Monthly Archives: March 2010

Double Victory! part omake

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This post will wrap up the Victory Gundam here at ASM.  These are the pictures taken when GaiGun and I met up in Akiba after we finished our build.  I hope you enjoyed all the Victory goodness over the last month.  Next up is further followups on the Unicorn GBP.

Double Victory! part final

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So, here are the final official photo shoot pictures of the Victory Gundam along with the final thoughts on the kit.

Double Victory!

First off, paint, just to clarify again, I used the following colors:

  • Blue Parts     ->  Pearl Green
  • Red Parts     ->   Light Pearl Blue
  • Yellow Parts -> Haze Gray
  • Gun             -> Metallic Black with Silver Leaf

Other touches including painting the helmet and gun sensors with a dab of metallic green Gundam marker, followed by covering it with aurora stickers.  My aurora stickers is a clearish pink style, so the green underneath seemed to give it more “color” so to say.  For the Hexa head, I actually covered the whole eye section with an aurora sticker, to give it more of a “visor” style, similar to the GM grunt line.  The Victory head I cut squares to go over the eye sections.

The build in itself was fairly easy, aside for lots of smalls, and the need to build two core fighters.  After painting was done and initial parts built, I panel lined and applied decals.  As for my opinion of those, you’ve seen that already in my decal hell post.  Again, I look at it now, and I feel like it’s a bit of overkill.  But I seemed to be afflicted with a do all the decals or do none syndrome, so there you go.

Lastly, I finished off with a healthy top coat of pearl gloss over everything.  I’ve not been the biggest fan of glossy finishes, but I find that Tamiya’s gloss coat comes off much better than Mr. Hobby’s Gloss Top Coat.  Mr. Hobby still makes the best flat coat out there though.

And so what are my thoughts?  GaiGun and I actually compared notes yesterday in Akiba, and we both agreed on the surprisingly (or not surprising?) lack of poseability.  Now, the fact that you can do all the transformations is a good point, but on the other hand, parts don’t really stay in their place like they should.  In particular, the legs pop on to the waist ball pegs things, but you really don’t get that feeling of “snap, it’s in there” and so they fall off rather easily.  On my kit as well, the upper arms tended to literally pop off the shoulder, and you can quite notice that they don’t sit as tightly together as they do on GaiGun’s kit.  This is obviously for the transformation gimmick however, so I guess you have to give and take in certain areas.  Still, it’s kind of frustrating to try and prop things up for any kind of picture outside of them just standing there.

Again, one thing we also agreed on is that the engineering for this is amazing.  As noted by several of our commentators, the Victory is literally HG 1/144 size, packing the MG quality build. But again, as neat as it is, to be honest,  I’m not a fan of the Victory’s separate forms to begin with.  Flying arms with a gun is one thing, but flying legs?  In a sort of twist, I found myself liking the Hexa head more than the Gundam head, and will be displaying my Victory in Hexa Mobile Suit mode along with the Gundam head core fighter.

Overall though, in regards to my Victory Gundam, while not a perfect paint job, and that I think that I prefer more “solid” kits (The Sinanju is a great example of a solid kit), this was a fun kit to build, and I’m extremely pleased with the results.  For those who may be interested in seeing good engineering in a small size, along with volume in a kit, in the fact that you can build not just the Victory, but the Hexa version if you want, then this is a good kit to pick up.

A large part of that comes from the fun of doing a collaboration build with a friend, and that’s what really made this kit great.  I hope you all enjoyed the shots, and as you already know, questions, comments, praise, and all always appreciated.

Lastly, I highly recommend that you check out GaiGun’s final post regarding the Victory Gundam as he goes through the transformation process with his Victory, braving paint scratches and lost decals to give you the full review.

Double Victory! part 2

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More Victory Gundam shots for you! Here’s gallery 2, with more in a could of days.

Double Victory!

gallery 2

Double Victory!

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ASM and GaiGun are proud to present the finished products of our first collaboration.  Without further ado, we present to you the results of the Victory Gundam Ver. Ka Duo Project!

Double Victory!

Of course, that’s one shot of many.  GaiGun will have the specifics of his colors on his blog, but for mine, I went literally all Pearl colors.  You’re seeing Pearl Green with a Pearl Light Blue, with touches of Metallic Black, all covered with a Pearl Gloss finish.  I’ll cover more of the specifics in upcoming posts, but first I have to thank my partner in this project for going above and beyond in taking a ton of great pictures.  The gallery today is the first of at least two galleries of photos taken by GaiGun, finishing off with the gallery of informal shots we took in Akiba.

But who wants to read text?  Here’s a bunch of pictures for you to check out.  Comments, thoughts, and questions are always appreciated!

UGB WiP – Unicorn Gundam #0

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With the Victory build done, it’s time to turn my attention to the next project, the GAF Unicorn Group Build Project.    This build will actually be a bit of a slow build, as I’m somewhat busy this month with a variety of things.  For those familiar with Japanese culture, they tend to base the end and start of things around March/April.  This is significant in school, new jobs, and of course, the fiscal year.  The means work is busy wrapping up the “results” of the last year of business, while mixing in those ever important company parties.  Also add into it that Sakura season starts sometime in the next week, and you’ll throw cherry blossom viewing parties into the mix.  Oh, and of course, something I’m looking forward to, the next Ryu Ga Gotoku drops in 2 days, which puts yet another game on my already hefty backlog list. 

Well, excuses aside, this will simply be a slower build over the next month.  I’ll try and make up for it, I promise.

So, you’ve seen the box.  Again, even after both kits being discounted 30% here, there was still a near 2,000 yen difference between the regular MG Unicorn Kit and the HD Color + Cage kit.  HD Color really pops on things like blue, red, and even gold, as we saw with last years HD releases of the Zeta, Hyaku-Shiki, and Gundam Mk-II kits, but when it’s white, you really can’t tell the difference.  A nice coat of clear gloss on white would probably give you the same effect.  Thusly, I decided to just go with the regular version.

The box again, for your reference.

So what’s the plan?  I’ll be doing this build for permanent display in Destroy mode, as the Psycho Frame is what I plan to show off on it.  This also makes it easy to paint like the Victory, and should be fairly fast once I get past the painting part to build.

Unbagged and ready to snip.

Of course, the main rule of the Group Build Project is, like the Sinanju Group Build Project, to paint at least part of the kit.  In a way I think this makes the Unicorn harder to paint than the Sinanju in respect to the available color schemes with the characteristics of the Unicorn Gundam.  Of course, anything is possible in actuality, but I think the first hard choice starts with the Psycho Frame, which comes in a clear reddish pink color.  Do you try and keep that clear quality, or do you go solid? Choices, choices. 

Speaking of choices, what colors am I planning to use?  GaiGun and I met up this last Saturday for our monthly pub and Gundam run in Akiba, and we took the time to look at paint.  And there is plenty to choose from…

Nice selection!

Now what to pick…

In the long run, I’ve settled on my main choices, but in regards to the Psycho Frame, I’ll refrain from passing on that info just yet as I want to see how doable my choice will be.  But for everything else  I’ll be using my staple favorites I think:

Inner Frame – Gun metal -> This will be used mainly on the areas that will be visible, so around the ankle, knee, elbow, etc, with plated silver highlights on areas (back of the knee, etc)

Backpack/feet – Dark Mica Blue -> My Sinanju color right here.

Weapons – Debating between light gun metal, gun metal, or metallic black.  For the gun, I’ll paint the ammo clips, not sure what color yet.

Thrusters – Metal parts maybe?  Still have some thrusters left over from the Sinanju…

V-fin – Gold or dark yellow.  

Over all Glossy finish, or, a pearl gloss finish (I really love pearl gloss finish right now….)

That’s my main plan at this part, and I’ll be starting in reverse with the Rifle and Bazooka to get that out of the way.  Regarding the Gatling, hindsight states that I should have gotten off my ass and gotten one off of Yahoo Auctions when they were around 1,500 yen, with this new release, the price seems to have skyrocketed up to around 4,000 yen, so, no plans on that soon.   I’ll hopefully knock out the weapons this week and start o the psycho frame, and if my choice of color works out good… well, we’ll see!