The Gratings...

I love walking on the gratings,
especially on the bridges,
crossing from one platform to another platform.

If you look down at your feet,
you can see straight down into the sea.


On lovely sunny days,
the sea water looks beautiful,
like glittering sapphire under the sun.

Heck, even during rough sea,
the water,
which would be churning waves slithering dangerously,
is still beautiful albeit threatening.

Back on Land...

This post was supposed to be posted on the day I demobilized from offshore platform. Due to family business and work, it is one week late.

All that I want to say is, it is nice to be back to the world where we have weekends and I do not need to wash my underwear with my hands anymore.

Nice…

Gundam Deathscythe Hell Custom…

Finally…

I have Gundam Deathscythe Hell Custom HG 1/100! Bought this model in KL during my one week holiday. The only one left in this one shop in Low Yatt.

Nice…

Never had I thought that I would be seeing that Gundam again.

Very rare indeed.

The only Gundam that I really like from the Gundam Wing line. Still, all in all, the Gundam Wing’s Gundam designs are still one of the best and unique. The best to me is Gundam Deathscythe Hell Custom! Other Deathscythe’s designs are not really that awesome. I am glad Gundam Deathscythe Hell Custom design did not turn out bad. If not, it would be a shame…

Anyway, I had started to build Gundam Deathscythe Hell Custom. Have not cut the parts off the runners yet. I mean, not all of them.

I usually like to do most of the panel lining and painting while the parts still stuck to the runner. Make it easier for me to do my work. Only if some area of the part is easier to be accessed by cutting it off, then I will do it.

So I had panel line some of the parts.

The horn was painted gold. Basically, that is pretty much it.

This is one of the Gundams that does not need too much paint and panel lining.

Lucky!

Hoping to be able to finish this one pretty quickly…

Good Bye Fullmetal Alchemist! Thank you!

At last, after being released for nearly 9 years, one of my favourite manga has come to an end.

First chapter came out in August 2001 and its final chapter 108 draws the curtain in June 2010.

I would not want to spill the whole story for you here… But I had always enjoyed the remarkable plot and storyline of Fullmetal Alchemist. The number of characters is not too overwhelming and quite distinct with their own unique character, adding more flavor to the manga. The characters support the plot well.

The best part of the story is the moral values instilled. The manga encourage studying and the main characters never stopped studying. They never give up when they could not understand something and persevere until the knowledge is in their grasp.

It has been a long journey and it is sad to see a good manga has come to the end. Still, the ending was a good one, putting the whole story into perfect balance. Anti climax marvelously done I will say.

I had enjoyed waiting for its new chapter’s release every month from the first day I read it in one of our local magazine. I do hope Hiromu Arakawa will make another good manga.

Perhaps, Fullmetal Alchemist’s new adventure?

Anyhow, thank you so much for the manga, Hiromu Arakawa! You are the greatest!
Fullmetal Alchemist should be one of the gems of the comic world!

Read the manga! It is really that good!

Trust me…

Picture taken from http://ning8poc.wordpress.com/

Spray cans...

One of the techniques of Gundam Modeling that I am trying to learn is spraying or using air brush.
I cannot afford air brush just yet, so my brothers and I settle for spray cans…

Now at my place here, a good spray can for plastic model is virtually impossible to find. Probably if I go into every shop here at my place, I could possibly find one…

Then again, that is a waste of time.

So we bought these spray cans and tried them on my military units…


Well, one for sure about color spraying, it does take heck lots of time. First I have to cover parts that I do not want to be sprayed. I used a normal masking tape for that. That is the most tedious part to do…

Then spray!

I learned that spraying directly made my models looked ugly…

Later I found out that you cannot spray directly but instead you swing it left and right, with the model between the two points you swing spray…

Hmmmm…

I do not have pictures to show you…

Maybe I will put it up later…

Anyway, that method produced better sprayed coating…


I was lazy to cover the design on the Military Units shields…

So as you can see, when I scrapped off the paint, other part of the paint peeled off as well. I have to cut around the part that I want to scrap the paint of to minimize this. Doesn’t really work that well…

Probably the paint then…

Also because I didn’t put the coating over the paint, it easily gets scratch off. The pictures below shows the paint was scrapped off. Probably I should have done like what my brother did. Make the spear staff thinner and then spray the colour on. It does work with his Military Units though…


After you spray the colour on, the surface gets slightly thicker…

The paint does not really stick well on the plastic surface so probably we still need to find a better spray paint…

I build Gundam here...

Here is where all of my Gundams were turned into beautiful Gundams! Just a small space where I can keep all the stuff I need and some space for me to work on my Gundams.

Shown in the pictures is the SD Gundam Military Unit that belongs to my brother. The three of us bought a Military set each. In each set, you have a Military Unit for the main three groups: The Dragon (Blue), The Phoenix (Red) and The Tiger (Orange).

One of my brothers chose Orange, the other chose Red and so I get the Blue units. The thing is, most of my SD Gundams are from the Phoenix…

Anyway, I can still use them as enemies for my SD Gundams dioramas.


Now to finish up my Military Units…

Around 80% are done. Maybe I can get to finish them this weekend…

I will let you know.

Gundam Bind 1/100? 1/144?

The SD Gundam Bind really makes me interested in SD RX 78-2. I now have the urge to do some customization so that I may have a bigger SD RX 78-2 Bind.

It will also be interesting to see RX 78-2 Bind. Whether it will be in scale 1/100 or 1/144, surely it will be awesome. We are talking about the real RX 78-2 not the SD RX 78-2. Some serious customization here…

First thing first, we need to replicate the arm for 1/100 or 1/144 scale. The left arm had to be redesigned for the real size.
Then next thing is to make the arm. I am very very new in this customization business. I will have to know what sort of material and the most important thing how to shape those materials into the left arm of the RX 78-2 Bind. That IS a challenge… Google time!

That also means that I have to sacrifice an RX 78-2 for this project. That shouldn’t be much of problem except that…
It is very hard to find a 1/144 RX 78-2 here at my place. The only model available is a 1/100 RX 78-2 which quite pricey… Still I can just grab an SD RX 78-2 instead.

Another challenge here...

I was thinking, if I can pull this project off, the real size RX 78-2 Bind will sure look awesome! I was thinking of lighting up those evil eyes on him. Creepy…

RX 78-2 Bind has two red eyes. There is one eye on his face and the other eye on his left arm’s face. Thus, I also need to replicate an RX 78-2 face and stick to the left arm. Or maybe if I can get hold of some extra RX 78-2 faces…

To wire up an LED inside these small heads should be a pain… but the effect will be tremendous. Now, we have to figure out how to fit everything inside the model. You would not want wires to stick out of your model don’t you?

Other than the left arm, everything else should be easy. Just need to spray RX 78-2 black. That is all. Probably some splashes of dark purple as shown in the illustration of SD Gundam RX 78-2 Bind from the link here…

The dark purple is at places where it is originally red such as the feet, the hip, the shield and the fore head.

A real challenge indeed and should be a good start into the world of Gundam model customization for me…