Get Your Sprues Lined Up!

1/144 Turn X
I started this blog with the goal of sharing my methods of kit building. I've been engrossed with model kits since 2002 and over the years I have amassed for myself a sizable amount of unbuilt and unpainted kits. I realized that my main reasons for having this huge unfinished pile was because for me then this hobby has become both time consuming and expensive especially if you've been using branded hobby supplies like Tamiya Hobby Paints or the official modelling supplies from Bandai. Don't get me wrong, I've tried these products and I can say that they really do get the job done but the price, at least for me, became a huge barrier. Also, if you live in the Philippines, these supplies can only be bought at the very few hobby shops that we have and being a freelancer I have found it impractical for me to travel just to get my model kit supplies. Because of these reasons, and just because I'm a big cheapskate myself, I resolved to go about and work on my stash using the cheapest and fastest way that I know to build them.

1/144 Age 1 Normal
My main focus right now is finding alternatives to hobby supplies that are commonly used by model kit builders of both Gundam (Gunpla) and military models. Granted, it is hard to get award winning model kit builds with my methods. But I like to consider myself a casual modeler, I don't join competitions anymore, and when it all boils down to just having fun and messing around with your kits I think that the techniques that I employ are more than suffice.

So I've set rules for myself and here they are: 
  1. Model kit building needs to be fast, cheap and simple.
  2. Set up time should be kept to a minimum.
  3. The less exposure to toxic fumes (unavoidable, to be honest) the better
  4. Minimize dependency on hobby supplies bought from hobby shops, not because they are not good (because they really are!!!) but because it's hard to get them where I live
  5. Brand dependency should be kept to a minimum and if a brand is preferred, it should be one that is easily bought from the neighborhood hardware shop and the occasional trip to National Book Store (that ubiquitous all around school supplies store in the Philippines) or any common art supply stores.
1/144 Mobile Sumo
This blog will hopefully be a repository of what I have learned since I discovered my love for robots made from plastic that I have to build myself. It is the building part that is always the most fun and my aim is to share with you what I've learned from experimenting, reading other blogs and following model kit build logs and being just an all around cheapskate in my pursuit to make this hobby more affordable and in the end more enjoyable for the casual model kit builder. More importantly, I hope to learn from other modelers visiting this blog as well.

So cheers guys and hope the week turns out well. Enjoy your plastic and remember, this is just a hobby :)


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

MG Shenlong Gundam

Image
The MG Shenlong is my 3rd MG build and I am beginning to really appreciate this line of kits. I am primarily a 1/144 scale builder because I like how compact the kits are and somehow, at the back of my mind, whenever I am working on something that's taller than 8 inches, I feel like I am working on a toy.  Specifically a doll is what I see in my hands, instead of a model kit. The size just bugs me... it feels really really big. However, having painted the MG Strike Noir and the MG Deathschyte, I feel like the MG's are growing on me and for obvious reasons. For starters, I find them easier to build. Compared to HGs, they have very few seams to cover and since almost all the parts are molded in color I do not have need to mask as much as I need to do with HGs and older kits. I hate masking, I would rather hand-brush a large area than spend time cutting masking tape and aligning them. When I was younger it was fun, now I see as a waste ...
Read more

Mechanical Chain Base

Image
I got this mechanical chain base more than a year ago but only got around to painting it about the middle of the year. I love the idea of having a hangar for my 1/144s because it serves as a nice backdrop for a photo shoot and it somewhat fills in this craving of mine to make an actual diorama with my kits. I primed this with Bosny Primer Gray, it cost Php90.00  or around $2 here in the Philippines and it's been my primer of choice for more than 3 years and it works really really well with both hand-brushing and spray painting. I weathered this one using cheap artist's oil paints and added the panel lines using a Gundam marker. The decals I got from a Bandai Decal Sheet that a friend gave me. Weathering didn't make much time as I just aimed to add color variations and to just make the whole thing grimy. I love this small truck think, its very basic but adds a nice focal point to the base. And here it is with my 1/144 Gaia that I f...
Read more

Gunpla Tutorial: Surface Preparation and Taking Care of Seams and Nub Marks

Image
Here is the second part of my tutorial on how I build my Gunpla. Before we go any further, I'd like to apologize because I was not able to take as much photos as I needed to make what I wanted to show you guys as clear as possible. Noob mistake, I'll do better next time :) Here we see a sample of the snap fit for the kit. Before I go about finishing up the kit I make sure that I do a complete build first to determine the areas that I need to fix and the areas that will not be seen. I do not work on hidden areas because I think that's wasted time and effort and instead I concentrate on the surfaces that will be seen. You may notice from this build of the torso that there are a lot of nub marks. That's ok, we really do not need to be clean here, we just have to check if the kit builds well. (I forgot to take a photo of the whole kit, sorry!) Here's an example of a nub mark. After determining that this part will be exposed when I first made a full buil...
Read more