This past weekend we had the April build gathering. The size of the group was fairly light, so I took the opportunity to utilize my newly designed workshop as well as try out the snazzy little panorama feature on my Galaxy Nexus. So I moved my workshop from the little room to one that is easily 3 or 4 times the size. I moved the futon and one of the couches from the living room into the space as well as a coffee table. This area will now serve as the studio for future video podcasts. We two gunpla podcast episodes as well as a quick 3+ minute long commercial for this year’s SCGMC event. Here are two pan shots of the new workshop.
In the past, I’ve done the quick video clips of techniques and had them posted on here, youtube, and over at ThoseGundamGuys. The videos were always rather raw as they were for the most part unedited and just short clips posted in flash at the beginning, then thrown onto youtube. I’ve also done several live panel presentations on the subject of gunpla building at various anime conventions and a few model shows. These were longer sessions of either one to two hours and afforded a different style to presenting the materials.
Since I’ve some free time of late; I started to explore the idea of using a video podcast to bridge the two ideas. I can still present learning materials, but in a long format style. This first episode is about 50 minutes in length. I go over a little bit of the basic building techniques and continue on to show a few modifications that I’ve been adding to my HGUC Dreissen project. Eventually, I plan on adding in a co-host and possibly doing a three camera shoot. I may also drop the length of the episodes to 30 minute chunks. But this all hinges on how well the first episode does and if I actually have an audience. It is an interesting learning curve for video production. Hopefully as I do this more, the process become much less tedious as I become more familiar with the editing software and learn more tricks and shortcuts.
The original video is made at 29 fps, 720 resolution and came out to a nice 11GB file. So the streaming version is considerably smaller and of lower quality. But for now, enjoy and please send me as much feedback as possible.
And for those that want to just download the file as opposed to streaming go here: Gunpla Podcast Episode 1
Last week was March’s build gathering, and since it was a week away from Kenken and Latte’s birthdays (March 24th), we also invited their breeder’s sister who owns Crumpet, Kenken and Latte’s sister. Oddly enough, she’s also a model builder that has been to AX and does some excellent work with resin kits. Crumpet is a bit antisocial so we were hoping that the large gathering of strangers and 5 other corgis will help break her out of her shell and shyness. She was fairly timid at first and rather unfriendly, but I think she started to get used to the dogs and started to play. And by the time they left, she was definitely more comfortable, so hopefully she’ll continue to visit during the build gatherings.
In other news, I’ve been doing a great deal of modifications to the HGUC Dreissen, which will be most of this post.
Back in Christmas time, I went to visit my Godparents and had dinner at their house. My Godmother had made some Gravlax which was amazing, and after talking with her a while, it seemed easy enough to make. A few weeks ago, I searched out a few recipes online and settled on a fairly simple one that called for Kosher salt, vanilla sugar, cracked peppercorns and some dill. I added chives and basil and then followed the rest of the recipe and it turned out fairly decent. So much so that when I gave about half of what I made to my parents, they finished it within a few days and asked me to make more. So here we are, a slight modification on the original recipe.
It has been a while since I worked on any gunpla, but about a week or so ago, I was hit with an some sudden inspiration and using some ideas that I’ve seen over the past year I started this project. If all things go as planned, this will be a 3 or 4 part project that will eventually come together. Dusting off a couple of boxes of HGUC kits, I start with the first kit, the HGUC Dreissen ver. Sleeves.
Before doing any sort of mod or anything, I just cut, sanded, and snapped the kit together to get a better idea of where I want to do modifications. Sanding and snapping takes about a day or so but with it put together, the real fun can begin.
The memorable points of this weekend was an evening back in Joshua Tree and a few hours of work on the giant Unicorn Gundam statue. So the recent addiction is trying out astrophotography, well as much as that’s even possible with my current setup. The weekend before this past one, Yuki and I drove up to Joshua Tree as a scouting mission to see about snapping some pictures of the dark sky. Funny thing is that the last time I was out in this area, I was riding along with MarkW as we ventured out to Jame Zee Doyle’s (aka JED from old model building RAAM/CoM sites) house to pick up some kits that he was no longer going to build. MarkW’s Sazabi original owner was JED.
While there was no moon to saturate the night sky with lighting, there was however lots of clouds that worked to reflect the lights from Palm Springs effectively. The goal to snap pictures of the night sky turned into just snapping pictures of the land, clouds, and my car in the calm desert night. The good thing is that I did get some more practice with nighttime photography. This weekend we were a little more successful.
For those of you that visit my site from within the United States, please take a moment to read through some of the information about the two bills that are going before congress. Wikipedia has gone dark for 24 hours to help spread awareness. XKCD, a webcomic I frequent has also posted a page with a good amount of information. Google also has a information page in regards to SOPA and PIPA. TheOatmeal.com also has a message, this is some serious shit.
Inch by inch, day by day, our freedoms to say what we want, what we feel have slowly eroded away. Please contact your representatives and have your voices heard.
