Games Workshop - War Hammer 40K - Wall of Martyrs - Imperial Defence Network

Grateful to a friend of mine who introduced me to work on this kit.  This is the terrain kit for the War Hammer 40K series, and it belongs to the same owner whom I've previously help to build the Fortified Manor of the War Hammer series.

This Imperial Defence Network is a limited item kit consists of 1 Imperial Bunker, 2 Imperial Defence Emplacement, and 3 Imperial Defence Line.  It is a huge box for a War Hammer 40K.  The basic requirement is to have it painted as closely as possible to the box art.  Well, all went well except that I can't figure out what's the correct colour for the skull plate motives.  Anyway, the friend who got me this work has not been hearing any complain from the owner about the skull colour, so it is a case close I supposed.

Right, here are some of the pictures taken after the whole thing was put together.

When the whole thing is put together, it produces a huge layout of the defensive network, which will require a very big table to have it stationed.

The painting process is of another level in terms of the process.  Firstly, there are similar pieces; secondly they are all big pieces; thirdly, they are all big pieces with a lot of details.  So the challenge is really on how to paint them all so that the colour will be consistent when they're put together.  The whole process, starting from assembly till painting, took me about 50 working hours, within 1 month.

The whole thing is done with airbrush painting, and dry brushing, with a little bit hand painting on some small details.  The color that I used is Mr Color, and Tamiya Enamel Paint.  The new thing that I learned here is the thin wash, where a thin layer of enamel paint been applied to give the finishing a different kind of feel.  I've learned as well that thin wash with enamel paint is best if the surface is not rough, otherwise the paint will not flow.  The work in progress for this work is recorded in Pla-Zone.

Overall, I've learned something new from this build.  Basically learned something new on the weathering part, and then I've learned something new as well on managing the painting process.  Lastly, the most important part is still to learn from mistake and to keep on improve.

Finally, some other pictures that I've taken during the work in progress stage.

That's all for now.

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.

Bandai MG 1/100 Turn A Gundam White Doll

Turn A Gundam is considered to me, at least, the one and only kind of rare designed Gundam. I read an article before that during the production of the latest Turn A Gundam anime by Tomino Yoshihino, the meaning of Turn A is the collection of all previous Gundam, therefore he wanted to have someone who could design a Gundam that would fits the theme, and thus came forth the design by Syd Mead.

Honestly I was not really buying into the design at first, but after watching the anime and further digging shows that this Gundam is indeed unique and it does somehow suits the theme that Tomino wanted. It is to date can be considered as a pretty strong Gundam due to the fact that it uses i-Field as propulsion system, possesses nano-machine technology that could turns everything in contact to dust, plus able to regenerate itself.

This MG Kit that I did was for the Pla-Zone forum Overkill Group Build. In someway my theme would be to overkill it with details, which I don't think I've achieved much. At least I was able to do something new. Without further ado, the following are the pictures taken for this kit.

The color scheme is mainly White because Turn A Gundam has a nick name called White Doll. So I was trying to go along that line, White. Then, I chose the Gundam Hammer instead of the usual beam saber or beam rifle just to give it something different than the usual setup. I have used the Gunpla Builders Parts for this kit as well, mostly for the clear green lenses on the back of the body, the head, and also for the Gundam Hammer. The rest of the details are pretty much added using pla-plate.

The other significant change of this kit is the head, where I shifted the antenna from the chin to the forehead. Indeed that Turn A signature is the mustache antenna, but I thought probably trying to see how it would looks like should the mustache is moved to the forehead. It turns out pretty cool, in someway.

This kit has been entered into the Malaysia Gunpla Builders World Cup 2012. I never thought that I would get good comment from people though because the color is considered as pretty monotonous as most people would prefer more vibrant and more colors. Still, even with those little comments that I received, it's good enough for me because I'm still learning to improve, and those comments are like an achievement remarks that "Yes, I have at least achieved the objective!". Of course, some critical comments are good as well in a way that could help to improve on my future build.

The work in progress for this kit and the finishing pictures are also posted on the Pla-Zone forum as well.

Super Robot War - Some in-games hidden secret

After playing Super Robot War for a while, I started to notice that the in-game conversation between mission to mission can sometime be hinting what will be expected in the next release.  In example, as I was playing Alpha 3 a while ago, the theme of this game is called At The Galaxy End, which is the same phrase that appeared in the in-game conversation in Super Robot War MX.

I've played Super Robot War MX first before playing Alpha 3, but have never really read the conversation properly.  Until I replayed the MX again, I found out that the in-game conversation did mentioned about At The Galaxy End, a conversation between Zero (villain from Dendoh) and the boss of Chronos (from Machine Robo: Revenge of Chronos), where the boss of Chronos telling Zero that the each universe would come to meet its end, hence using the phrase At The Galaxy End, which is the reason why the Chronos has been harvesting the necessary power to do the dimension jumping from one dimension to another dimension in order to survice through that catastrophe end.  Then come Super Robot War Alpha 3: At The End of Galaxy, which basically is based on the theme where the heroes have to face that catastrophe end ignited by the endless power of Ide (from Ideon).

Then Super Robot War Alpha 3 did have a special stage where we get to see all the original characters playing together, which gives some hint that the next game is going to be released would be based on the original character, hence Super Robot War OGs (a remake of OG and OG2 of gameboy), which later they did came out with the game.

Then in OGs, there are mentioning of Dai-Rai-Oh (the main super robot character in Alpha 3), which Ryusei Date said of as a super robot focuses more on kicking style attack, which has already appeared in Alpha 3, then in OGs Gaiden, Touma the pilot of Dai-Rai-Oh appeared, which certainly hinting it will be appearing in the future installment, which it would in the upcoming OGs 2.

Not only that, but OGs did link to other Super Robot War game as well, such as Mugen No Frontier & Mugen No Frontier Exceed, where the W series that being mentioned in the early part of OGs 2 appeared, and also the plan EF (Endless Frontier) drafted by Lemon Browning mentioned by Axel Almer in the end of OGs Gaiden also is referring to the Mugen No Fronter series, which Axel Almer appeared in the 2nd installment.

And finally, there's a mentioning of Exbein, which simply referred to as EX in the in-game conversion in OGs Gaiden.  At first I don't really understand what it means, but after the released of Exbein, and as I was playing the game again, I realized that the EX mentioned is indeed referring to Exbein.  It is also the same in Super Robot War Z, where there are references made to character i.e. Ryouma of Getter Robo that his counterpart in another dimension/parallel world is much more violent than he is, which that version of Ryouma appeared in Super Robot War Z 2.

Although it is easy to say that these are the things that we should have expected from game maker, but like Banpresto that's making such a hint by nicely blending it into the in-game conversation?  That I would say is a clever move.  Unfortunately since it is only available in Japanese, therefore only the Japanese would know what is going on.  Nevertheless, this is also one of the reason why I'd never get bored with Super Robot War because you could expect quite a lot of things by piecing the puzzle here and there, much like reading the Bible.

RG 1/144 RX-78-2 Gundam

This is the first RG and the first snap-fit only kit that I've done.  The purpose of this build is to see how far can a snap-fit Gundam kit to go.  It is also a good opportunity to learn new thing as well, such as applying shading by using only Real Touch Marker produced by Mr Hobby.

The time taken to finish building this snap-fit only kit and shading with Real Touch Marker is about 1 month.  It is not a easy process indeed because the sanding of the parting line, and the nib mark have to be done carefully to avoid any obvious sanding mark.  The other thing that's taking it such a long time to do is because of the tremendous detail on this kit, which have caused me to use about 4 Real Touch Marker blender just to blend the marker into the body to create the shading effect.  However, it is not that easy to do but it is achievable with patience.

Gamers' Workhop: Blood Bowl Team High Elves

As I've mentioned before that I'm not really a fan of fantasy game, so I don't really know much about them.  I was introduced to this game called Blood Bowl, which consists of a few races of fantasy races to compete against each other in a game of American Football, except that it's much more violent.  Heard that it's a board game that exists for a long time, where it is played with miniature figures.

I decided to go with High Elves team because that's the one that's the one that I feel more comfortable with.  1 team required 11 figures to start, so my friend managed to help me to get 1 extra because the box of High Elves that I got has only 10 figures.  The box set that I used is called the High Elves White Lion of Charice, produced by Gamers Workshop.

In order to have it conforms to Blood Bowl, I have to cut out all the weapon that they're holding because the boxset is produced for war gaming purpose.  Some pictures of the finishing products.

The fun part of building this thing is that it's so small and yet it's capable of producing a lot of possible poses.  I do enjoy building these figures.  As for the painting, it's quite a challenge because not only that it's small, there are some parts that cannot be reached, so will need to plan the painting more carefully.

I learned something new via this build, which is a technique called layering, which is basically a painting way to create a transition between 2 color tones.  I also learned that it's not necessarily to use washing to achieve the enhancement of details, which it can be done equally good with only painting & blending of colors if it is done correctly.

In a nutshell, doing this thing really is an eye opening experience for me to painting, and some in depths on how critical it can be that adding shadow could add more depths to a piece of painting.

Bandai PG 1/60 Gundam Astray Red Frame (friend's)

This is my second PG Red Frame that I helped my friend to build.  I won't be talking much about it as I've already done so with my previous PG Red Frame.  What I intended to do on this one is to improve it as compare to my previous build.  So in this build, I tried to apply a few techniques that I learned since joining the Gunpla modelling community.  Some pictures of the finishing product.

In this build I tried to apply shading, dry brushing & washing because through all my previous build, I find that these techniques are very useful and could add more depths to the overall finishing, i.e. enhancing the details.  I also tried to improve on the shining metal parts by using other brand of paint, which in this case it's Gaia Notes gold and silver.  Both give superb finishing.

Overall, I'm pleased with the outcome even though I felt that it can still be improved, but am glad that at least there are improvements over my previous build.