Monthly Archives: November 2011

Read more about the article All your base are belong to us

All your base are belong to us

Since the last update, the past several days has been spent focused on the base as the Jegan is completed. The process is fairly time consuming as each step takes about a day to fully dry and cure up, if I’m lucky. Depending on the humidity, temperature and thickness of the stuff applied to the surface; the celluclay (Papier-mâché) may take anywhere from one to 5 days to completely dry. Last night, I applied the celluclay to the base and here’s a comparison of the base from the start of the build to now. The light at the end of the tunnel is much brighter now, and this is the last component of the build. Once the celluclay dries, all that is left is the painting and weathering for the base which are some very quick steps in the overall scope of the project.

Aside from the added electronics and surface details, the basic build technique I use for dioramas or bases:

  • Styrene sheets, rods, strips are used for structural details
  • A basic surface of styrofoam, wood blocks, or in this case, a resin asteroid base is used for the main surface dynamics, the basic landscape for the base
  • Plaster cloth is used to encompass everything as well as give a solid surface for the next layer
  • Celluclay is used as the final texture or covering surface over the dried plaster cloth
  • The final steps are paint, weathering, and any sort of ground works such as grass, sand, dirt, rocks, etc.

On to the build progression for this project’s base.

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Read more about the article Sazabi Base: Building slows, painting begins

Sazabi Base: Building slows, painting begins

The past few weeks saw a great number of hours on building. Earlier last week, the construction processes have slowed down as most things are “built” and ready for paint. This past Thanksgiving week/weekend saw the completion of the Jegan. The amount of hours spent drops drastically because I now have to wait for things to dry and cure before continuing on to the next steps. Work on the base pieces continued in separate processes to maximize the limited amount of time.

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Read more about the article Revisiting the HGUC Saz – New Base Build

Revisiting the HGUC Saz – New Base Build

Revisiting the HGUC Saz, sort of. Back when I first starting on the Saz project, I had a very elaborate base planned for it. However, just building the Saz burnt me out and any interest in creating an appropriate base to accompany the kit completely waned. This resulted in the simple mirrored base that shows off the leg thrusters and other bits. I got complaints from some peers that it was a bit on the simple side.

Fast forward to SCGMC a few weeks ago, I had the kit displayed with two other HGUC Sazabii. The local distributor came to the event to check it out and also let me know that I had won the semi-final for Bandai’s international Gunpla Builders World Cup 2011; so the Sazabi will be representing North America in the international competition in Hong Kong, December 25, 2011. The SCGMC event was going great and then I was informed that I would be going to Hong Kong to compete; it was icing to an already amazing day.

The following morning, I got an email from the distributor officially confirming that I won the slot, giving me the dates for the event, and also suggesting that I make some improvements on the existing base – suggesting that the mirrored base was a bit on the simple side. Something already agreed upon by several folks. So later on that day, I started planning out the new base which is basically a downsized variant of what I had originally planned for the base when I first started the project.

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SCGMC the Aftermath

This past weekend was the first annual Southern California Gundam Model Competition (SCGMC) presented by ThoseGundamGuys. The idea to run our own contest came out of years of frustrations when attending other model contests. So back in April, we set the wheels in motion and started working on creating our own competition. There has never been a model competition of this kind in Southern California that I know of, so we had no idea what to expect. A few of us were a bit pessimistic and we set the bar a little low just so we don’t completely disappoint ourselves. But all our hard work paid off and there really is a decent gunpla following in Southern California. We organized the event planning for about 60 people in attendance. This was our goal, and we found a venue that would support this and contacted a few vendors; then started a marketing campaign to as many local hobby shops as we could find as well as hitting the online resources for gunpla discussions.

We had an attendance of about 100 people, 35 individual entrants, entering 88 models in total. I definitely believe we surpassed our goal and I believe that we can continue to do this event annually. Hit the jump for more details and pictures of the event.

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