This past weekend was Pasadena Modelers Society’s annual contest Valley Con. A group of us from the build gatherings showed up and just ended up filling the table with gunpla. For which none of us won anything. There were quite a few very well done kits, but some of the things that won just boggled our minds a little. Oh well, what can you do when they lump all the science fiction into two categories: mechanical and creature. Odd that they’d add a category such as “Armored Trains” which had about 4 or 5 kits total, instead of better organizing the science fiction category. But for most of us sci-fi model builders, we’re used to being thrown into a corner and not having people give a rats ass about us. It’s even more niche and worse for the gundam modelers.

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Another busy weekend goes by. I was off on Friday so Art, Ed and I went back up to Bear Mt. From Saturday, we got some $10 off coupons for Sunday-Fridays and got to use them. The weather was nice and warm, and we got to the resort before the lifts started running. We had a great day and I ended up doing about 21 runs before calling it a day at 3 in the afternoon. Returning home on Friday, my HID conversion kit came in the mail so I spent roughly 20 minutes making the install to my car.

A few of us went and saw Alice in Wonderland on Saturday for which I felt was a better movie than the last Depp/Burton Wonka experience. Sunday was spent at ValleyCon trying win little plaques for model building. Unfortunately, my camera stopped working, I had put some batteries out of a brand new pack of batteries, and after testing my camera just now, apparently one or more of the batteries were bad. Oh well, lesson learned is to bring more batteries.

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The last bits of touch ups, minor details, and final gap filling for the hair was done these past two days. Pretty quick little kit, I can see the attraction to doing little busts like these. Quick fun build fix. Now I can relax and just have fun for the rest of my weekend which begins now. WEEEEEE.

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The past two days finished most of the major painting steps. Now I have a bunch of little touch ups, fixes, and some minor details to add to the kit and I can slap on the “finished” label. As of tonight, she looks like this:

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I had a fairly busy weekend; a few friends and I went skiing up at Bear Mt in Big Bear and I got a little bit of work on Cosette with some actual visual progression. The weather called for significant storm to hit Friday night into Saturday all week long, but we kept with our planned schedule to head up early Saturday morning to ski/board. I did most of my work on Cosette while recovering on Sunday; and if I keep my current progress pace, I should have her done by the end of this week for ValleyCon this coming Sunday.

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Work continues for Cosette. The first layer of primer was sprayed after the initial sanding session and putty works. If I continue at this pace, I may actually be able to finish this kit by the time Pasadena Modelers Society ValleyCon rolls around next week. The priming session has showed some rough spots. I’m now on the fence about how to approach the hair. As the figure is supposed to be a little grimy and down trodden, I’m not sure if I should clean up the hair. The initial spraying of primer has shown a decent amount of rough spots on the hair. I may apply some small spots of putty and smooth out some of the rough spots, but it may take away from the gritty look of the figure. I’ll take another look and make a decision, but for now, I focused on areas that need to be fixed.

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At the build gathering, I pinned three kits that I received. One of which is a Cosette bust kit sculpted by modeling circle Modeller T. The sculpt is inspired by Émile Bayard’s illustration for Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables which depicts a young Cosette sweeping. The kit was sold at the recent WonderFest Winter 2010. Being a rather big fan of Les Miserables, both the book and the musical, I picked up the book after watching the musical and enjoyed both very much; so when I saw this sculpt, I had to grab it. Inspiration to work on kits come at odd times, as for the past few months, the push to build anything was all but non existent.

The second thing I started working on is a commission repair job for a Mizuki Tachibana from Gravion figure. The hair has a chunk broken off one of the two hair pieces and there is a prominent paint chip on the other hair piece. This should be a quick fix, the only issue is color matching for the hair.

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