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Construction Time Again

Monday, November 16th, 2015

That’s the latest robot model I’ve built; this time another from Bandai’s Valvrave series (Valvrave VI to be precise). I know nothing of the manga or anime, only that these kits were cheap (~$20) and look distinctive.

Similar to the other one I made a while back, this is heavy in the sticker and transparent plastic department, but was quick and easy to assemble and looks pretty snappy assembled!

My next project was this LED Christmas tree kit, assembled with a bit of solder and gumption from the pieces shown at left. It rests on a 9V trunk, and flashes prettily when pushed down on. (SFL would recognize this as a slightly larger ‘blinky thing.)

It was extremely simple to assemble – especially after the nixie clock from earlier this year. A fun little project for my desk at work!

Lastly one of the new metal miniature Star Wars kits, this time the ‘Special Forces Tie Fighter’ from The Force Awakens. I love the new Tie design and was looking forward to making this kit.

But the difficulty was as high – higher even! – than any of the other kits of this type and I hated putting it together! Before you consider buying this one yourself, make sure you have high precision tools, superb lighting, invulnerable skin and the patience of a saint. Even then you’ll make unfixable mistakes like I did….

But it looks pretty great doesn’t it?

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NYCC 2015 Day 4

Sunday, October 11th, 2015

Since we could only stay at the con a few hours today we focused on one last sweep of the main hall (well, about a third of it) and some last minute purchases.

As always I love the vintage and the unusual, and were it not for getting sidetracked by a pile of ancient D&D modules (all of which I then bought) I nearly purchased a crazy expensive boxed Ultraman villian from the 80’s.

I didn’t buy this though:

Or any of these:

And certainly not this:

I have to say though, I love that someone’s even trying to sell that. Yet another reason this con is so much fun.

I haven’t spoken of our celebrity sightings yet. Aside from the X-files panel, we probably saw fewer this year than ever before, and much of the sightings were like this:

There were also much fewer people signing autographs this year as well, which may have been good because I doubt anyone could have topped the bizarre John deLancie from last year 🙂

Eventually, it was time once again for us to turn our backs on the con and head home.

Since it’s KLS’s birthday today, we had sprung for a first-class room on the train home! It was cozy and comfortable, and came with a delicious meal in the dining car!

Doesn’t she look happy!!

After four long and packed days we’re super tired, but once again we had a great time at NYCC. I’ll follow up in a few days with a post about some of the unusual loot we brought home with us…

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NYCC 2015 Day 3

Saturday, October 10th, 2015

We awoke early and headed down the con to line up at 9 am for a bracelet that would get us into a panel over four hours later. Then we lined up for another bracelet to get us into another panel starting over nine hours later. All this took over two hours and while frustrating and boring is typical of Saturday – the day of lines – at this con.

We spent the couple of hours we had in Artists Alley buying prints before heading back to the main hall and lining up again for the first panel which was The X-Files.

And it was amazing!

We got to see the entire first episode (which screens next year) and it vastly exceeded our expectations. It was followed by a panel featuring Mulder (Duchovny) and Skinner (Pileggi) and series creator Chris Carter himself.

Since they didn’t want the episode leaking online security was very tight and included guys watching the audience through night vision goggles (!) to spot anyone trying to record it! Surreal…

The afternoon was the usual con overload, gawking and buying and dealing with the intense crowds. No matter how much you walk around there’s always something new to be seen!

Many things were bought, both for us and others. Dozens of 3DS street passes were obtained. Swollen feet throbbed in agony.

We headed out for some dinner and to drop our loot off at the hotel.

We returned for the cosplay contest, which was a lot of fun. Leaving the con after it has closed looks like this:

Tomorrow – KLS’s birthday! – is the last day of this years con. Even after over 20 hours on the show floor there’s still things we want to have a closer look at. Since we’ve only got a few hours before our train, it’ll be a busy morning indeed!

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Craft Work

Wednesday, September 16th, 2015

I could fill this blog with endless posts going into tedious detail about the various model kits I always seem to be making. But that’s a bit dry for those of you not me, so instead I’ll take this chance to show off some of my recently completed kits.

The first is Imperial Girl, the second in a series of kits based on the character art done by Yuji Himukai for RPG series Etrian Odyssey. I made the first kit earlier this year and thought it was pretty snappy but this one is even better, with amazingly detailed armour (with metallic paint) and many cute faces to choose from. It was an easy build as well, and looks wonderful straight out of the box (ie. without additional paint).

Next was this ‘Metal Earth’ miniature metal Notre Dame kit, which Bernard gave me a while back. I’ve made many similar models, but this was the first of the larger ‘ICONX’ series (more pieces and complexity). It took me about a week working about a half hour per day and was certainly amongst the more difficult I’ve made. The finished product is very pretty though 🙂

I’ve always loved General Grievous, iconic villain of Star Wars episode 3, and this recently released Lego kit may as well have been designed with me in mind! Using the bionicle framework, Lego has created perhaps the single best Grievous figure yet made, that not only looks fab but has amazing poseability (including locking his arms together). It’s also quite large, standing over a foot tall. I love it!

Last but not least is this Gundam, or to give the correct full name of this kit: RX-0[N] Unicorn Gundam 02 Banshee Norn (Destroy Mode) Full Psycho-Frame Prototype Mobile Suit. Mouthful of a name aside, this is one hell of a kit that includes about 10 colours of plastic (including 3 transparent types) and seemingly-zillions of pieces that snap together to form a very angular and almost overdesigned beast of a robot. This was a fun kit to make and looks great with the contrast between the black armour and yellow ‘crystal’ innards. It’s a 1/144 kit which means it’s a tad smaller than the 1/100’s I prefer, but the price was low (~$20) and the quality extremely high. I enjoyed making this one a lot!

I’m finding myself spending more and more time making models like these. I find it very relaxing. Maybe you should give it a try?

Posted in Art, Crafts, Models, Otaku | 2 Comments »

Valrave The Liberator

Sunday, July 19th, 2015

I wanted to make another robot kit, but rather than a weeks-long HG Gundam or Zoid (both of which are on ‘my stack’) I instead opted for an ‘easy’ 1/144 kit.

My thoughts first turned to the impressive Strike Freedom Gundam 1/144 RG kit, but Florence is going to make that one and I didn’t want to ‘copy’! Then an enjoyable search online led to me buying this guy for about $20:

It’s ‘Valrave’ from the anime Valrave The Liberator. I neither know or care to know anything about the anime but loved the design of the mecha 🙂

Here’s what I found inside:

I hadn’t bought a 1/144 kit in a long while and was surprised at the detail of this one. 7 different plastic colours along with metallic stickers is more than I expected from a budget kit.

Assembly was easy enough, with the whole shebang taking maybe 4 hours in a few sessions. The most complex part was easily the abundance of stickers:

Here’s a before-and-after of the right leg:

If you look along the bottom edges, half-way up the leg, and along the rims of the two curved hip pieces you can see where I (carefully!) have applied stickers. I needed tweezers and patience to get these perfect, and thankfully they were normal adhesive stickers and not the challenging water-applied decals.

Here’s all the body parts pre-assembly:

And here he is put together:

So much detail for such an inexpensive kit! He’s very poseable, extremely well balanced and looks great.

Next were the weapons and stand. I’d never had a kit with a stand before so even though he stands easily I put him up on the stand as if he were hovering:

There are many weapon options. I went understand, with just the one sword and shield. Here’s a shot from behind:

And here he is in his new home, sharing a shelf with a giant stuffed Peep:

Obviously I’m very pleased with everything about this $20 model. Good thing I bought another in the lie at the same time 😉

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