RX-78-3 Preliminary shots

Just some shots I took during the first session of the RX-78-3 build a couple of days ago. This is exactly the same kit as the RX-78-2 Ver 2.0 and the same frame as the GM 2.0 so I could do this thing with my eyes closed. I prefer the RX-78-3 to the RX-78-2 in terms of colour scheme.

The sliding mechanisms in the arms look very nice and allow a lot of movement while still looking like a piece of heavy machinery.

I sprayed the thrusters and inside of the backpack Mr. Hobby Silver just to make it stand out a bit more. Backpack! Backpack!
The sliding mechanisms on the legs are very similar to those found on the arms. The range of motion in this kit is impressive and it makes me glad that I didn't paint it because I will be able to pose it willy-nilly without worrying about scuffing paint.
I knew I didn't have enough time in one night to completely build the mecha. In the midst of the build I thought that it would be a change to build it half complete and half 'nekkid'. This way I could pose him for some pics then and there. It also shows off the frame like you see in the instruction manuals.





The next night (yesterday?) I completed the build and top coated and tonight I put on all the decals. I used the leftover waterslides from the RX-78-2 build and some of the dry transfers. Stickers.. No way! Decaling has become the favourite part of a build for me. I look forward to completeling a kit just to apply decals.

Tomorrow will see me putting on the last of the decals on the weapons and doing some panel lining and touch up and he will be all finished. Then Gouf! or is it, Diorama?

Dammit, GM!

Yup, he's silver. But that's not the part that has me swearing. I planned to paint the GM Ver 2.0 using leftover paints I had as I want to use as much stuff as I can before I retire from gunpla. So I used the Mr. Hobby Silver on the head and other select parts of the body.
I then used my Tamiya Brilliant Orange on all the green parts. HOWEVER, Tamiya Brilliant Orange works like crap and won't stick to anything. I tried a couple of coats and it still beaded up and looked like garbage. Dammit, GM! I needed to think of a solution. I needed a paint that would cover well and definitely hide the faults left behind from the orange. I had a little bit of semi-gloss black leftover.. Hmm, I thought, black and silver go well and the Tamiya black spreads nicely. I knew I didn't have enough black so I headed off to the Yamida Denki because I knew they stocked Tamiya sprays unlike the closer Toys R Us.

But, if I use black, the frame won't be as noticeable, I thought. Hmm. While looking at cans of paint I grabbed a can of Tamiya Silver Leaf (made famous on my Shin Musha Gundam). I had a tiny bit of Silver Leaf left so it seemed like a good idea.

Returning home I sanded down all the crappy orange and sprayed it black. The Orange was so crappy that it hung around and created some problems for the black. Dammit, GM!


Spraying the frame Silver Leaf made it really stand out and it looked very good. I was very impressed with the result. The hands, especially, looked awesome. I was pleased.

But... (you knew this was coming, didn't you?) the Silver Leaf also, apparently, makes pieces very brittle. I don't know if it is because of the plastic Bandai used on the new 2.0 frames or whether it is just the relatively narrow width of the pieces or the Silver Leaf itself, but when I started to assemble the frame then armour, the frame pieces started to break.

Dammit, GM!

While assembling one foot a piece of the frame, which isn't even used to secure armour, snapped off and flew away.

One side of an ankle snapped.

When I assembled the sliding mechanisms on the arm and slid the armour on first the forearm, then the upper arm shattered! I had to piece them together, glue the frame, then slide the armour on and repair that. The arm.. it not bend so good.

The worst of all were the hands. Being small pieces, the fingers and thumbs just crumbled apart and I was left searching the counter and floor for all the pieces. I don't even know if I have them all again. The wrist also snapped so I can't even attach the hands.

Dammit, GM!

I don't intend to mail away to Bandai for two entire hands so I think I will be doing a lot of gluing. I think I will glue the hands back together holding the weapons so they are supported that way.

I don't want to huck this entire thing in the garbage because I think it has potential but with all the broken pieces and the now weakened frame I have to decide what to do with it.

I decided. (That didn't take long, eh.)

Diorama!

I could build a battlefield type seen with a beaten and broken GM or I can build one of him getting the core-fighter kicked out of him by an enemy. I know...!

Yeahhhh! This is going to be interesting.

More gunpla? For the guy who said he was quitting? Well, the wife is in the hospital for another four days at least so I have been pounding out the gunpla while she is away. For example:

I built this guy in about 6 hours in total (mild painting included) and he is having the topcoat dry now. Decals tomorrow night!

I will create an entry just for this guy soon. My entries might be coming fast and furious so be sure not to miss an exciting episode of...

Two outta three ain't bad

Now that I am not hurriedly trying to build gunpla, I have some time (to write about hurriedly building gunpla). I will fill everyone in on how the project went down and will add a smattering of somewhat related pics throughout.

So what about the GM Ver 2.0? He got put to the side after I sprayed the armour pieces and the paint didn't take too well. I will have to sand down most of the pieces and paint again. For the most part, the frame and weapons are complete. Just waiting for some time. And now I have some! No. No, I don't.

In the midst of this gunpla project for work that had me waking up at 6 am every morning, my wife came down with a cough. As it was the end of the year, most clinics were closed. She toughed it out for almost a week and when the nearest clinic was open again went to see a doctor there.

Here's the reader's digest version of how things went from there. She tells doctor she has been having a persistent cough. He looks in her throat and agrees it's a persistent cough. He prescribes a cocktail of pharmaceuticals for her to take. She takes them for three days and feels a little better. The next day she develops a fever. Three days of fever and being stuck in bed while I take care of her and our child and then back to the clinic where they do a chest x-ray and..

Pneumonia. Immediate hospitalization needed.

I have been having a go at being single dad now for the past few days, so I would get up at 6 am do some gunpla while I prepared breakfast and did laundry. Take daughter to daycare, go to work, pick daughter up after work, go visit wife in hospital, return home to bathe daughter and put her to bed, and do gunpla until 2 am. I think I ate occasionally, too.

Thank god it's over with. Well, the gunpla part is..

Well, not really.
Yes, it's the new RX-78-3 Ver 2.0. Why do I have this? Well, when I was building gunpla downstairs at 6 am in a very cold house, I was bundled up under blankets while I snipped parts off the gates. One part flew off and got lost somewhere on the blanket or carpet. Which part?
Yup, the little emblem that fits on the skirt. I still have no idea where it went. I mailed off to Bandai for some spare parts, but with a deadline looming, if the parts weren't to arrive in time I would need a backup plan. The day before the project was due, the parts still had not arrived. I thought I would pick up another RX-78-2 Ver 2.0, use the emblem for the project and replace it with the bandai part when they arrived. However, I didn't really feel like building the exact same model again so soon after completing it. My solution, the RX-78-3. Sure it's the same kit, but there is no deadline so I can play around with it and the colours are different so it has some appeal.

The build is pretty interesting and the articulation is great so I will (hopefully) put more details into my blog as I build it. But then again, I am a single father right now, while still running errands for and visiting the sick wife.

By the way, the replacement parts were waiting for me when I arrived home from work. One day late.

There's another thing I wanted to say. Damn you, Katoki! I spent almost as much time applying decals to the Ver Ka as I did building it. Guess which shield is the Ver Ka...
So I have a GM Ver 2.0 which is half done, and now the RX-78-3 Ver 2.0. As well, I have a Zaku Cannon that has been sitting here for a couple of months. The Zaku Cannon is going to be my swan song, so it will stay sitting there for awhile yet.

Hopefully I will have a gallery up for the RX-78-2 (plural) soon.

Due tomorrow!

Did I make it?Details to come.

Core Fighter Comparison

This will be a brief entry wherein I compare the core fighters of the Ver. Ka and Ver 2.0.


In the picture below the upper core fighter is that belonging to the Ver Ka while the Ver 2.0's is the lower. The look about the same, right? You can see the Ver Ka can sit level on its own while the Ver 2.0 cannot. I found the Ver 2.0 to feel rather flimsy.



The view from above. Ver Ka on the left and Ver 2.0 on the right. First thing to note, the red wings that fold up into the body are designed differently. This is somewhat expected considering the 7 years between kits. The Ver 2.0 wings are made of two separate pieces that are fitted together and then slid into the body of the core fighter from behind. This proved quite difficult to assemble because of the size and thinness of the pieces involved, whereas the Ver Ka wings are one piece that assemble easily by putting an upraised cylindrical piece into a hole. (giggity).

The Ver 2.0 also has two flaps that fold up from the body on either side of the tail wing. Again, because of the size of the piece involved it was difficult to assemble and I don't really want to unfold them as they are designed to be because I fear they will pop out. The Ver Ka just seems sturdy in comparison.



Folded up into the core block. You can see that the Ver Ka (left) just has one solid piece for the bottom whereas the Ver 2.0 has one piece with sections cut making it look much better in my opinion.



And the core block from the other angle. Folding the Core block of the Ver Ka is a piece of cake in comparison to the Ver 2.0. The mechanics are the same for both blocks yet you have to be very careful with the 2.0 as it can stress the pieces when you are transforming and I am sure those thin pieces will break easily.



The Ver 2.0 (top) comes with a stand so it can be posed flying. This would be a cool feature if they had something else to act as the core block for the RX-78-2 while the Core fighter is on its stand. How does the RX-78-2 stay together if this is the case? I haven't finished assembly of the mecha yet so I will try it out once finished. The Ver Ka has a core block that can be assembled and inserted into the Mecha while the Core fighter is out and about. Good idea, me thinks.
When you take the ease of assembly, strength of the pieces, and transformability, not to mention the lack of core block for the 2.0, I think the Ver Ka is the better of the two. Anyone else built both?

Follow up to my f@&! up

This is the change I made on the RX-78-2 Ver 2.0. It is not the part I f'ed up. More on that later.

I mentioned in the last entry how the clear parts for the leg armour had the large knee piece placed directly over the kneecap piece. In my opinion this is not that well thought out. The point of the clear armour, as far as I know, is to show what is going on underneath, but to see one more clear piece beneath a clear piece seems odd. So I put the original knee cap armour back on and it looks much better. Don't you think?Since taking that picture I have also replaced one clear armour part from each piece of side armour as it gives it a better effect.

And I started on the torso of the Ver 2.0 (the GM 2.0 is exactly the same.) This design is really well done and it has a lot of articulation. Interestingly, the pistons point towards the rear of the mecha.
Now we will discuss how I almost busted up the legs of the RX-78-2 Ver Ka.

In this picture you can see the hollow that is the polycap. When I originally assembled the leg frames, I had the pvc piece inserted opposite of how it should be, so that it protruded from the leg frame.
The result, when trying to attach the leg armour, looked like this.
I couldn't figure out where I went wrong. I tried gently pushing it together but it didn't work. I tried using a little more pressure and broke off a small piece of one of the armour pieces (it can't be seen when assembled properly so no harm done). I even tried using my hobby knife to shave some pieces smaller thinking that would help. Perhaps assembling Gundam at 6 am isn't a great idea. I put it aside and came back to it that evening and noticed my error when I checked the manual. In order to fix it I had to pop off the armour, take out the screws, separate the leg frame pieces, flip the polycap around and then reassemble everything.

Compared to the new Ver 2.0 the Ver Ka is simple. Really simple. In fact, to see just how simple it is, check out the picture below.

At 6 AM the following day I opened the Ver Ka back up again and assembled the whole thing in an hour. Before topcoating for decal work I will separate it into sections (legs, arms, torso, etc) and use my utility knife and sandpaper to remove any nubs.

Next blog entry will be a comparison of the core fighter from the Ver Ka and Ver 2.0.

Clear parts debut!

A quick entry to show the work I have done on the legs of all three of these kits. It's an odd feeling to work for an hour or more and then look at what you have accomplished and think it is not too much. Then I have to remind myself that it is because I am switching from kit to kit.

Here is the RX-78-2 Ver 2.0. Bandai packed in an extra E runner with parts molded in clear plastic. The clear is a different kind of plastic than the normal armour parts. It is slightly harder, but still easy to work with. As I am not frame painting I feel a little bit of disappointment because the details that the clear parts allow you to see are rather bland. For example, the knee has a small armour part for a knee cap, over which is placed another armour part. When the joint bends you see the smaller armour part. After taking this picture, I spent some time looking at these legs and thought that clear part over clear part is terribly boring so I went back and replaced the small, knee-cap part with its original white part. Now you can see the white part behind the clear part and the overall effect is much better. (pics later)


And the legs of the GM Ver 2.0. Yup, other than a different piece for the front leg armour these are exactly the same as the RX-78-2's.
The Ver Ka, on the other hand, are quite different. This kit being many years older it is rather simple, and uses screws to assemble the joints. A nice touch was the white tubing that is built into the back of the knee. You can't see it in this picture, but I actually assembled these incorrectly. I stopped here for the day. When I tried to attach the leg armour the next day it wouldn't fit together correctly and caused me a lot of consternation and probably at least 30 minutes of lost time. I will explain in the next entry.

I am not even half way through the project, but finding it enjoyable, although getting up at 6 am on these cold winter mornings isn't the enjoyable part. It's hard to assemble tiny plastic pieces with really cold hands. ;)