Build Off - Davime Vs Krescenhaze

Hello Dear readers, first of all , i would like to thank you for your time for reading my posts..
and second of all I would like to share this banner -

Yes, this is another Build-off between to active members of MAC. Both of them are the founding members of MAC and both of them are really skilled and experienced.

As you may all know, me and Aulon had a friendly build off with the same mobile suits and then we were talking about it on skype and I believe it was Kamm that suggested Krescenhaze to have a build off like ours. They were working on the same kit and Krescenhaze was happy to go along with the idea and he proposed that idea onto Davime and afterward, it was green light.

David Ceremonia AKA Davime have been modelling for quite sometime now, as far as I know, it has been two to three years that he has been modelling. David's strong point is his unique way of plating and his massive usage of plates and making things , simply put, awesome. He has churned out a number of great kits all have been improving by ten-fold since he started this hobby.

Adrian Navarro Sicat AKA Krescenhaze is , according to my knowledge, a late comer into the hobby and a junior compared with David. But don't let the info fool you, Adrian is very very well capable of making a unique and beautiful piece of work and he has proved that months ago with his great looking IJ ( which will be featured at a later time) and the works he had done to this unicorn. Adrian's strong point is that he's good with curved surfaces and he can details thing like crazy ( believe you me).

Read more >>

Featured Modellers Chapter 3.1: Decay's The-O

Hello dear readers. In this chapter 3 of my featured modeller series, I will be proudly presenting a very very beautiful kit done by a fellow modeller from MAC, who is also a member of a group of close friend. His name is Marc Meyer, known as Decay on MAC and this beautiful piece of his work that will be presented is a one of kind THE-O.

Decay was only scarcely active at figure FM once and when he knew about MAC, he became an active member right away (although I honestly have no idea how he knew of MAC :P ). He has then graced MAC with a magnificent piece of art and his contribution to the forum is very very enormous.

Decay has been modelling for over 20 years, working on the warhammer figures and Lord Of the Rings figures. He has only started working on Gunpla for a mere two year. And this THE-O is the second project that he has done, by project, I mean like customising, modding project, not including OOTB.

Decay airbrushed this baby with desert yellow all over and did weathering with hairspray and pastel. The modding he has done include moving of the hidden arms to the elbows, making the chest look more boxy, bulky, major changes on the feet and some cosmetics changes here and there and of course, major works on the gun.

Now, what's great of this kit is that, Decay turned the THE-O into his own style, his own concepts and that concepts just turned out awesome. By my count, ( keep in mind of my hate for the THE-O), I have only seen 3 or 4 other THE-O, and two are Kamm's and Don's. The weathering Decay put on this massive kit is just simply amazing, subtle and realistic. And with the new cosmetic changes, who else can argue that this is not beautiful??

I hope you will love this THE-O as much as I do. More info about this build can be seen at the forum thread here. Enjoy and Stay Tuned for more updates. Thanks for reading.

Read more >>

Featured Modellers Chapter 1.2 - Kamm's HLJ MkII

Greetings dear readers. In this second sub-section of the chapter one of Featured Modellers, I will be featuring the one and only HLJ (Hobby Link Japan) Gundam of a dear friend of mine, the one that we from MAC know and love as Kamm.

This is a piece of work that which he is so proud of ( and obviously, the one which he keeps showing off.. LOL.. just kidding Kamm :P ) and I agreed with him being so proud of this kit. Not only this kit has superb battle damage and weathering details, but the paint is top-notch too. As usual, Kamm who loves painting model kits, painted this kit entirely by hand. I know most people won't believe this but if you look very close, there's still one or two brush stokes some where (my eye sight bad, so I couldn't really pick them out, sorry about that) and that is indeed proof that he hand painted it.

And the weathering and battle damages he did on this kit is purely amazing. It is not amazing because it looks great ( basically these are just basic battle damages and weathering) but it is amazing the way the battle damages actually turned out. He used simple and basic techniques to weather, including washes and dry bushing and he just used a power tool to make those battle damage. That's why that is amazing, using simple methods to make those effects and they turned out perfect.

Kamm is a active member of Gunpla.TV and the way he came across to this agreement to make this the offical HLJ sheme gundam is a quite an interesting one too. This is the full account of how that came by, straight from the modeler's mouth -  

'''He pmd me asking me to send pictures and a write up to them so they could feature it, next a few weeks went by. I finished my "THe-O" and uploaded that. They then asked me if I would do a tutorial on how to

battle damage/weather kits. And I said would you like me to do it in the HLJ theme. And they said yeh '''

On top of that, he got that kit for free ( lucky guy.. hate him :P ).. 

Nevertheless, it is always healthy for the eyes to see a great piece of gunpla and as a dear friend of him, I am proud to present his greatest achievement in his modelling career.

Here's the YouTube link for the finished model if you want to see more

and here's the tutorials on how he did those effects -

Link 1

Link 2

I hope you dear readers will love this gundam as much I love it. Thanks for reading and Stay Tuned.

 

Read more >>

Featured Modellers Chapter 2.1: Aulon's X-bone

In this chapter 2.1 of Modeller's Innovation's Featured modellers series, I will be featuring another friend of mine. His name is Paweł Cynk and he is known in the modelling community as "Aulon'', to me, he is a dear friend who invented the bottle cap technique for his diorama. That technique just blew me away. Aulon is not exactly a noob but he tends to go a bit overboard with weathering, nevertheless, he is a great modeller and his works are great.

To know him better here is a little interview I made with him - 

Q - How long has it been you're doing modelling?

A - the real starting date would be 9.2008 - that's when I bought my first kit- MG Force Impulse Gundam - still loving the design would love to this one again (*wink*wink*hint*wink* ). although i was interested in gunpla long before that and read a lot, as for modeling... well glued few kits when i was still a kid, both plastic and carton, rember helping my cousin making some kits - mainly his carton 1/350 aircraft carrier, don't remember the name tough but i remember deck number 66.

Q - What s your style of modelling.

A - my style... tricky question. i don't think i am the one to decide that haha
i was once told that all of my builds have a distinctive "feel" to them, although don't cite me on that as I'm not sure about that myself :p

Q - How many kits have you worked on???

A - let me count... only finished kits? - oh seems like my happy number - 13 completed gunpla kits so far :D (i can list them for you if you want :p)

Q -  AB or HB?? 

A - currently both. i used to do only handpainting, but stared ABing last summer with only 2 kits so far (SD Kanpei and HGUC Hazel II [Recon] ) crossbone is fully handpainted tough. I think that i will keep doing both types (with spay cans from time to time like it was with one of my MG Exias) as some things are just easier to handpaint instead of masking and airbrushing, both types have advantages and drawbacks therefore I will try to use both of them :D

Now you know a little about him ( I don't know him that much either so .. :P :P ), anyway, 

Without further ado, I present to you ... Mr. Aulon's great piece of art - 

The Crossbone Gundam Diorama 

 

 

 If you want to see more you can check them out at -

Picasa Gallery

Youtube Video

I hope you will love this Xbone as much as I do 

Stay Tuned for more

Read more >>

Improving the HG 1/100 Nataku - Part7

Right, This is update no. 7 and I wll be working on the face and the fangs from now on....at first, I was working to make the V-fin much better, make it thinner yet add a bit more length and bulk and the sorts..

As you can see, I install some plates by cutting off the Fins and gluing back together.... and add some thin plate on the sides of the large V-fins to add more ( I would say) bulk and sanded down and shaped into something similar to that of the WZC V-fins
Unfortunatly, I haven't take a photo of the sanded process for the V-fin so you would have to look at the works i done after a few more pictures...
ok... and i was looking at the nataku head and I saw really really really small ''ears'' and I thought like ''what the heck are they doing there??'' and I decided to make a new pair myself...
As usual, you wanna make something new, you cut your pla-plate first so...
Step 1 :

I admit I based if off the ears of the WZC but I also tried to retain the orgial look
step 2 : some small details

That is my way of scribing, which is extremelly useful to scribe straight line - you see the lines I drew with black pen?? basically you just line up this '' Dymo tape'' along the pre-drawn line and after making sure the tapes are securelly adhered to the plates (make sure the tapes are not moving)... you just scribe by means of a scribe or a hobby knife...
and voila ... here is the finished new lines... the upper one is the exterior of the ''ears'' and the lower one is the inside of the ears..

after that, which is step 4, I just cut of the orginal part, precisely at the place where the ear started bending...  and sanded my SB ears into a angle and glued with the orginal part like so in the picture .... 

Can you guys see the early stages of the V-fins shaping?? That is so ovbiously messy and looks very bad and I just hated it cos its so hard to shape so I made a new V-fin out of scratch.. again, I love the WZC v-fin so I based this V-fan of the WZC V-fin... here is the result I get... which is pretty cool in my eyes...


right.. that's the head done... all that's left to do seam line and some more tidy up.... next up is the dragon fangs....

as everyone knows, the fangs are quite a bit short and little bit dull, so I elongated and sharpen them a bit by means of pla-plate shapings reinforced by putty... and this is the result it give ....

I have to admit, the sharpening of the fangs are not exactly top-notch, but I am happy with what I got... and move to the detailing the shields...

I was looking around the shield and found that it was too bare so i decided to detail it up... and i stared on the sides .... by cutting 4 plates like so ...


after that, I glued them on the sides of the shields and sanded down the sides to an angle to match with the shield, and the final version looks like this ...


and I thought, ''ok, the sides is done, happy with it.. what else??'' and I found that the 'head' of the shields looks rather plain so I just strap on a plate to detail is up a bit . The following picture describe that as well as shows you the upper portion of the shield..


That's the upper portion of the shields done, so I moved on to the lower ( you say the interior of the shield or its belly)... As you all know, the underside of the head of the shield is hollow which is just awful so i filled that up with greey putty... and I used strips of pla plates to come up with that ''panel??'' looking part you see on the pictue.


As you can see from the picture, I also detailed the hollow sections where the fangs go in when it is at their normal position. That hollow section was just aweful so filled that up with a plate, cut according to the shape and size of the hollow region and put on a kotobukiya vent part diagonally ... I was going to SB my own vents but i was just play lazy.. :P hehe ... and as you can see from the following picture (sorry about my ugly hand :P )... the details fit well after every part is fitted, although it's a little hard to see... hope you guys can see that


Now, it has come to the final part of the detailings of the shield... the peg on the posterior part of the shield goes into a polycap at the end of the red segmented chain (i'm talking about the circled part from the picture)

That was  pure eye sore... a absolute bummer to the actual kit.... and so I decided to improvise an detailed up that part... like so...


It was done by surrounding with pla plates, fliing the gaps with green putty and putting another layer of alternating thin strips for cosmetic purposes...
Attached back to the chain, it looks like this...

And I am very very very much facinated by my own results :P :P (if I'm not, who else would.. :P.. nah.. just joking around.. :P ) anyway, that's wrap up the dragon fangs/shield of my Nataku.. next up is the backpack.... Stay Tuned...

Read more >>

Build Off - Aulon Vs Hummingbird

Hello dear readers - Before I start anything... let me just post this banner

That's right.. This is gonna be a build off between me and Aulon - one of the great modeller of MAC who build the awesome Xbone that Don blogged about ... Going against this guy won't be easy.... ''sigh''

But honestly, this is not a competition build off. This is a friendly build off, you could say this is a share and learn from each other build off...

We were just talking some days ago and one thing led to another and we decide to have a build off as fun ..

We decided to have a build off about the Strike Noir.. His being a HG and mine a MG.. We don't have set rules... we will build our kit as we see fit...

I have to say, I am really really proud to be having a build-off with this man.. Think about it, it is an honour to be having a build off with someone who invented the bottle cap technique for his diorama... Either we are very good friends that he proposed this build off or I'm getting better with my modelling... which ever the reason, I am so proud to be having a build off with this guy... even more so that our friends from MAC is cheering on both of us..

So, Aulon Vs Hummingbird, a modder vs a scratch builder, a weathering man vs a clean build man - What Kind of kit will they make??? Stick around and Find out..

Full details of the WIPs can be seen here -
Hummingbird's MG Strike Noir Raven
Aulon's HG Spectre Strike

Thanks for reading,, your support is much appreciated...  Stay tuned

Read more >>

Improving the HG 1/100 Nataku - Part6

Right..I'm sure you all will remember that i was moaning about modding the legs,right??? well... I stopped the moaning and took actions...i modded the ankles...
All thanks to the support of friends and gunpla family and senseis and senpais from all the various fourm that encouraged me to mod on the ankles... ARRIGATTO...

Before that, I made some small touchups to the skirts area....

back skirts


front skirts

and the Groin or whatever-you-called-that-part-armour.. I extended this a little bit and put a peice of plate on each site to add some details.. i thought it was just twoo small compare with the whole kits..so,, yeah


and the butt armour?? (sorry guys)... i also did the same thing as i did with the groin armour


that finialized the skirts and pelvis area.... and now. moving on to the legs, i decided to work on the feets first...
1st - i trimmed it down to a slimmer feet by sanding,sanding and sanding (huu lots of sanding i tell you)
2nd - I cut the white ..eh..upper feet.. and extended it by stacking 4 pieces or 0.2 (i think) mm plates.. u can see the stacks plates
3rd - again, i used my method that i used on the shoulders to extend the toes and make it more better looking (and i am happy with it)
and here is the pictures of what i did....

Side view


that's the feet done,, and yes, still needing a LOT of clean up, i moved on to the feet.... I decided to make the ankles similer to the SF or IJ or destiny...the only thing is that i made it reversed.. the MG have the two ball going both way from the ankle guard, while my ankles have two cups installed in it.... here's the steps...

1st - obviously, i had to cut the ankles apart..
2nd - i used the orginal cup that was in the ankle and another one from koto parts to make the joint, since the cups are not styrene (they are PC, as u know) so gluing won't work in this case,, so i just slapped on a massive amount of putty to hold them...
3rd - again... i used a massive amount of putty and since the koto ball joint are not styrene either, i thought it would be better to sink them in putty and tried to hold them like that... and much to my surprise, it works...
Here's are the pictures,,

1st step -

2nd step -

3rd step -

so now... my lets (lower legs actually) are made up of three parts, as you can see from the pictures


so,., after the mods..... my nataku now looks like this...


I am very happy with what i got.. and quite satisfied,,, now all that's left for me is to do some touch-ups here and there..clean up, finishings,,,oh yeah,, the dragon fangs.. can't forget those.... and the head... gonna have to sharpen the V fin and the ears..... any comments,, just fire away....thank you so much for your support.. Stay tuned for more

Read more >>

Improving the HG 1/100 Nataku - Part5

As you all know.. the back skirts of every late 80s HG.. and I do mean every... are attached and they cannot be move and it really is a royal pain in the neck... so...  first thing first... i cutted it in ''twain''.. that was one hell of a cutting.. my  arms were aching from the sawing...

and this is what i do after i cutted the skirts... the full process is in the picture.....


so.. after seeing this... i assuming you guys will be thinking what i do with the back skirts... well, here it is... as ususal the full process is inside the picture... and man, this is one confusing process... i had to carefullly figure out where to put in the cups..


and ta- da.... my HG Nataku just got a MG skirt... of cos.. i still have to put more details in it..... will do it shortly...


Inner View


AND this is how much my nataku can bend now....... compared here with the WZC ..

and here is wher my current progress ..... a dirty nataku ... about 75% done..... I first thought of extending the leg... but i decide not to..... but i still have to modify the legs.... or maybe kitbash some....

That's it for the first part of the Waist mod... Stay tuned... next update will be the leg

Read more >>