Modelling 101: Don't bite off more than you can chew

Hello Ladies and Gents ( if there is any ladies at all that read my blog post). Welcome to another post from the hummingbird.

Right, in this post, I would love to talk about another basic thing junior modeler need to know. And its basically about ''biting off more than you can Chew''.

That's right folks, ''Biting off more than you can chew''. It can happen, it will happen and it happened to me. Ruined a 1/144 Freedom and a 1/100 Heavy Arm and not to mention, I'm living in a country where Gunpla is very hard to come by.

Before I go on, have a look at my failures owning to my mistake of biting off more than I can chew.

As you an see, these are the result of me biting off more than I can chew. The Freedom, I bought it back in 2008 and I saw White Base's freedom and inspired by it. The Heavy Arm, I got it in early 2009 and was inspired to MG-fied this thing. 

I started Gunpla at late 2007 and the freedom was like my third gunpla since I started and there was only a limited resources to which I can access. In short, I had no idea what the hell I was doing or how to do thing. I was just inspired by other's great build that I wanted to do something like that. I was 18 back then, that also speaks a lot, as I was still very young and just wanted to copy something great. And boy, I did copy with out proper learning, proper practice and all I got was failure. But that didn't discouraged me, it fueled me to learn from them. Of course, those two models became wastes.

Its true gunpla is very addictive and inspiration is very very important. But perceiving inspiration in the wrong way can result in disaster. For a young and aspiring modeler, seeing so much inspiring builds can and will fuel him to try to be like his inspiration, be it modding a kit or painting kit. 

If that's that case, I just want to say this - Take things slow. Research, Ask around, read tutorials and practice first. For instance, lets take MatX for example. He does great modding job. One would (and surely be) inspired by his crazy, awesome, out-worldly modding. And from that inspiration, would come drive to mod and without proper practice, thinking one can do it,  one will start cutting up his gunpla, only to find that it is near impossible to get even a fraction of the modding done. Evidently from my past photo, that exactly happened to me. I didn't research enough and I went ahead and BAM, Failure. I bit off more than I can chew and I was left with two crap. 

I seriously don't want my juniors to go through what I have gone through as it is quite painful and a massive waste of money. So, please, take it from a man who went through this, do not DO NOT bite off more than you can chew.

I hope this post have been nice and educating to read. If you require any thing regarding gunpla, please don't hesitate to ask me and even if you ask me something that is not my expertise, I can refer you to my friends who know more. 

Thank you all for reading and as ever, thank you for your ever lasting support. 

Stay Tuned until the next update.

Edit - to add to this post, A great great modeler by the name of Matt Tomczek said and I quote 

''  I understand that Gunpla is hard to come by for you, but I actually disagree entirely with this. In order to learn, and progress, you need to do more then you can. If you just "take what you can eat" you'll never get better or learn anything at all. In the event that you ruin a kit, so be it. You learned the lesson, and yes it sucks that you lost some money, but in the long run you'll understand what you did wrong and will learn to either prepare better, or avoid your mistake. '' ... 

This is true yes ... but at the same time, I have seen many junior modelers biting off more than they can chew and doing something they still cannot do and put into a bad community, that will have a negative impact on those said modelers. 

The most important thing is , instead of biting off more then you can chew and getting negative results and what not , I would just like to advise to take things slow and practice and slowly and surely, it will come to you. Just don't rush.

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Special Feature 1.2 - Kamm's Ground type Sazabi (HG)

Hello there Ladies ( if there are any) and gents .... Once again, its time for the little birdy to blog again....


And that's right ... you saw it in the title... Another special feature ... a few moons back, I made a first special feature and this is the second one .... and in the special feature, I will be featuring a ground-breakin, breath-taking work for one of the Legend of MAC and ADMIN of. MAC . A man with a golden heart, who goes by the name of ''' trumpet'' .....Kamm.


Now if you all could remember that I made a blog post about the build off between the Decaying Legend and the Hand Painting Assassin, You might have noticed already What I will be featuring today. But in case you don't remember, let me kindly refresh your memories with a link back to it - Here it is 


I seriously doubt Kamm will need introduction to who or what he is .. but just in case you guys forgot about him or haven't actually heard about him, let me refresh your memories - 

• Kamm  only got into the hobby since 1 year ago, 
• He loves to paint models - he's a painting guy, pure and simple.... 
• He used to paint warhammer models and now, he has switched to gunpla. 
• He HAND BRUSH his models - that's right, HAND BRUSH 
• His most famous work is the FAZZ: FEARED ONE
• He rose to fame after building his HLJ gundam
• And best of all, A very very very good friend of mine.

Kamm is a very skilled modeler, most particularly  in the painting and weathering departments. He has done  a range of modeling including painting warhammer figures, clean works, weathered and the ever impressive modifying works.


If you could kindly refer back to the announcement about their build off, Decay and Kamm decided to mod a HIGH GRADE Sazabi into their own version. Kamm choose to work on a ground  type and he really went all out on his sazabi.


To go along with this concept, and of course with some help from me ( hehe, just kidding) ... he choose to go with a two tone green colour scheme just as you would see a real war machine in the outside world.


And don't let this blow you away  but the whole kit has been hand painted. You saw it right, , Hand painted... I will be damned if I could find a single brush stroke on that thing... Always tried to look for one so that I could rub it in his face.. but damn, I still can't find one... LOL



Just with Decay's sazabi, You may be wondering why I featuring this exclusively while I have my own chapter, featuring Kamm's work...  Well, here's a list of why -
1st - a very very magnificent piece of model
2nd - the mods are just too realistic, I am a military geek and I can assure you, he made everything practical and realistic 
3rd - one of the best weathering I have seen
4th - amazing paint and clour scheme, Certified by this Military Geek ( me !!)
5th - perfect decals 



I could go on and on about this Sazabi ... but Why prolong the photo section?? You guys properly can't wait anymore ...
So without Further Ado, I present to you ....
'' The ASSASSIN SAZABI '' 

A simple yet beautiful wallpaper made by  Kamm himself -









And as you know, is a Vloger so here is his video he made for this baby -

Kamm doesn't have a blog but you can see many more photos and the discussion over at the the offical Thread over at MAC.

I hope you will find this Sazabi as magnificent and beautiful as I do. Lets give Kamm a round of applause for completing such a monster and please DO visit his channel to give feedback, add friend or subscribe.

Oh, and if by any chance you know Kamm  or if he has helped inspire you or helped you in modeling or whatever it is, please do click the picture below and check the tread out.

^^^^^^^^

You will know what I'm talking about and What is going on and What to do after visiting that page. So please please, do visit that page.

I hope this post has been a fun to read one.
As usual, thanks so so much for being such supportive and kind readers.

STAY TUNED FOR MORE

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Featured Modellers Chapter 3.3: Decay's Vent Saviour

Hello dear readers.


Its been quite some time since I have featured another modeler's work. I do apologize as life has been quite hectic on me these days and I don't find the time to blog about featured modelers.


So, today, let me proudly present you another work from a dear friend of mine, a friend who is also one of the legend of MAC, a man who is the champion for the customized category for the recently concluded EUGC, and that is no other then ... DECAY.


Again, for Decay, this is nothing more then a relaxed build but he did stated that this is his practice build. Why would someone with his skill need to practice, I don't have the slightest clue, but he did say he been wanting to do something that wasn't heavily modded and just stick with the original design and add detail. 


As you all know, he has been building all of kits with super-massive mods and really really weathered or damage looks and this is his first time building a super clean build. He also said it's very hard to make a kit all nice and clean while adding modes; everything needs to be double check and sanded. And even when he was in the final stages, he noticed new errors that he did not see before.


He did make some minor doo-doos on this while he was painting, though. While top coating it, some of the blue color was damaged they need to be re-done. Apparently, such doo-doos are hard to control and even he himself doesn't know why that happend and how he can prevent that from happening in the future. 


And as you can see this, before and after photos- 



The original kit doesn't have the upper-rotated thigh but it comes with a ball joint. And if you can look at the after photo, you will see he did something on the thigh, which is a MG-fied upper thigh. He made that thigh by using the parts that I sent him. I, The hummingbird, has to scavenged my NG Aile Strike and send him that kits upper arms (biceps) so that he can have much better posing ability in the legs. I don't really regret scavenging my kit as he had made this kit so beautiful that it was worth doing so.


Again, nothing less then a awesome piece of art from the Decaying Legend of MAC, a piece of art that I am proud and honored to share with fellow gunpla enthusiasts. Here comes the photos -

And here is the really really really beautiful wallpaper he made with this finished kit, that is in my own eyes, nothing less then perfection - 

Hope you all love this great kit as much as I do. 

If you want to see the discussion about this , please do visit the Thread on MAC forum and/or you can visit his blog.

Thank you all for your support. Stay tuned for more.

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D-day Diorama : a masterpiece of one of my master

Hello dear readers. 


Its been a while since I have featured another modeler. Do forgive me as I have been quite busy with life and stuffs. 


Right, in this post, I will be featuring a master piece work of one of my first and foremost master in scale modeling. I am more than proud that my master allow me to featured this great masterpiece of his.


A master in scale modeling, by the name of Glenn Burford; I had the honor of becoming friends with him since march of 2009. A man of great skills and patient, he helped me with basic skill of scale modeling from taking care of nubs to weathering, and even now, still looking out for me as a friend and a disciple. 


The dio is made for his son, for a d-day memorial event in his son's school. In stead of me explaining how my master made it, why don't I just show you what he explain to me. This would be like straight from the horses (sorry master, just a phrase :P ).


Right, here is what he told me - 
''' Okay, i'll start at the begining
The base is foam board, built up in the area under the bunker
the beach and under the landeing craft are regular wall compound, spread out textured to look like sand. I used a spare figure to make all of the boot prints.
The bunker is from a very old AIRFIX playset! I was lucky to find that one!

The barbed wire was made by winding wire around a sharpie. and the fence poles are sticks off a vine in my back yard
the tank crosses were made with stock angle plastic, notched at the ends
The landing craft with the tank is Airfix and the LCI is from Pegasus Hobbies( a brand made by my local hobby shop
The US Rangers are also by Pegasus, I don't remember the brand of the Germans
The water was made with woodland scenics clear water and dry brushed white in top
the blueish color was painted on the bottom of the sea before the water was poured in ''

So lets move on to the pictures, shall we ?? 

I know most of my readers are gunpla modelers but I become a gunpla modelers from a scale modelers. I am at heart, and first and foremost, a scale modeler and a masterpiece in scale modeling such as this, I cannot help but feature it. I hope you all love this dio as much as I do. 

If you want to see more , you can check out his album on FB. I don't know if he has made his album public or not, but its worth a try clicking on the link to see.

Thanks for reading. Stay Tuned. 

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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.

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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.

 

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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

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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

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Featured Modellers Chapter 1.1 - Kamm's Strike

Hello dear reader, just wanted to share serialized featuring of the works of my friends ( mostly from MAC) and some of my idol modellers...

In this first chapter, sub section 1, I will be featuring a dear friend named Kamm. Wearing a white mask in his avatar picture and wielding a mighty paint brush in his hand, he had placed himself a consider rank in the world of senior gunpla builders.

Kamm, who only got into the hobby since 8 months ago, loves to paint models. He used to paint warhammer models and now, he has switched to gunpla. The works he has done with his paint brush and hand painting skill have been amazing. I tried my best but I can only get to 1/3 of his painting skills. His most famous work is the HLJ gundam, which I will explain in more detail in the coming posts. This post will highlight one of his kit: the Strike With I.W.S.P.

This is not exactly his first kits but as far as i know, this is his very first THAT he started sharing on forums. Personally, I hate the colour but that doesn't mean I do not like what he has done with the kit, most especially the battle damage.

Here's a number of photos of that kit.. Enjoy

Until next post, Stay tuned

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