IPMS OC OrangeCon 2017 and starting a new resin figure project!

This past weekend was the annual IPMS Orange County’s Region 8 Contest: OrangeCon. This is always a great contest to attend. More so now to spread the word that is Gunpla. While setting up, an older gentleman looked over at me and exclaimed, “Hey, you’re one of Those Gundam Guys!” This always makes me chuckle. He then proceeded to tell me that he had met me a few years back at a previous OrangeCon with a friend of his that I had known from a previous IPMS Nationals in 2007. The guy was from Arizona and was inspired by our talk about gunpla and brought his own custom made Zaku; pictured below. Apologies for the dark pictures. SciFi is the redheaded stepchild of model competitions, so we’re usually in some dark corner out of the best lit areas!

He said that he was having a blast building gunpla and was building more. He ended up winning 1st place in the Sci/Fi Mech/Gundam category – that got split into SciFi Gundam and Scifi Non Gundam. But more on that later. I chatted with him for a while and told him about our show, but he’s unable to come because he lives in Tucson. Blah, people from all over the country are flying/driving in for SCGMC. But that’s another story. Fellow TGG members Brandon and Jonathan came and entered their kits. They got 2nd and 3rd in the SciFi Gundam category.

More about Orangecon after the jump.

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Anime Expo 2017 and a new commission project

Anime expo has come and gone and I’m finally getting around to uploading the pictures I took from the two days I went and writing a little bit about the event. This was a great year for gunpla. Katsumi Kawaguchi came out to AX and along with a panel of Bandai folks did the judging at the AX leg of the GBWC USA Regions. That was pretty cool. They hosted a few Gundam and Gunpla panels. We also hosted our usual Gunpla building panels for all ages and the infamous 18+ panel as well. There was a new group that had a booth at AX this year. A group called Simp, and from our chatting with the folks there, they are a group that builds commission gunpla models and have started their own shop as well as selling some GK gunpla kits too. They had a pretty impressive display of built kits at the booth. Speaking of commissions, I had promised a guy that contacted me that I would start working on his figure commission in July (after I was done with AX and the GM Sniper project). So now that that’s done, the kit arrived today and I started to get cracking on it. The customer has some specific ideas so hopefully I can build to his expectations.

More about AX, our panels, AX GBWC, and the Saber commission after the jump!

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SCGMC 2016 is over, here’s what happened!

For those that don’t know what SCGMC is, it’s the Southern California Gundam Model Competition. This was our 6th year hosting this competition; and even though there was a big convention happening the same weekend (Pacific Media Expo – PMX) we still did quite well. We had 280 people in attendance. Of that, 87 entered the contest with 178 entries. Yes, 178 individual entries. One guy was responsible for about 17 kits. We had people travel from Arizona, Vancouver Canada, Minnesota, Seattle, and Virginia specifically for this show. Without any doubts, this is THE BIGGEST LIVE GUNPLA contest in North America. We had several live demos that had actual hands on experience with airbrushing, water slide decal application, and photography. We set up two photography booths so that once judging was done, the entrants could grab their kits and take some professional pictures of the kits after learning how to take pictures with the live demo. We had 6 vendors including ABC Toy 4 Me, Robot 4 Less, Robo Toy Fest, Tatsu Hobby, Modelers Alley Creative Studios, and Volks Hobby USA.

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More details about the show after the jump!

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