A mixture of Gunpla, Cooking, SCUBA, Corgis, and Life

Southern California Gundam Model Competition 1 Month Away!

Last weekend was IPMS OC’s annual OrangeCon event. A group of Those Gundam Guys went and pretty much ruled the Gundam category. One of the tank builders did make the 1/35 scale Hovertank from 8thMS Team, very nicely done. Angel picked up Third place with his Unicorn, I grabbed a Second for my Efreet Custom, and Mike, one of the newer guys to our build gatherings picked up 1st for his Patchwork Sazabi. Which also picked up Best Sci-fi, and with the running of Best of Show, was the one of two kits battling for that award, only getting inched out by Sean’s incredibly well built ship (not a ship guy so, I forgot the name). Not too bad for the new guy who picked up airbrushing from attending last year’s SCGMC.

Which is the perfect segue into the little video I made to help promote the event that is a little less than a month away.

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This year’s resin figure build: Revy

Several weeks ago, it occurred to me that I had yet to build a resin figure this year. I’ve been building fewer projects over the course of a year, but so far I’ve completed the resin conversion Efreet Custom and my little Nu project. Yes, the Efreet is mostly resin, but it is definitely not a figure kit; so picking through my pile, I narrowed down a few during the August build gathering. The Dutch and Revy kit pulled to me, and looking at the quick fit of things, I decided on the Revy which looks like it’s about a 1/4 scale bust kit.

So we begin, with Step 1: Basic building and pinning. I actually quite enjoy this step, the rough excess resin tabs are cut and the kit comes together in unpainted resin pureness. One of the build guys, Manuel, lent me his jeweler’s saw, which cuts through the resin like butter, and reduces the chance of resin chipping from using clippers. However, there is a real possibility of slipping and cutting into the resin parts other than just the excess resin, so care needs to be taken – especially since these saws can take off skin and bone just as easily.

Excess resin is removed here and there while the parts are test fitted, making sure parts are snug and aligned. Once this is done, some of the parts are carefully pinned trying to keep true to the alignment. Here I can see what pieces need reshaping or realignment.

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SCGMC Categories Discussion

This past weekend, a few of Those Gundam Guys got together for a meeting regarding SCGMC. Interestingly enough, this was the first official meeting we’ve ever had. We’ve gotten two years experience under our belts; so this meeting was to reflect on what we learned form the previous years and how we can improve the event starting with the one coming in November. Most of the issues dealt with better organization which we definitely need. And if we are able to follow through with 90% of what we have planned from the meeting, we’ll definitely be vastly improved from the previous year.

But the one other issue that came up is a problem that I’ve seen at most model contest. Well, not so much a problem, but a pattern. At various shows in various categories, there’s usually a modeler that consecutively wins year to year. Now, this isn’t too big a deal at various shows as they’re larger and the categorical scope is much wider in terms of included model genres.

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Monthly Model Build Gatherings

The first gunpla build gathering hosted by the collective that would later be known as ThoseGundamGuys, had fairly humble beginnings starting July 21, 2007. It was born from comments and discussions after panels at Anime Expo as well as from several gunpla hobby forums. The basic idea was to gather the local gunpla builders to create a community focused on learning gunpla building skills.

I had known that there was a decent number of gunpla builders in Southern California just based off attending local IPMS shows, Anime Expo, and online discussions with members of various hobby forums. I had learned most of my building techniques from reading and stumbling through some good and plenty of bad experiments. Attempts to add to the collection of English based online references for building worked well, but it didn’t completely satisfy my lofty goals. So these monthly model build gatherings started. I believe our first one was 4-6 of us, some meeting for the first time, other’s I had known previously from local model contests and from AX.

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