Model Building

This is a little bit of a catch up post for the multiple things happening in my life over the past few weeks. I finished casting the Gouf Custom Exceed head conversion kit and bust and those are on sale at the store here. If you are looking to get one, this is your chance. I will not be making any more casts as the molds are pretty worn now. The last couple of pulls had to be repeated to get a good cast out of them. More on that later. The picture above is my spoils from OrangeCon 2019. I entered 4 kits, a little Haro I started and finished the day before Orangecon (this past Friday), the Dom Barrage, the Death figure, and the RX-78-3 Gundam G3 Exceed head. The 3 gunpla projects were entered into the one gunpla category which got split, so I got a 3rd place for the Dom Barrage as the “Large” split and then got a 2nd place for the Gundam Exceed head for the “small” split. Yeah, the 1/35 scale exceed head is considered small. I didn’t even expect that to place which is very odd. But it’s cool, I got some awards and picked up a cool looking classic Lambo from the vendor’s room. Should be a quick build once I get done with other projects currently on my plate.

SCGMC is 4 weeks away! Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit! More after the jump. (more…)

Time for a little update on the Gouf Custom Exceed Head conversion kit progress. This has been a fairly productive month, most of the time has been spent making the mold and making casts for all the parts. But time to play some catch up. The last time I left off, I was still working getting the shape of the head correct, or to a point that I found acceptable. After the priming sessions to check for the correctness of the surface, I can get to scribing the final bits of detail for the side of the head. There is a definite order of operations here, since scribing before getting the shape right would just lead to rescribing details that are covered up by more putty used to shape the head. The first thing is to lay down some tamiya masking tape for curves. The tape is a little rubbery and considerably thicker than the standard yellow tamiya masking tape. This allows for the tape to curve and keep a continuous line along the surface. This is perfect for masking curved surfaces and just having curves. I’m not using this to mask, but as scribing tape to help guide some chisels. If I am careful with the chisels, I can scribe in a perfect line. For the purpose of scale, I used a .5mm to scribe in the lines. I started with a .3mm but found they were a little too thin for the scale. 3mm Mad Works carving tape is used as the scribing guides for the detail lines perpendicular to the line that runs along the lower half of the head. I liked using the Mad Works carving tape over dymo tape since it’s clear, which makes alignment very easy; and I can reuse the tape a couple of times in comparison to dymo which is only useful once then the stickiness is completely useless.

More updates and information about the pre-orders for the limited casting run of this project after the jump. (more…)