IPMS OC OrangeCon 2017 and starting a new resin figure project!

This past weekend was the annual IPMS Orange County’s Region 8 Contest: OrangeCon. This is always a great contest to attend. More so now to spread the word that is Gunpla. While setting up, an older gentleman looked over at me and exclaimed, “Hey, you’re one of Those Gundam Guys!” This always makes me chuckle. He then proceeded to tell me that he had met me a few years back at a previous OrangeCon with a friend of his that I had known from a previous IPMS Nationals in 2007. The guy was from Arizona and was inspired by our talk about gunpla and brought his own custom made Zaku; pictured below. Apologies for the dark pictures. SciFi is the redheaded stepchild of model competitions, so we’re usually in some dark corner out of the best lit areas!

He said that he was having a blast building gunpla and was building more. He ended up winning 1st place in the Sci/Fi Mech/Gundam category – that got split into SciFi Gundam and Scifi Non Gundam. But more on that later. I chatted with him for a while and told him about our show, but he’s unable to come because he lives in Tucson. Blah, people from all over the country are flying/driving in for SCGMC. But that’s another story. Fellow TGG members Brandon and Jonathan came and entered their kits. They got 2nd and 3rd in the SciFi Gundam category.

More about Orangecon after the jump.

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Sena Kashiwazaki: Getting her hair did and finishing up the project

This weekend was the build gathering and I actually finished this kit before the build gathering even started. This past couple of weeks, I have been dealing with the issues of the paint chipping on one of the chap parts. I had painted the chap piece along with the other parts and masked as I normally masked and the paint chipped when I started unmasking. I ran the part in a tub of lacquer thinner and placed this tub in the ultrasonic cleaner with water and ran it there; then painted and it chipped again. I then soaked the thing in more degreaser, ran it with the degreaser in the ultrasonic cleaner, and left it soak in the degreaser overnight. Then ran the part in isopropanol alcohol in the ultrasonic cleaner and dried the part. Upon close inspection, I found that the mold release was still on the surface of the kit, so those areas were rigorously sanded and the part re-cleaned in alcohol in the ultrasonic cleaner. Dried completely, then repainted and masked without any issues.

With that done,I finally got the rest of her finished and assembled. One of the major last parts was the hair. Once that was finished, I got to working on the details such as clear glosses, washes, the fingernails, and flat coats. The very last piece was her butterfly hair clip. And with that, she’s done!

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Sena Kashiwazaki: The Eyes

Sena progresses with the eye painting. I’m still pretty scared of this process and I’m still learning, but here are some things I found that have helped me. I start off with the face getting a coat of white base then painting the main skin tones before going on to working the eyes.

Below is the video of the whole eye drawing and painting process:

The written details about the process comes after the jump.

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