is an absurdly long video of me applying mold release to the piece itself and the clay and the blocks around around it. I give it to you in the hope that it will impress upon you the importance of doing this both when you are creating your mold and when you are casting copies of the piece. If your copies, or worse yet your original gets locked into the mold then you will be very sad.

DO NOT DO what you are about to see in the next two videos. I Chopped up some old tin-catalyzed RTV to use as filler in the first mold, but then I discovered that the unmixed tin-catalyzed RTV had passed its expiration date and turned into nasty chewing gum-textured stuff. So I grabbed a bottle of Platinum-catalyzed RTV imagining that I could combine the two in a single mold. They DO NOT COMBINE well at all. So learn from my mistake and don't ever combine them.

The Mistake:

The Result of the Mistake:

Luckily I had enough of the pink stuff to make two more copies of the mold that actually hardened properly. So now here's me pouring the resin - which is a two part mix that fully hardens within about 20 minute - about into the molds.

The Resin itself is Insta Cast White.

It doesn't have the same look and feel that professionally made garage kit resin has, but it worked out great for my purposes, and it was pretty inexpensive.

I really like doing ornaments like this for xmas presents because even though it probably takes about the same amount of time as shopping would take, it's more personal, I'm participating less (or differently) in consumer culture, and it ends up costing me less money.

I'd recommend trying it if you like this sort of thing.

D-Sserd build begins

2008-01-05T10:17:00.000-05:00

I'm getting a group L-Gaim build together over at the best modelers community online.

This is my entry: an old Bandai 1/144 D-Sserd.

Here are the first parts I've put together:

Here's a video of those same parts:

And here's a noisy video of me priming the arm with Mr. Surfacer 1000:

And here's a shot of the first three parts all primed:

santa claus is on his way

2007-12-19T11:22:00.000-05:00

OK, so this is SO not anything to do with mecha, but it is a sculpture project I'm working on right now. So I'm posting an image here, if only to let anyone who actually reads this blog know that I am working on SOMETHING.

And furthermore, I will be cleaning this up then making a few molds and casting copies of this over the next few days. So that'll give you a chance to walk through a simple moldmaking and casting process. I'll shoot some video so you can see the finer points of RTV and resin mixing and pouring in a flat one-sided mold.

New Custom Vinyl

2007-12-04T12:00:00.000-05:00

Last Friday there was a custom toy show at my local comic shop, the Vault of Midnight

Here are a couple of pics of my contribution:

More Painting on the Tachikoma

2007-11-04T11:23:00.000-05:00

Doing some texturing on the body of the Tachikoma with Mr. Surfacer 500.

And putting some color onto the "eyes" or "sensors" or whatever complicated technical name I'm sure Shirow made up for them. For details on the paints used for the finish (which looks even more interesting in person) watch the video below.

Some Primering

2007-11-03T20:35:00.000-05:00

I sprayed some Mr. Surfacer 1000 on some parts of the Tachikoma and now it looks a little something like this:

Real Face Junchoon: Jack-o-Lantern

2007-10-31T20:40:00.000-05:00

And video:

I'm Back!

2007-10-04T21:47:00.000-05:00

There's nothing like a little severe personal crisis to come between a man and his hobby. Been close to 3 months now.

Well, the Helmine feels a bit overwhelming at the moment - both technically and financially speaking. But I still have a closet shelf full of lovely kits.

Here's the intro to a simple one I started work on this week.

I'm hoping I can sandwich some priming in between various other exciting activities this weekend.

Volks 1/100 Helmine

2007-07-13T07:54:00.000-05:00

I got this kit from Yahoo Japan Auctions by way of the proxy bidding and "deputy" service website Shopping Mall Japan in the neighboring state of Indiana. Including all the service and shipping fees it cost just over $250.

This is the front page of the typically bare-bones instruction sheet.

And here's a picture of all its 47 parts laid out in the classic resin kit part layout "pose."

I'm not entirely sure whether or not this kit was worth all the money I paid, but I do like the design which is a kind of Five Star Stories "cousin" to the Gundam known as Qubeley.

Since the kit is about 20 years old, it is a pretty bad cast. Lots of pinholes or bubbles that were trapped and hardened into the plastic resin. Some mold misalignment causing damage to details or the design of the original sculpt. Some bigger bubbles that just completely wiped out details.

Those who know me, however, will know that I (perhaps perversely) enjoy repairing and resculpting parts on bad kits to make them better. This is what I will be doing in this case, and now I will take it a step further and re-cast the kit when the parts are up to standards that should improve considerably upon the original. I don't feel like I'm stepping on anyone's marketplace toes with this. The kit is really old, as I said, and very few people even know that it exists at all.

I'm well into the repair process already and I want to share some of it with you.

First up is a youtube video of before and after work on the big shoulder armors:

Next are before and after pics of repair I did to the point of the helmet's horn which was lost in the casting process:

Here is a video of the process for the resculpt.

[Edit] BTW I just found out that I've been mispronouncing the name "Helmine." It is German (duh to self) and short for Wilhelmine so it should be pronounced as "hell-mee-nuh". It means "the resolute protector" which I think is nice.

ACen Kit Building with Kids

2007-07-07T19:49:00.000-05:00

Put this off for too long ...

The model building for kids thing I did at Anime Central went really great. The kids all loved it and we had a great time together. Thanks HLJ!

Here's a few pics.

The staff at the con said my presentation had the biggest turnout of anything they'd done for the kids but even so the turnout wasn't huge, so I had about a dozen kits left and I'll be doing it again next year with the leftover kits (now safely in storage).

Finally figured out the foot detail casting!

2007-06-04T05:30:00.000-05:00

After my first attempt went awry thanks mainly to resin that was well-past its expiration date, I decided to make a new mold with RTV.

Here's the mold box getting started. I've just roughly lumped in the Kleen Clay to hold the part in position so that it is level in the box, and has enough space on all sides to make a good solid mold. I've tried to estimate a good volume of clay so that as I smooth it out the level will rise nicely to just below the edges of the part.

Using this set of tools:

from here (click on the "set of 12" thumbnail, it's the better set but has no direct link), I smoothed out the clay and worked it up snug against the edges of the part and the walls of the box. The RTV (Room Temperature Vulcanizing) rubber will work its way into the smallest spaces so a good seal is necessary. After that I built up the walls of the box with another row of bricks and laid in a thin snake of clay around the walls to raise the level a little more there.

Then I added one more layer of Legos so the RTV has enough space.

Here's the demolded RTV. I didn't use any mold release, which was fine in this case. I was nervous tho' because I did that by accident, not on purpose.

For the casting, I decided to use Bondo auto body repair filler. I was inspired to do this by a Brazilian figure sculptor on Hobbyfanatics named Ryuji who uses this stuff all the time. It's way cheaper than urethane or epoxy resins and the supply is much handier at the auto supply store (casting resin is a bit hard to find, even on the internet). I did spray mold release before spreading the Bondo into the mold.

The first one I did wasn't even worth showing because the working time on this Bondo stuff is only about a minute, which came as a big surprise and ruined the first attempt. This is the second attempt:

There are too many defects in this part to make it worth using on the final product, so I tried a few more times.

Here's what I came up with. The second and fourth ones are fine.

Now I just have to trim it up and smooth out the flat backside so I can fix it onto the flat foot and the prime and paint.

Wish me luck!

Vatshu Ankle Joint Modifications

2007-05-30T20:51:00.000-05:00

I'll break it down for you. First I carved out some of the plastic that was there to hold the original stupid poly cap:

Until the new socket PC fit nicely, but loosely at the level where I wanted it:

Then I laid down a little "pad" of Magic Sculp epoxy putty for the new PC to press into:

And after the PC was mounted at the right depth and angle, I filled in the surrounding area with more Magic Sculp using clay sculpting tools to press and work it smoothly into place:

These are the "ankle bones" that connect the top of the foot to the bottom of the leg:

So now the ankles will be essentially double jointed.

Look at these videos for a more well-rounded view of all the action (ignore the sound, please):

Once again the main idea here is that test fitting is of the utmost importance in Garage Kit building. Even more so if you want to do modifications.

Vatshu footage

2007-05-28T11:23:00.000-05:00

Those who have been with me for a while will remember this:

Well, after much deliberation and a failed attempt or two, I think I've figured out
how to succeed.

I'm making a mold of the bottom of the foot from my 1/144 KOG Patraqushie starting with this stuff:

and bulding up about 8 layers.

I used a blowdryer to get the layers built up quickly, then through a supreme effort of will I let it cure overnight.

Now take a look at the results:

The latex took the detail pretty nicely:

Come back later for the resin casting experience.

2 mods on Vatshu

2007-05-18T07:10:00.000-05:00

hip joint are now ball joints instead of floppy side-pinned tubes.

and I filled in a significant portion of the gaping holes at the sides of the chest.

SD Gunner Zaku Lunamaria Hawke custom

2007-05-06T13:19:00.000-05:00

I built this little guy last night to get ready for an intro to model building presentation I'm running with for a roomful of kids at Anime Central in Chicago next weekend.

I shot video of every part of every step of the assembly process so the kids can see first hand how it's done and then do it for themselves.

I feel like I really had a breakthrough in terms of using the camera as my eyes. I stood behind the camera with my magnifying visor on so that that little camera LCD monitor didn't seem quite so small.

It still eliminated the main cues (you know, 3D binocular vision) I use for depth perception, though, and that's always been the hardest part for me about shooting close up modeling vids. I always feel like my hands are just swimming around in space and I constantly want to peek over or around the camera to be able to see what I'm doing "with my own eyes" as it were.

I worked really hard to get the lighting decent and I think that helped alot, as did the magnifying visor. Here are two of the videos from late in the process:

Final Stage of building the BFG:

and mounting the BFG onto the Zaku:

More on Vatshu

2007-05-05T08:02:00.000-05:00

I got the shoulder armor cleanup done.

First the inside of that piece from the last post:

And around the edges:

I got the final priming and sanding done on the smaller inner layer of shoulder armor too. I feel like I'm finally getting a handle on this whole elimination of seams thing.

Here's an animated gif of those inner armors:

I don't know if the gif will work, so here are the individual images:

Vatshu cleanup

2007-05-03T12:32:00.000-05:00

Working on the shoulder armors.

I realized that the insides of these big panels were hugely exposed and needed smoothing out. Lucky for me I hadn't glued them together yet (hooray for test fitting). Here's what I'm talking about:

If you look inside there you can see little circles, pointed out on the right side in this pic (you might need to angle your monitor down to see it):

The arrow on the left is pointing out a rough edge I'll need to polish too.

On this pic you can see what this part looks like before and after smoothing out:

and here's a little movie, with actual narration no less, that shows you how to quickly and relatively painlessly clean up parts that show their "wrong" sides like this and other shoulder armors so often do:

Even if I was doing "no-paint" this would look good now. But I'm painting this time around, so stay tuned :)

From the ridiculous comes the sublime

2007-04-26T12:32:00.000-05:00

I want to take a break from doing difficult and complicated kits.

On Hobbyfanatics some of us have been having a back-and-forth about metallic gold finishes on our kits, and it got me itching to try my hand at doing a pristine airbushed gold finish on a kit.

So I remembered this ancient kit I picked up at a con last year. I practically fell over on the tiled concrete floor when I saw this thing in one of the little exhibitor stalls. It's KING JOE from Ultra Seven!

It's clearly Chinese in origin, but it does have a foil sticker showing the Tsuburaya seal of licensing approval. I'm guessing it's between 20 and 30 years old. It only has 10 parts, a couple of which don't even appear on the instruction sheet, so I'll have to figure that one out.

It also has this:

Yes, it's a windup toy!

I'll be posting again soon with a video of the test-fit stage in walking (staggering?) action.

Hyakushiki is done

2007-04-20T16:26:00.000-05:00

ACen presentation

2007-04-16T12:17:00.000-05:00

Check out the link here for more info about my panel at Anime Central next month.

Hyaku Shiki!

2007-04-10T13:52:00.000-05:00

No decals/stickers yet. I put those on last night and need to make a few final adjustments. Final pictures soon.

One legged (I was detailing the other leg).

Detailing on the KOG

2007-04-01T20:23:00.000-05:00

Here's a few pictures of some detailing I did on my KOG Joker 3100 Gold Plated Edition last night. I tried to do this with an acrylic wash over a layer of gloss coat. Lucky I tried that on just a small section of the top of the head, because cleaning up the wash with an alcohol swab nearly had disastrous results in that it started ripping chunks of the clear orange acrylic off from on top of the chrome plate.

I was lucky enough to be able to grab an extra fine point black Gundam marker at a hobby shop yesterday and that did the trick.

Have other people had trouble keeping these markers flowing properly? I had to keep a note card next to me to blot the pen tip regularly.

Really good article

2007-03-26T11:13:00.000-05:00

Here is a great article I found while I was researching for background to add to my upcoming model building presentations at the Anime Central convention this coming May in Chicago.

Let me know what you think of it in the comments section.

Vatshu marches on

2007-03-25T12:21:00.000-05:00

Here's a few more illustrations of the Vatshu project

Adding the inner shoulder joint.

This is the rather large gap between the parts caused by inserting the poly cap (notice that the parts are also misaligned, again because of the poly cap):

This is the two halves split apart and the dremel bit I used to open up the poly cap bracket just a bit (taking care to do so in such that the parts will align better too):

Then the halves fit much better, but now there's a problem in that this sub-assembly fits too tightly onto the top of the upper arm. This hole needs to be a nice clean circular one, not a ragged oval:

So here's a little clip of me rolling up a tiny snippet of sand paper to reshape the hole:

Inserting the tube into the hole to smooth it out:

At last, done with all the test-fitting and touch-ups:

So I can glue stuff together:

KOG Joker 3100 lower body

2007-03-25T12:14:00.000-05:00

Just a very brief clip showing the waist/legs/feet of this IP kit.

why weight?

2007-03-20T12:18:00.000-05:00

Vatshu leg early test fit

2007-03-20T12:16:00.000-05:00

Saving Squidward

2007-03-20T09:01:00.000-05:00

I used the resin kit pinning technique to fix a piece from one of my son's board games. In the video I mention a "pin vise" which is a very small hand held drill for precisely drilling tiny holes in stuff. An essential tool for installing short lengths of brass rod into the weight-bearing joints of resin kits.

here's a pic of the pinned together legs of a G-System enhanced recast Schpeltor resin kit, sorry its a bit fuzzy - old pic / old camera. The blue stuff around the ankle-armor is blue-tack

Skirt armor on the Vatshu

2007-03-07T15:27:00.000-05:00

The front plates of skirt armor

A closer view of the detailed edge of those same plates (one is raw off the sprue)

The rounded armor for the sides of the skirt

Very small springs hold the skirting onto the waist unit (at least they will eventually)

More work on Vatshu

2007-03-03T18:20:00.000-05:00

Working on one of the arms...

This is the wrist guard/armor, there are two of them since the mech has two arms that are just alike. On the left is one of them fresh off the sprue, on the right is after I cleaned it up and reshaped it a little with a needle file:

The "before" piece is one the right this time:

The underside, "before" on the left:

From the side, "before" on the left:

And here's the part test-fitted onto the arm:

Weighting the foot of the Type 100

2007-02-23T16:32:00.000-05:00

Ignore the audio in the videos.

Taking the test fitted foot apart to find places to pour in the #12 lead bird shot:

One of the core foot pieces, before and after chopping and grinding out the "snap together" pins (all the before and after shots read right to left):

The other core foot piece, again before and after removal of "snap together elements."

The base plate of the heel of the foot, before and after:

The upper plate of the heel, before and after:

The toe, upper plate, before and after:

The toe bottom plate, before and after:

I also trimmed down these tabs that fit into slots on the upper plate of the toe assembly to make room for just alittle more lead shot. Before:

...and after:

Here's how the part above looks in a before and after test fit, before:

...and after:

Here's the paint dropper that I use to pour the lead shot. I clipped the tip so the opening is larger than a regular paint pipette. It's standing in a tape roll so it won't empty tiny balls of lead onto my work table.

Here's me pouring the lead shot into the prepared foot part:

Here are the two base foot parts filled with lead and with their various holes sealed up with epoxy putty:

Another view:

The core of the foot, also filled and puttied:

I love a nice bead of glue on a seam line. This will clean up nicely:

The final piece:

Too bad you can't "see" how heavy it is now :)

Amazing knife

2007-02-21T18:00:00.000-05:00

If you don't have one of these, you probably should get one. This is a fantastic knife for seam scraping and detailing work of all kinds - on kits or scratchbuilds.

They sell them here.

Please let someone make a gift of this to me

2007-02-16T13:37:00.001-05:00

Okay so I'm really getting down on my knees here.

I don't want to turn this blog into an Amazon wish list, but by all that is holy this looks like an amazing kit!

For those unwilling to click the link I'm reprinting HLJ's pics below:

For one who has long wished for a Ban Dai Master Grade-style Five Star Stories kit, this is the closest that dream will probably ever get to coming true.

The old saying that the way to a man's heart is through his stomach is true enough, but an awesome toy-for-grown-ups will get my heart pounding too.

Ban Dai wants you to scratch build

2007-02-16T11:15:00.000-05:00

Well, maybe not, but they sure seem to be pretty hot to give us plenty of extra poly caps with their kits.

It's clear that they have a number of standard sets of poly caps that they put with all their kits. You will almost never use every one off the rack that is included with whatever kit you bought.

DO NOT THROW THESE OUT!

If you feel the urge to throw them out, send them to me instead. Just put them in an envelope with a couple stamps on it.

The 10 year old Vatshu IP kit I'm working on right now has the worst joint design I've ever seen. The knees are pretty nice, but that's about it.

Mecha joints should imitate human joints, because human joints (and those of other fellow vertebrate animals) are awesome. This means BALL JOINTS for hips and shoulders, and also - for simplicity's sake - for wrists and ankles.

This Vatshu kit just uses different sizes of side-pinned tubes, and they don't even fit well in most of the locations sculpted for them (except in the lovely knees, we all know side-pinned tubes make nice tight knee joints).

Thank heavens I save left over polycaps.

I found two lovely pairs of tabbed cup polycaps that I'll be using for the hips and ankles on this kit with a little puttying work, much of which I would have had to do anyway just to get the bad caps to stop flopping around.

Still mulling over the best way to sculpt the balls to fit into the cups, but I've done this before so I just have to figure out if the way I did it before was the best way or if there might be something easier. I'm not always so great at coming up with solutions that are both functional AND simple.

A little discouraged

2007-02-15T18:53:00.000-05:00

I worked for hours today detailing one of the feet on that Vatshu kit.

The two rear stabilizer things came out good - very pleased with them.

Not so pleased with the main body of the foot. I didn't have a coherent plan to start with, but luckily I engraved all the stuff into a double coating of Mr. Surfacer 100.

I was bummed out by the prospect of sanding it back down and re-doing it, but then I had an epiphany, thanks in part to this image that lodged in my mind after I saw it this morning. I realized that I can take an impression in clay of the foot sole and then sculpt out a negative to cast and attach to the bottom of both feet. This way I can make something really cool and complicated without having to worry about trying to duplicate it on the second foot.

I'll let you know how this goes...

New Display Case

2007-02-15T09:15:00.000-05:00

I ran out to IKEA last Friday night (an hour before closing time is the best time to hit that madhouse) and bought 3 new display cases. Got two built. Put recessed lighting into this one with the help of a 2.5 inch hole saw. I love hole saws. There's something so satisfying about using a good hole saw. I put my old MG Qubeley for Ple-two, my new KOG Joker 3100, and a fresh raw yellow MG Hyaku Shiki in it to check it out. Me like.

Sound provided by my goofy son Chris.

Vatshu The Black Knight

2007-02-14T17:00:00.000-05:00

Several years back there was a Cantonese noodle shop on one of the main streets here in town. Wong Faye played on the sound system and in the front of the restaurant crammed into a tiny space - the way they do it in the micro-malls in Manhattan's Chinatown - was a little import toy "shop" with only enough room in it for the owner to sit and watch HK action movies on a tiny monitor. I used to love checking out the windows for the latest MG Gundams, mini figure sets and bootleg DVDs.

This was the spot where I bought my first garage kit, though I didn't know it was a garage kit at the time. Back then I thought all models were like the Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica ones I had sat in the basement building as a kid. Those kits, I'm guessing now in hindsight, were made in factories that churned out huge quantities for a low-priced children's market.

Garage kits are not like this.

I just recently learned that one of the bigger garage kit workshops in Japan has a grand total of 15 employees.

Ban Dai - the maker of all those Gundam kits - employs hundreds.

Anyway, that first kit was a Volks GGI/MM (Great Garage Injection/Mechanical Moving) EVA-01 kit that was, as I later found out, infamously difficult to build. Leave it to me to make my return to my childhood hobby with something this tough.

It took me about six months of pretty hard effort to build it (and this was back before I became a father and had much more free time for building). Admittedly I did some crazy, time consuming stuff like freezing the foot and leg parts into blocks of ice so that I could fill the hollows with smelted lead solder without deforming the plastic (I've since discovered lead bird shot, most recently of the #12 variety.Get yourself a lifetime supply for about $35.

Well, that brings me to this kit that I've just started building: a WAVE kit from 1997 that I bought at a good discount from that little shop-in-a-restaurant when it was going out of business. I got some nice little L-Gaim kits there too for less than what dirt costs.

A real blast from the past - this kit really shows its age, especially compared to the mostly very nice and straightforward gold-plated Knight of Gold Joker 3100 kit I built last month.

On with the show...

If I don't feel bound to follow the instruction manual (like I do when I build MG Gundams, which remind me of higher-priced Lego kits in their shared complexity and the disasters that can result if you"skip ahead" ) then I like to start from the ground up. So here's the first look at the feet:

A big part of garage kit work is figuring out what to do with the parts. The instruction book is perfectly serviceable, but it leaves out all the details required to turn out an end product that doesn't look like trash:

Another thing I noticed:

These 4-sided manicure kit nail-file blocks from the cosmetics aisle are stupid fresh:

And with the right tools it doesn't take much to make a big difference:

And on the subject of tools, the Dremel will now make its first appearance:

And now that the parts have been satsfactorily prepared I can fill the hollows of the foot with lead shot:

And seal it in place with cyanoacrylate glue:

After the glue set up, which wasn't long, I glued the 3 main foot pieces together with solvent glue.

I think this one is going to turn out nicely.

Come back soon for another set of videos.

Something I was working on a while ago...

2007-02-09T16:09:00.000-05:00

About a year and a half ago I got really into the idea of trying to become a hardcore scratch-builder. I found a (relatively) simple Mamoru Nagano design from Schell Bullet:

I bought all kinds of polymer clay and moldmaking/casting materials and set to work designing a piece that I hope will ultimately work as a kit that I can cast for others to enjoy as well..

Here are some images of work I accomplished on the torso, arms, and hands.

Here's the torso in the mold box. The mold itself is the blue stuff which is then sandwiched with snug, but not tight, rubber bands between two pieces of scrap wood so that it holds its original shape and does not leak resin around the edges of the cast piece (such leaks, when they harden, turn into "flash" that must be trimmed from the part):

Demolding the torso. You can see the long pouring tube with a sort-of funnel shape at the top and the short vent tube at the opposite end of the part. It is better to fill molds from the botom up this way because it helps the air bubbles rise out of the resin so that they don't end up as pin-holes in your part:

This is the torso smoothed out with considerable filing work. This was my first-ever attempt at casting a part and I just decided to do it rough so I wouldn't be disappointed if it turned out badly. Even after smoothing the core piece, I still have to do a great deal of puttying work to sculpt out the final version. Then I'll have to cast that again:

The sculpted left forearm. Using white sculpey clay I worked the basic shape and baked it hard, then I tooled some details into the surface of the part. Now it needs to be molded and cast in resin:

The sculpted left arm-shield. Same technique as the forearm above:

I posed the hands from a Ban Dai MG Qubeley kit and sealed them with jeweler's wax (the brown stuff) If I hadn't sealed them they would have gotten locked into the RTV mold rubber, which has an amazing facility for flowing into the tiniest crevices. Then I could recast them. The blue suff the hands are emdedded in is oil-based non-drying clay. The fleshy-colored stuff is some PVC sprue cut from a Spriggan vinyl figure kit, used here to create the pouring tubes. You might also notice the frame of legos around the edges. Legos are great for building really solid mold boxes. They fit tightly together so that the mold rubber doesn't leak out and you can easily size them to fit whatever part you're casting.

Here's what the hands look like fresh out of the mold. You can see that I cut little vent tubes at the tip of each finger so that I could fill the mold from the bottom up again. Positioning your part correctly in its mold is very important so that it will fill smoothly and totally with resin:

After they've been trimmed up a bit:

This scratch building stuff sure eats up time, so this was as far as I've gotten, but it's really fun so I'm sure I'll get back to it eventually.

10 Pounds of Lead Shot Will Mash Your Packing Peanuts!

2007-02-09T16:01:00.000-05:00

(cross-posted from "pajkossy" (another blog of mine)

I bought this bag of #12 (believe me when I say, that's the tiniest pellet size you can get) lead bird shot. This stuff is definitely not to be used in the course of hunting for food - unless you like breaking your teeth on the way to getting lead poisoning. It's like very small Christmas cookie sprinkles, only made of shiny black metal.

Why did I search for hours on the internet for this stuff?

Only love or anime could make me do something so odd. To be more precise: building injection-molded plastic mecha (robot) models.

I still haven't gotten around to watching Zeta Gundam - the show from which the model I'm currently working on came, but this Hyaku Shiki (that's "type 100" in Japanese) has some DAMN heavy feet now.

Prior to filling them with the lead shot, which settes in very nicely thanks to it's small size, each foot weighed about 1/4 ounce.

I'll update later with their new weight, as well as the weight of the rest of the kit. For now I'll venture a guess that the feet will weigh almost as much the entire remaining structure.

Pix here when I finish it.

UPDATE:
Each foot now weighs about 1.25 oz, so together they weigh 2.5 oz. This is about how much the whole body from the hips up weighs. This should make the center of gravity low enough for more dynamic poses that an unweighted model could maintain.

Leg assembly and completed lower torso: Hyaku Shiki

2007-02-09T14:55:00.000-05:00

I finished the body assembly on my Master Grade Hyaku Shiki yesterday, here's a little peek at it:

I know that it is yellow, not gold. I wanted to build this without painting it to create a how-to for those kit builders who don't or maybe can't deal with the painting side of the hobby.

I imagine I will paint this by and by, but for now I like the way it looks "in the raw."

One difference between hardcore Gundam builders and hardcore FSS builders is that the former get into shading with the beloved "Max Technique" and weathering and bashing and dioramas, while the latter dwell obsessively on stuff like resculpted shoulder insignia bas-relief paintings and other "cosmetically beautifying" efforts. Gundams are all about the narrative while Mortar Headds are about sculptural beauty.

Guess which side of the coin I fall on...