This past weekend was the model build gathering for September. A bunch of folks that haven’t been back to the gathering for awhile showed up – Jay, Miko, Artur, etc. Good to see some of the old faces. Art showed up with a few boxes of random kits that he received from a friend that had passed on, so instead of the trash bin, he felt the kits may find some good homes with the folks from the build gathering. It’s hilarious to see the sudden reaction when the phrase “free kits’ are uttered. After the grab fest, about one box full of kits was left over and we suggested that Sean take it as a donation to IPMSOC’s annual distressed kit auction event.
The gathering started with some work on the diorama. We finished wrapping the last bits of exposed foam, and added more celluclay to patch up some exposed plaster cloth areas. Dan, Dave, and Brandon spent most of the time working on the 144 kits for their respective diorama sections. Since Terry has become a bit too busy with school and such, Manny is taking over his section and finishing his kits. He spent the first part of the gathering putting together the three kits from Terry.
Brandon brought his RC tank that he was working on for the past few weeks. There’s still a few things left on it, but it’s pretty much completed. It also runs, and when he turns it on and runs it around the house, Hugo freaks shit and tries to attack it. Kinda cute. Yet no other dog reacts this viscerally to it, silly Hugo. Woepriest also brought his finished HGUC GP-02 which is fairly nicely built, but he’s not satisfied with it and is looking to sell it off. We suggested that he go to Robot4Less to sell off the kit, but not before he enters it in a few contests first.
Casval brought a bunch of those Gunpla X Gundam.info promotion cards. The build gatherings have gotten fairly large and continually, we’re getting more and more benefits from the local distributors as well as local shop. Robot4Less gives the group a 20% discount when the build gathering folks make a trip to the shop during the build gatherings. Dan, me, or Angel usually needs to be with the group for the discount. The cards Casval brought were for the folks at the build gathering, if they wanted to grab some. I took the fun opportunity to snap a picture of the stack, so as to makes folks that aren’t part of the build gatherings jealous – as if they already aren’t.
As a side note, I haven’t taken a single one of these cards. I’ve been offered them since the promotion started, and I’m pretty sure that if I had started to collect them, I’d definitely have a stack two or three times larger than the pictured stack. I have my own methods for promoting the hobby, and I just don’t need nor care to participate in this contest.
Back to work. I wasn’t feel much like building. Originally, I had an HID retrofit kit come for my Scooby, but the company I purchased the kit from left out one of the components I ordered; for which I was planning on spending the day with my car. I really need to get back to finishing up the damn GM’s for my diorama. I did split the parts up to single out the areas that need further masking and detail painting. I’m hoping that sometime this week, the motivation returns and I get to finishing the damn things. Other than the detail painting, I still have decals, the wash, weathering, and final flat coat. I really need to finish that before October so I can bring the part to IPMS Orange County’s OrangeCon.
I threw on Detective Dee for the girls and Manny ran over to watch as well with Casval and Sean. I glued a few parts of Terry’s GM Wagtail and placed binder clips on them to help Manny out with the seam work on these kits.
The evening ended a bit early with most folks leaving just slightly past midnight. Sean was still working on his 72 scale X-Wing commission. I spent time looking at his first MG kit, the Gouf 2.0 kit. And Sean’s work on his X-Wing motivated me to find my 48 scale X-Wing and start snapping the sucker together. We built for another couple of hours before calling it. For not being motivated to build, I got some decent amount of building done. ADD modeling indeed. Here’s Sean’s MG Gouf, he still has some weathering and to attach the cables before calling the kit completed.
