Gunpla by Xahki

Gunpla and other Plastic Stuff

[xahkigunpla]

Tifa Lockhart custom complete.  My first really intensive modification.  Made for a contest and something I've always been wanting to do, I used the Frame Arms Girl Materia as a base to make my Tifa Lockhart custom, my favorite female video game character.  A lot of work was put into it, and it still doesn't look completely right, but I'm glad I did it.  Because of the nature of the modifications, I learned a lot including scratch building using putty and styrene sheets and using random materials like cloth and rubber bands.  I don't think I'll ever revisit my mistakes at this point, but I'm still happy to have her now.

[xahkigunpla]

Slowly coming together.  Currently fixing a broken joint, but hopefully I’ll be painting soon.

[xahkigunpla]

Progress on the Tifa custom.  This was my first time using putty to sculpt new parts, but it was pretty funny.  Very messy though.  All the details of the sculpting done now, and next is to sand everything smooth and maybe try to clean up what I can at my skill level.  After that should come using styrene sheets to make her clothes.

[xahkigunpla]

My next project is gonna be super ambitious.  I finished writing down everything I’ll be needing to mod, and damn, this is gonna be a lot of first time experimentation.  I’m either gonna be really happy with how this comes out or disappointed beyond belief.

[xahkigunpla]

My first gunpla commission, and I actually really like how it came out. I'll probably make this level of weathering the standard for future builds now since I quite like it, but I'll be looking into how to properly weather neutral greys for next time. I'm ashamed of myself for breaking the chin piece during the final assembly, so I opted to add more weathering to the section to save the area a bit.

And just in case anyone out there is interested, I am open to gunpla commissions right now.  Message me if you’re interested and I can share you the rates I charged for this and for future possible commissions.

[xahkigunpla]

Stiletto/Stylet complete. First off, not sure on which name is proper, and second, I would recommend never to pose a FAG much after painting. After adequate curing time, priming, careful moving, there was a lot of scratching going on during the photoshoot since the kit is so tight even after sanding connecting pieces. Praise Bandai for not having this issue. Still, it was fun to paint a girl figure, and definitely learned I should take it easy on where and how much shading I do on skin.

I heard Stiletto has the worst parts separation of all the FAGs, and I believe it.  Either by design or laziness, a lot of the sections were just one part so a lot of masking was done to achieve pretty much all the color separation you see. Biggest offenders of paint chipping was getting the weapons in the hands.  The aftermath was so bad, the weapons are just fit into the hands forever.  Another was the gimmick with early FAGs where you could replicate the box art with a fixed unarmored leg and arm.  The balljoint got stuck in the regular leg from the paint and friction that I couldn't even replicate it.

[xahkigunpla]

Put the Stylet aside to work on this.  It’s the Universal Unit - Gundam Barbatos Lupus.  Most people probably never heard of Universal Unit, but it’s a candy toy model kit that has a surprising amount of detail and poseability.  I’ve included a comparison shot to show the scale compared to an MG and HG.

The main thing I got from this build was that I respect people who hand paint miniatures far more now.  Only the white was airbrushed and shaded while the rest were all handbrushed.  I quickly realized that masking off everything would be way too hard at this scale so after looking up how people do Warhammer 40k, decided to hand paint everything else since they may as well be all details.  I normally wouldn’t paint something this small, but as a present to my girlfriend, I wanted to go the extra mile.  There’s also a comparison shot between the finished and out of box look as the box of candy toys included an extra.

[xahkigunpla]

Probably the most degenerate thing I’ve built, so far, but as my first Kotobukiya kit, it’s pretty interesting.

I’ve been considering either doing 3 things for my next project: MG GP03 Stamen, a custom using an RG/HG kit, or a garage kit, with the latter two being completely new to me so it’d be a good learning experience.  While I was leaning more toward one of the latter two, it would require ordering new kits and the Stamen option had the benefit of clearing out a little of my backlog.  I ultimately decided to try out my first Frame Arms: Girl kit as I’ll reducing my existing backlog as well as working on skin tones for the first time in painting which should help a bit with a future GK.

The kit has really given me more respect for Bandai for every part of the build so far, but the final product looks pretty good.  I heard Stylet is the worst of the FA:Gs since her parts separation is the worst, but I liked her design the most and this’ll be good practice with masking.  I’ll go over the details of some of my opinions on the build in a WIP post.

[xahkigunpla]

Review:

Since I’m building in chronological order, I’ll be going through older kits first so standards will try to reflect that although I’ll still make some comparisons to more modern kits.

Colors:

OOB, the colors it is molded in is pretty wrong.  The sturm faust should be green, the blue should be blue and not this turquoise-green it comes in, and some greys are a bit wrong if you want to be picky with accuracy (e.g. shotgun should be a lighter grey).  It’s completely missing the white on the antenna and shoulder spike which must use stickers to cover.  The black “holes” on the shoulder and forearms are just molded in their respective grey and “blue” plastic and need to be filled in, or better yet, actually be holes if possible.

Articulation:

The legs can perform a 90 degree bend even with double jointed knees, but the ankle articulation is pretty bad as the way they did the ball joint is very restrictive.  This hampers a lot of spread legged poses.  While the claws on the feet can move down, since the foot is molded in one fixed pose, posing is also difficult because of it.  The waist can rotate nicely and there is no ab crunch.  The shoulder is connected by a ball joint in the shoulder to the socket of the torso.  There’s enough leeway in the design to move the arms a fair amount, but because there is no swinging mechanism in the torso, it’s still limited in that regard to modern kits.  The shoulder armor is attached to another ball joint to the arm itself so there’s some movement that can be made there too. The arms can bend almost 180 degrees with its double jointed elbows and curling arm position.  It’s flexible enough to pull off the tucked under the shoulder weapon holding position in most cases.  The head cannot look down due to its design, but can rotate left and right and look up by the neck joint’s placement.  The eye camera can also be rotated left and right and easily accessible without needing to take off the helmet.

Gimmicks/Weapons:

A huge plus with the kit is all the weapons it has, having 2 shotguns, each with a configuration for a stock or not, 2 bazookas, 2 sturm faust, 2 beam sabers, and its chain mine.The chain mine is pretty flexible, but only the last 6 mines have the latches and overall, each mine has no articulation to swing any out or in.  The shotguns have a nice swinging iron sight to each of them.  Due to the grips of each shotgun and old hands, however, its very difficult to have it hold them convincingly.  The cockpit hatch can open to reveal a tiny pilot inside.  The neck’s able to swing to make the head look up pretty well to replicate when its flying close to the ground. All the verniers are on ball joints and the two behind the legs can even extend out.

General Opinions:

The kit has an inner frame in its forearms, torso, and legs, but its thighs and upper arms are hollow.  Because of all this, its pretty light for its girth and is prone to tipping over if not planted firmly.  The curling forearm its molded with is pretty bad and makes you try to pose around it without looking weird.  I personally think being able to tilt the head down is a big deal and not having that sucks.  For its time, of the ones I’ve built, it’s definitely an improvement in a lot of areas though. Its proportions alone make it better to me than the bootleg third party version too.

Pros:

Tons of weapons, striking silhouette, decent articulation in upper body

Cons:

Articulation suffers with lower body, hands are awkward with shotguns, very light causing balancing issues, neck/head articulation could be better

TL;DR:

It’s ok for its time.  It could use a ver. 2.0 but is very serviceable as is.

[xahkigunpla]

My first refurbished kit. It was one of the first MGs I did getting back into the hobby and an experiment on topcoating, drybrushing, and weathering. I learned how to strip paint for this redo attempt.  Off the bat, there was some significant problems I had in the process.  For one, I actually lost a tiny thruster part while stripping the paint.  Fortunately, it was very minor and doesn't really show.   Secondly, because of its archaic design, I had to be creative with some masking and seam welding, mainly on the arms.  I had to modify the forearms so I could slide the armor over the gatling system so I could seam weld it properly, similarly with the biceps.  Because of that, there was a lot of accidental painting oopsies and once it became too much, I weathered the area to hide it a bit.  Some of the enamel washing stuck as well which caused a lot of shading/smudging I did not plan for.  But problems aside, on to everything else.

I'm really happy overall with my shading this time.  It's very subtle, but it's enough so you can tell.  It's also the first time I'm happy with the white I achieved and I'll be shading this same way for future kits to achieve the same effects.  My decal application got much better as well.  WIth that, and my as resistant to scratching painting method I used, I'd say this is my first "complete" kit and now everything here is all to user error now that I got the basics finally down. The armor looks pretty cool after putting it all together. The rest are a bunch of action shots, but due to the age and engineering of the kit, the range of motion is pretty bleh so I made due with what I could do.

[xahkigunpla]

I'm so titled that I lost the tiniest thruster piece during the washing process. Fortunately, it's in a very inconspicuous area and if I also exclude the paired piece, it probably won't look too bad. Got to live with it, I guess.

[xahkigunpla]

08th MS Team: The Shuddering Mountain

And here it is finally complete. 

Now, using MGs and trying to pay some respects to the anime, a lot of space is required for 4 suits and it admittedly looks very cramped.  I tried to make a scene that could make use of the limited articulation of the suits but still be believable.  At first, I planned just a straightforward good guys on one side, bad guy on the other, but there was a huge gap in the focus of the scene and a lot of bad angles.  Instead, I chose to go with one that focused on the rivalry of the Ez8 and Gouf Custom where the Ez8 is felled, but just as things look over, the tide is turned when backup arrives and allows a beam saber to be drawn in the confusion.  I hope, overall, the diorama looks decent, and I’m glad I could finish something like this.  I doubt I’ll do something to this scale with gunpla again, but I don’t regret doing it.

[xahkigunpla]

Man, really sorry about not keeping this updated.  I’ve actually been doing some work in the past few months, but it’s just been way more convenient posting on Instagram, especially with the WIPs.  I’ll try to post more often here though.  For a summary of the WIPs, this was my first non-gunpla plastic model kit, and damn, the quality sucks.  I hear it’s the same for all railroad buildings, but it’s outright criminal that the gates are gigantic, in horrible areas, and even the sides of the buildings aren’t the same height.  I’m glad I had throwaway nippers to use otherwise my good ones would’ve been destroyed.  Since it’s not snap together, it was my first time gluing everything together and it was pretty cool to see how reliable plastic cement is as something other than filling in seams like I’m used to.

A bit on the diorama I wanted to make, I wanted to convey a city battle scene with the 08th MS team and the rival suit Gouf Custom.  Now, using the MGs, the articulation and technologies of the kits are ancient so it was hard finding believable, and hopefully still cool, poses.  I wanted at least a building in there to be a proper diorama so I decided to get my first building kit.  The cardboard base I used is from leftover cardboard from a detolf box where the road is just painted black on the cardboard and styrene sheets were cut and glued on to be sidewalks and give off slightly different levels.  Now, I messed up hugely with both the background and building and have found I just like painting and building robots instead, but I’m thankful for the experience and have grown an appreciation for other crafts through it.

[xahkigunpla]

MG Gouf Custom complete!  I learned a lot with this as it is the first Zeon MG I’ve painted so I had to be a bit creative is painting some parts, mainly the power cable bits.  I admittedly was very sloppy overall with the weathering.  It was getting late and I was getting impatient, but I should’ve just used an extra day to work on it properly.  There’s also some silvering I didn’t notice that I also should go over before topcoating the next time.  Still, I’m overall happy with a lot of things.  I mainly like how the gatling came out and learning to shade on different colors other than white although it might look too subtle, but everything is shaded.  Next up will be a diorama background to plant all the 08th MS Team MGs in.

[xahkigunpla]

Next project snapped and test-fitted. I can already see how much a nightmare some masking and seam welding is gonna be.

[zahkey]

MG Gundam Ez8 and therefore the 08th MS team complete!

[zahkey]

Finished up my second (and third) attempt at the MG Ground Gundam. I massively fucked up especially with the gloss coat, decals (as a PSA, fix silvering as soon as you see it before it’s too late like with me), and possibly priming because there’s so much paint chipping. I think I put enough time though that I can call it done.  At least it doesn’t look so bad from afar.