Monthly Archives: December 2010

WiP: PG Strike Freedom #01

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As noted by my initial 00 WiP, I’ve already jumped in and started on the head. Let’s start off easy and ramp it up from there. So let’s take a look, shall we?

The parts for the head

You may note the led there, unfortunately, while it’s strong enough for the eyes, it’s obviously quite lacking for the front and back clear sensor areas, so for those who want to have some color there, you may want to look at painting or doing something there. One thing I do like is the vulcans are made of two pieces, with the black standing out a bit more than just one white piece.

Halfway done.

And before you know it, the head is complete. Overall impression looks good, so I went ahead and panel lined it. There’s one decal for the head, but I’m debating on waiting for the most likely water slide release. Again, kudos to Bandai for never releasing water slides at the same time with the kit.

Front

Side

Back

And with the head done, I jumped straight into the beam rifles, as I have a tendency to hit weapons block if I leave them for last. As is, they are both fairly simple to build with only slight differences allowed for the combining feature.

Parts for the first beam rifle

And completed.

Second beam rifle parts

Closer look at how it comes together

Closer look at how it comes together

Completed and with the second beam rifle

This rifle has some connected movement, pull back and the sensor moves up.

So, stick one up the, ahem… other rifles rear and…

You get a giant ass rifle!

With rifles out of the way, I feel relieved knowing I won’t have to drag myself to do them at the end. So far at this point, all is simple, and I’ve managed to use up 1 of the 55 runners. Now 54 more to go. Next up, jumping around again, we move on to the backpack and torso.

WiP: PG Strike Freedom #00

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As mentioned, the PG Strike Freedom arrived on Friday, and while I wanted to jump in, business kept me away for the weekend.  However, I’m back and it’s time to unbox and get ready to get at this monster kit.  First off, one thing I notice is despite this PG being the biggest in terms of volume and runners, it comes in a smaller box than you would imagine.  The OO Gundam Raiser kit and the GP-01 definitely take the cake for big boxes, but Bandai stuff 55 total runners in this box rather efficiently.

Front

Back

Sides

Unfortunately, while cutting back on box size, you have a ton of plastic bags to open up to get at the runners themselves.  So much for thinking ecological?  But still, just the sheer amount of runners is amazing.  The wife was definitely wondering when I would stop taking runners out of the box.  She was also not happy with the amount of plastic bags leftover from unbagging.  I think it must have taken five minutes just to get the runners unbagged….

Mount Plastic Baggies

After getting these all unbagged, we go from Mount Plastic Baggies to Mount Plastic, as all I can say is wow, this kit is going to take some time!  Having been building HG kits lately, I’ve started to get used to building a small kit with 5 or 6 runners, but unboxing this kit reminds me of the effort and dedication that a PG requires.

Runners

With everything unbagged, it’s back in the box.

Normally I organize my runners in alphabetical order, but the idea of doing that with 55 runners wasn’t appealing, so I went with separating by color. Looking close at the runners, we see that dull yellow gold color (I hate this color, it looks so cheap and bleh) runners take up quite a large portion of the kit.  Thankfully the design calls for those yellow parts to hidden behind armor, and uses extra finish to be used for visible areas.  My bigger concern going forward will be how gate placement will be for other pieces.  The downside of PG size means you have larger gates, which means larger damage is always a possibility.  Speaking of going forward, my plan will be to work on the PG Strike during the week after work, depending on how many Japanese end of the year parties I have to attend, while continuing to make the MG ReZel my weekend project.  Rather than going in order as well, I’ll probably be jumping around, and will most likely do the head, dragoons, and weapons first.

WiP #01 coming soon!