Fujimi 1/24 Honda Today (You're Under Arrest Movie Ver.)

I've always like the series You're Under Arrest authored by none other than Kosuke Fujishima, who's also the author of Ah! My Goddess, which is also another series that I used read. It was through his works that I started to develop a liking for cars and motorbikes as Kosuke himself is also a fan for cars and bikes. I still remembered reading You're Under Arrest manga, where there will be pages dedicated to explain about the cars and bikes that were used by the hero and heroine in the series. I still remember, as well, the first time I watched the OVA of You're Under Arrest, I immediately like it very much because firstly the story itself, and secondly the animation, which can be considered as one of the top notch production back in those days, where computer aided graphic has not been widely used yet.

So this Fujimi 1/24 Honda Today kit was produced back in the late 90's as the movie version of You're Under Arrest came out during that period of time. Currently this kit is also one of those hard to find kit as Fujimi doesn't reproduce this kit as to date. I was blessed to be able to buy this kit off from a fellow modeller. The kit comes with 2 resin figures of the 2 main heroine of the series, Natsumi and Miyuki, some other items, and a 1/24 scale CUUTTEEEE-sy little Honda Motocombo. As such, I planned to build it with some scene that I have in mind, which reminiscence one of the shot in the opening of the OVA, where both the heroine were staring at the city from a seaside. Here are some of the photographs of the finished build.

Firstly, the car, it took me approximately 5 months to get it done. The reason being that along the way, I bumped into a lot of mistakes, thus it took me a while to redo the car kit. Secondly, the little Motocombo, which can be considered as the easiest among the other objects in this build. Thirdly, the resin figures. I have a lot of tough time with the resin figure as well, especially the Miyuki figure, which I have to do "plastic surgery" to give it a pointier nose as the original nose was really flat. The figures took me 3 weeks to finish.

Lastly, the base to put everything for display. As I intended to make it as a reminiscence of the scene where both Natsumi and Miyuki are standing by the sea side, I have to make the base to have something from that scence, hence the grass and the out-of-scale (bad) brick roads. I was having problem after the initial stage as I don't like the dark tone color of the grass and the brick road, so I decided to touch up on it to give it a brighter tone.

So overall it is fun to build the kit. Although it was not easy to build car kit given that I used to Gunpla building, yet through this build I could learn a lot of new things. It was indeed a one kit tried all - car, bike, figure, and diorama display. Whether I'll build another one will be a different story...

Gamers Workshop Warhammer 40K Ork Dreadnought

First of all, I'm not really a fan for this kind of fantasy figure. Even though some of them are pretty nice looking, but I just won't buy it and do it, unless it's for special occasion like last time the Blood Bowl tournament table top game. As for this time, I did this figure because of the Christmas Group Build organized by fellow Pla-Zone members for the Christmas occasion, where we'll be exchanging gifts, which were all model kits of all genres, and whatever we received we'll have to work on it within a specific timelines otherwise will have to pay for the penalty of not doing it.

The time I joined was the 2nd time that this GB was organized. The fun of this GB is that you may received something that you've never done before. For me, I got this Warhammer 40K Dreadnaught as my gift. Now previously I've worked on miniature related figures before, so more or less I would know what to do with this figure. Without further ado, here are some of the photographs taken of the finished painted figure.

Normally, painting miniature figure is done by using acrylic paint because firstly it is water based, and secondly it is much easier to control. However, I only have the High Elf set Vallejo Acrylic Paint, thus the color is not really suitable as I would envision it to be no matter how much I custom mix the color. Therefore, I resorted to use lacquer based color paint instead.

Except for some small details, most part of this figure was painted with Mr Hobby lacquer color, either using airbrush or hand paint. After that, I'll paint some of the small details with Vallejo acrylic color, and finally dry brush and wash it with Tamiya enamel color. What I was trying to achieve in this build was to improve on my weathering, i.e. using pastel and chipping. Yet, I was still far short from that because my weathering sense was still not very good. So, will have to learn to improve on that one at least.

So is it fun to build this figure? Yes it is, but I could foreseen that I'll not build another one in a long time as I said before that I'm not really into this genre.