After a year long break, returning to the Water Front

Motivation, inspiration and other ation-esque terms sometime fades away as a project progresses for a host of reasons. This project was chugging along last year and just stopped cold. It sat on my workbench and just occupied the space for a good while before I came to the realization that I did not want to work on it. I boxed it up and shelved this for a little over a year. I recently revisited a 7 year shelved kit that has since been shelved to get some quicker little projects completed. This happens. Interests wanes and sometimes, it is best to just put something away in hopes that someday, the interest returns and the project gets completed.

The first set of pictures was where I last left off. I had started getting the main base piece together. I had cut a hole out, glued some mesh in place. The idea here is to use a picture of some GMs I had previsouly built, and place the picture under the base to create an illusion that there is an underground element to the base. The wood base is built up with some balsa wood sides. This was about where I stopped last year; I had some work on various pieces and there was no mental execution plan for the project.

(more…)

Continue ReadingAfter a year long break, returning to the Water Front

Those Gundam Guys at IPMS Las Vegas Region 8 Competition

This past weekend, Angel and I along with our wives, took the excuse of the IPMS Region 8 show hosted by the IPMS Las Vegas chapter, being held in Vegas; packed up a grip of our gunpla kits and headed out to sin city. They actually have a “Gundam” category as one of three categories under the Sci-Fi umbrella; so Angel and I were under the impression that were was a pretty good gunpla following. There were 5 entrants, 3 from So Cal, and 2 from Las Vegas, one of them being a recent transplant from So Cal. But regardless, its still damn cool they have a Gundam category in lieu of being lumped in with the rest of the Sci-Fi stuff. And we got to plug the crap out of SCGMC!

The event was held this past weekend on Saturday, April 18; at the Riviera Hotel & Casino. The place is the hotel that the movie Casino with Pesci and De Niro. The place is also shutting down next month to be demolished. So at the very least, we got to see the last hurrah of an iconic piece of Las Vegas history.

Like most contests we’ve been attending of late, we dropped in, filled out the paperwork, set up our kits, maybe chatted with a few folks then ran off. With the wives in tow, AND in Vegas, there were other priorities. We asked for more space as there was only 1 gunpla kit on the table. And when we left, there were 11, 10 of those belonging to Angel and I. Hopefully there would be more entrants. But we didn’t wait along for that and went off to have a nice brunch at the Wynn. When we returned to the room after our lunch, we were told that the room was closing in 5 minutes for judging, and didn’t reopen until about 3:45. In hindsight, we should have just hung out until the kicked us out, then went to eat. I did get to meet up with an old competitor Mr. RJ, whom I met well over 10 years ago at an OrangeCon event. He does mostly mods to 1/144 Zeonic kits with German influence and all hand painted. Pretty damn amazing skills. He took first place in the Gundam category. We also met another fellow name Keven who has a blog: http://topmodelplamo.blogspot.com/; you can read more about his entry on his blog. Hopefully he’ll make it out to the SCGMC show in November; Vegas isn’t too far a drive. After a quick chat, the room closed and we were kicked out.

(more…)

Continue ReadingThose Gundam Guys at IPMS Las Vegas Region 8 Competition

Back to the Grimoire

It has been a few months since I started up on this project and I’ve been getting a little work on it only at the monthly build gatherings. With Sena recently completed, I decided against starting up another figure project to focus on this one and just get the damn thing done. Prior to the Sena videos, I actually started using my cameras to capture the Grimoire build. I was still working out the set up that I think I’ve nailed down towards the end of the Sena series.

Here’s what the kit looks like currently.

Here’s the video for the head modifications as well as adding an LED to the head and wiring everything together.

More details about the current progression as well as the other video after the jump.

(more…)

Continue ReadingBack to the Grimoire