Model Making Makes Me Merry

[Octopus Prime]

It's an older kit, but not *that* old; it was a tie-in for R-Type Final 2.

I have a Vic Viper kit from the same manufacturer (Yolopark) and it, too, required glue, but far less of it. I think they might just specialize in Gunpla-style kits that sometimes need the Little Itty Bitty Bits to be glued on

 

[Tomm Guycot]

Man that's sweet.

I gotta get me some video game shooter space planes

 

[spines]

that's most of what i'm sitting on right now, a bunch i really wanted got reruns last year (the g2 vic viper might've actually been new though, that's the one i'm planning to go for next). hahaha.

 

[WisteriaHysteria]

The engineering and quality control required to make kits snapfit so that they interconnect so well nothing falls apart, but still fits together? Massively underrated by the general public. Bandai makes it look easy, and they set what might be an unrealistic bar for everyone else. Glue is still necessary for a lot of American kits.

Bandai's kit manufacturing happens in-house in Japan, so they probably have way tighter controls than a lot of other companies that outsource their manufacturing to China and elsewhere.

 

[Regulus]

I suspect there's also less pressure to avoid glue for largely static builds like fighter craft.

 

[Kirin]

Yeah I recognize that Bandai sets an insanely high bar after decades of continuously iterating their in-house design and manufacturing. It’s just that as someone who occasionally barely manages to scrape out time to dabble in this hobby, I’m not sure I’m prepared to deal with lesser standard anymore.

 

[Tomm Guycot]

Yeah I recognize that Bandai sets an insanely high bar after decades of continuously iterating their in-house design and manufacturing. It’s just that as someone who occasionally barely manages to scrape out time to dabble in this hobby, I’m not sure I’m prepared to deal with lesser standard anymore.

Nobody's building with non-LEGO bricks for a reason.

 

[Kirin]

Heh, yeah, these days some of the Lego knock-offs are getting close, but even the ones with good quality bricks still don't usually measure up to Lego's exacting standards in instruction clarity and build mechanics.

 

[Tomm Guycot]

As promised, a straightforward simple build. It's Pale Rider DII, the last in a line of upgraded grunt units run by the HADES AI system, which allows pilots to operate beyond their abilities for the very reasonable cost of their mind eroding.

This one colored per the Titans, a paramilitary group formed to weed out undesirables who got all high and mighty and started acting with impunity and terrorizing civilian populations.

A not at all political mobile suit relevant to 2026.

I picked this guy out last summer as he looks sick and has cool accessories. I wasn't expecting the sheer amount of stickers required and since it was Premium Bandai and had the typical monochromatic boxart, I didn't realize how much color correction I could have easily done with paint markers instead. I think I did okay, but it was a high stress night of adhesion.

One attractive part of this kit is its sick-ass bazooka. I have an old coworker whose only complaint about mecha is they have guns that operate with fingers and triggers which is wholly unnecessary because they are mechanical the gun could just wire straight into them. So seeing how this gun attaches over its arm as a nice tribute.

To power this gun the suit has a battery pack on one hip. The typical Pale Rider units have beam sabers in holsters/scabbards on their hips, and I'm kind of bummed the DII here can't have nice things. It IS nice that they are packed into its backpack, and they're actually larger than typical beam sabers which is great. And I'd never downgrade from 4 engines to 2...

But side carrying is so cool! And it's all packed in the box cause this is a modified design! the limited information in the instructions made it clear this unit has TWO beam sabers on its backpack. but it clearly came with a Beam Javelin - so where is that stored? I decided it was the side holster and made that small modification.

 

[WisteriaHysteria]

I wasn't expecting the sheer amount of stickers required and since it was Premium Bandai and had the typical monochromatic boxart

High Grades will require color correction more than just about any other grade out there, save for even simpler grades like No Grades, SDs, and Entry Grades. They're meant to be simpler kits. At smaller size and price point, getting color accurate parts that small is generally not a high priority for Bandai historically, and goes counter to the HGs purpose of the which is simplicity and affordability. I have noticed that in recent years, they've gotten much more sophisticated about needing less stickers for color correction. But this is also a 5 year old kit.

And here's the thing about P-Bandai. It's not actually "premium", whatever that means. It's just a direct-to-customer storefront for Bandai that can circumvent normal distribution channels.

Normally when designing a kit, Bandai needs the kit to be popular enough so that they can sell at volume in order to still make money selling to distributors/stores where they take their cut of the MSRP as well. There is also an opportunity cost when selling in this manner since gunpla kits sit in relatively large boxes that take up valuable space inside warehouses/delivery trucks/store shelves/etc. So if a kit doesn't sell and languishes on a shelf somewhere, it hurts double since it's taking up space that could be used on something else.

So P-Bandai then, is this vessel for not necessarily more "premium" kits, but rather more obscure kits, or special variants -- anything that would warrant a smaller print run. So that the rabid fan can get something more niche, while still being profitable for Bandai to do. Since this way, Bandai is cutting out the middlemen, can print-to-order, and can also cheapen out on production in other ways. Like the box art for example. They're printed in monochrome to save money. If it's being sold direct to consumers, then it doesn't need to sit on a shelf and look pretty to customers passing by.

Another way they save money on P-Bandai exclusives, is that they are usually kits that are much cheaper from a design perspective. I don't know for sure with this specific model, but usually P-Bandai exclusives will either be palate swaps with pre-existing kits, and/or reuse runners from pre-existing kits, with small modifications. So while this kit might be 5 years old, the core of it might be much, much older, from a time when more stickers was common. And color correcting stickers are often much cheaper vs redesigning the runners.

 

[Tomm Guycot]

Tons of useful information.

Yeah I figured as much. I have about 5 PBandai kits at this point (this is my second build) and it's interesting because the zirius has a normal full-color box and is very complex, but as I noted in the post, the gun FEELS like it was meant to do its transformation but it just doesn't. So that seems like a case of them having big plans and just making a cheap production decision and shifting to PBandai. But even the second printing has the full color box. A mystery!

Then again it also wasn't announced as PBandai that was revealed a month or so later, vs. this year's new kits are clearly marked PBandai and not.

Ultimately it's just a confluence of factors. I'm mainly grumbly about finding out how the back of his legs (not covered via stickers, either) are meant to be colored, after finishing the kit and looking for pose ideas. If I hadn't promised myself to keep it simple that would have launched a small sidequest.

At any rate - next up is my first MG and my first indulgence of my roots in Gundam Wing.


EDIT: Last comment on the potential age of Pale Rider DII - yeah it is probably the simplest build I've had overall but it's also one of the most solid-feeling kits to handle, so it's probably from right on the cusp of perfecting HG's durability before experimenting into the "cheaper Real Grade" landscape of more recent HG's.

 

[Tomm Guycot]

Having completed 10 models over a year, I felt it was time to try out a Master Grade (MG) kit, and for such an occasion it seemed safe to indulge my latent Gundam Wing fandom, dormant since college, which I purposefully held back so I didn't seem like a gunpla tourist / typical American scrub. Naturally I had to go with my favorite pilot/mobile suit combo, Trowa Barton in Heavyarms. Premium Bandai had his EW custom version which I couldn't resist, only afterward realizing it's probably because it resembles Soundwave.

My first surprise was learning that MG's come with tiny pilots (I have since learned many Real Grades also have even tinier pilots). Trowa has such a simple color scheme it seemed entirely reasonable to paint him. ...but then I had to paint the pilot version that would be INSIDE the Gundam cause it's part of the model. And once I went that far why not paint his dorky EW boyscout version too?

Having larger pieces, the initial cutout portion was much more pleasant and relaxed. But it also means untreated pieces feel a little more toylike, so my first idea was applying the dry-brush technique to any "exposed metal" parts to make them feel metallic. This meant considering each piece, how much is visible in the final model and trying to isolate relevant pieces. Even being careful, I missed a few and had to revisit those. Each needs to be topcoated first to provide texture for the paint, then painted, then topcoated again. And if any of these pieces has decals, those have to go on before the initial topcoat. So it's a process, and each step takes a day of curing before the next step.

Speaking of decals, MG's often have waterslide decals, which look WAY CLEANER than normal stickers when applied - but take a great deal more care to apply. These are a risk of any MG and it's why I avoided starting with a Ver.Ka kit, as the mechs designed by Katoki-san are just lousy with waterslides. Let's dip our toes in gradually, right?

Thing is, I didn't account for the Endless Waltz mobile suits being designed by Katoki himself. So any Wing EW kit is a secret Ver.Ka kit. It certainly lived up to that reputation. I'm very glad I practiced this with a stand I put together a few months ago to get my "waterslide legs" - however in each session at least one decal would tear or become unusable, and very few had spares! But with some ingenuity I found a way to replace any mishaps and apply every single expected decal. Bet you'd never find the replacements!

I even found a purpose for some bonus decals they include for reasons?

Somewhere in there, I also chromed missiles and gun barrels for a nice effect, though the chrome looks light or dull in places and I'm not sure how to avoid that. I masked them while topcoating and so on.

Anyway this is a really fun kit in that it has a million little things that open to reveal more guns or missiles. It feels very over the top.

I couldn't help but take a Guns Akimbo Daniel Radcliffe shot.

"You want to clown me? Okay. You wanna play rough? Okay. Say hello... to my little friend!"

It's SD Deathscythe Hell as a bonus!

I thought after my first big complex MG it would be fun to have a light, quick, return to the SD world for yet another Gundam Wing favorite. And by "light, quick" I mean I forgot how heavily the SD's rely on large weird stickers, and in this case several of them tore irreparably and I had to paint those areas instead. I wonder if you can tell where.

For what it's worth, I want to love Deathscythe as much as all the other Americans but I actually can't stand his stupid pointed shoes. But in SD they are kind of cute.

 

[Kirin]

Awesome. The very thought of that many water-slide decals makes my eye twitch, more power to you! Also I count like… 96 chromed missiles and I probably missed a few. Anyway, looks great. I also watched all of Wing back in the day so I can vibe with the nostalgia.

 

[Tomm Guycot]

Instead of modeling I've been finalizing the format of my album cards and taking "official" photos and whatnot. Which was a hefty lift after doing 12 models. But now it's done so I can get back to building.

Basically I've shared these "the packaging is a fun trading card" conversions before in a few pictures but displaying those is just like a checklist of things you've built vs. a clear way to show them off. So I added images to the back of each card.

So then you can obviously display those in a card binder - but I learned a fun technique (the michi method? I think) the kids these days use to spice up their collections, which consists of slipping larger images through 2 card pockets. Which makes this the perfect way to make a complete gunpla album.

Now if I ever had occasion to go to some kind of "build event" or whatnot I could just bring my card binder and give a good approximation of my work for anyone interested.

 

[Violentvixen]

We went to visit the small town where Lumber used to live and guess what I saw at the kombini right outside this tiny station?! They had two of the expo exclusive kits, absolutely bizarre but I'll take it. We were basically packed at this point so jammed it in the shopping bag we had and it was one of Lumber's carryon items, ha.

We finally build the dang thing!

It was fun and I really like how the solar panels wings work. We did have one piece crack either before or right as we cut it, but everything turned out okay.

We do want to order a stand as right now it's just balanced on the battery tail-like structure, but very pleased.

 

[Kirin]

Awesome. NGL, I’m kinda jealous of that find!

 

[Tomm Guycot]

So cool!

...and environmentally renewable(?)

 

[Tomm Guycot]

Okay hear me out

 

[Felicia]

Okay hear me out

I think my Nobel Gundam, with the Beam Ribbon weapon, would work in Castlevania as well.

 

[Kirin]

Lol, awesome. Some of them don't read super well at too small a scale, but if you blow these up to full-screen wallpaper size they're great.