HGUC Sazabi Completed

After weeks of no progress, I had been waffling between making an elaborate base for the kit or just displaying it simply, I finally resulted in doing a simple base. The plans I had would have hidden the kit or taken away too much attention from all the work that I had put into the sucker. I still had issues with the decals. I have no idea what it is, but something is reacting with the decal/decal setting solution/alclad. The difference from other kits is that I’m using the alclad hot metal red, and I believe that the paint is a bit on the delicate side. Regardless, I had spent enough time redoing parts and running through too many sets of decals. So screw it, time to focus on other projects without having this stupid thing loom over my head.

At the end of the day, the sucker has 28 LEDs wired throughout the kit with the power supply and switch assembly inside the crotch area. The chest was reshaped. The shoulders expanded and some interior details were added. The fuel tanks were extended and some detail was added over the tanks. The arm thrusters were cast with LED to create the small light up thrusters. The waist cables was completely replaced with an internal structure wire, wrapped magnet wire spring, and metal collars that fit over everything. The mono eye was modified added a small metal collar as the eye and inserting a small green LED to light the mono eye. The bottom of the feet were drilled out to add in some thruster details as well as an LED. The leg thrusters and waist thrusters were modified to add in LEDs. The backpack thruster pack was modified to add in three LEDs.

I thoroughly enjoyed the build, but not so much the labor and amount of rework required for ultra glossy finishes.

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Weekend Update

This past weekend was April’s Model Build Gathering. Earlier in the week, we discovered a new gunpla centric store located in our own very backyard of Fullerton. A few of us did recon visits to the shop and during the gathering we sent a few raiding parties. Quite a bit of work was done on kits this gathering, we were all so focused and in tuned with building that we didn’t even have time to break out rockband.

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Those Gundam Guys

Those Gundam Guys is the official group name for the random collection of gunpla, mecha, and anime figure modelers that gather once a month in Southern California to build, laugh at one another, and sometimes drink copious amounts of alcohol all the while trying to sing and play rockband without failing. This group has been gathering since July 2007. When asked if we had a name to our “club” the usual response was a shrug, we were just a bunch of modelers that liked to build plastic robots, why make anything official. Almost like some creepy underground movement.

The idea for naming the group came about again last year when we were asked to sponsor a trophy for the 2010 IPMS OC OrangeCon event. Still we half-assed a name to use on the trophy placard. We spent all of 10 minutes trying to come up with stupid witty acronyms for our group, but still wasn’t able to find something good enough. And nothing stuck. Fast forward a few months later when the idea of naming the group had long vacated our memories; a group of us come up with the brilliant idea of hosting our own competition. Tired of griping and whining at the end of every model competition we attend where we’re just looked at and talked to as little more than glorified toy painters; it’s time we shut the hell up and just see if we could do something.

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