Weekend Update: January Model Build Gathering And Happy Chinese New Year!

Happy Chinese New Years! Welcome to the year of the Ox (cow, bull, Moooo – you get the idea…) This month’s build gathering was significantly larger than the previous. The holiday season is over, and people are getting back into the groove of things. We had a couple of new people as usual; and the house was filled. Due to the weather, I didn’t feel like firing up the grill, so we invaded the local “the Hat” with about 21 of us, there were a few folks that left and a few that stayed at the house to build. Getting tables was an interesting experience; as when we first arrived, the place was packed, so we agreed to bring the food back to the house. But while standing and waiting for our food, tables started freeing up, so we started sending people to hold tables. It was fairly successful at first, but then some folks would get up to get their food, there by leaving the table unattended for some other Hat patron to grab; while a few others didn’t fully realize that there were over twenty of us and gave up tables…. Well the debacle was fixed and we had a pretty decent time – I think we ended up taking up just 5 tables. On to the actual build gathering…

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Back in the water… hooray for SCUBA!

It has been almost a full year since I last dived Laguna Beach, or off the coast of California for that matter. So on Saturday, I had my first dive of the year. It feels damn good to be back in the water. The conditions from earlier in the week were amazing. The water was as still as a lake, and the visibility was about 30-35 feet. I hoped the the conditions kept up for my dive on Saturday. The conditions were fairly good. Not the 30 feet that had been posted earlier the week. The surf was kicking up a bit, so it was a little surgy but not bad. Visibility was very nice. Temperature on the surface was about 85 or so degrees. Not too bad for the middle of January. Temperature at the 25 feet was 56. I had a hole in my glove so my left hand was a little cold. Enjoying my first day back to diving, I decided to go again today, Sunday. Below are pictures taken from the top and from the water.

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Shin Musha Prog and Wood Grain Tutorial

Weekend update on the kit. I spent a little more time this weekend just pumping the sucker out. I still have a good amount of work on the sucker such as all the detail painting, panel line wash, decals, and finishing the weapons. Speaking of the weapons, I wanted to create a realistic wood grain effect on the weapons, the Naginata, Musket, and Jūmonji Yari. I made a few videos for the technique as well.

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MG ∞ Justice Commission part 6 and Shin Musha…

Back to work on the ∞ Justice, as the holidays were fairly busy for me hosting things and just dealing with typical holiday season fun. I guess if I wasn’t such a social douchbag, I could probably just lock myself in and do nothing but work on kits… but hell, I have a life. I’m not much of an atypical model building I guess. Anyways, now back to the daily grind. Below are a few pictures of the mold making process using silicon RTV. I need to make resin casts of the joints that broke on the kit.

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