Gunpla – Gunpla.Paulie.Cool

A Good Head on Those Shoulders

Posted on November 18, 2024November 18, 2024 by pauliegon

In most forms of media involving robots, mechs, cyborgs, whatever — there’s typically a scene where an inert body comes to life as the head is slowly lowered and inserted.

We have reached that milestone in our own story.

When it comes to the head on gundam models, there’s always a couple of gotchas, no matter the grade. The spiky crown thing on the front of the head is infamous for never staying in place, and the Unicorn gundam doubles down by offering three different choices due to its transformation mode.

Saucy!

If I had any concerns about the Head Unit, they’d mostly stem from the small pieces and stickers. The pieces would be difficult to handle due to their size and the stickers even more so.

I also hate stickers.

I love decals.

But I hate stickers.

They never look right and even if you can remove them from the sticker sheet without damaging them, or apply them to the surface without picking them up and adjusting them a dozen times, then losing them and searching all over the place just to find that they were hiding out on the back of one of your fingers, but one tiny part got stuck on the other part of the sticker and now you have to try and get them apart and argh — fuck it, we’ll just leave it off!

I’m not a fan.

I also find out that I need new tweezers because the ones I had were damaged (this is the first model I’ve put together in a year and I may have used the tweezers for tasks beyond their purpose and tensile strength).

Still, I managed to get the stickers on the head pieces without too much fuss and —

Who am I kidding? That’s a blatant lie. I put two gold stickers on the wrong head spike things (this gundam has like four pieces just for the head spike thing, and three of them get stickers) and had to re-adhere them without making it too janky. Which is saying a lot.

See, a lot of gundam stickers are the shiny foil type, so they’re easy to wrinkle or crease, especially if you don’t place them just so on the piece and you have to make minor adjustments or tamp it down to make sure it sticks. Any bad move can cause a crease to appear and throw everything off. It just won’t look good.

Luckily, I made it out of this one unscathed, with only one long gold sticker slightly off center, but I’m not going to be using the piece in the long term anyway, so it’s all good in the neighborhood.

Other than the usual sticker follies, the head came together fairly fast and looked great.

Next up is the backpack.

The backpack is a crucial component for a gundam, since not only does it serve as visual flare by looking like a jetpack, it’s also where you’re going to mount weapons and other items.

It’s also the last major component on this build. Other than weapons and decals, once the backpack is assembled and installed, the gundam will be complete.

It’s kind of a big deal.

I really liked the design and look of the one for the Unicorn Gundam model. They’re not just using the same gold plated pieces as all the other components; they’re also using bronze pieces, as well as the clear ABS orange plastic that we’ve been seeing elsewhere on the model for the transformation effect.

It makes for great color differentiation and visual appeal.

It’s also surprisingly easy to assemble. I kept stopping myself repeatedly during this part of the build to make sure I wasn’t trying to rush to get it finished, leading to sloppy snips off the sprue, but I wasn’t. It was just that easy.

The only issue I found was during construction of the lightsaber handles. Yes, I know what their supposed to be called, but they’re lightsabers. I’m not the Bandai corporation. I don’t have to worry about trademark infringement, so I can call them whatever I want.

The rest of the gold pieces in this model had undergates on any parts that would be plainly visible, and any other parts that might show a stress mark were hidden from view. The part design on this model was impeccable.

Except for the lightsaber handles. After finishing assembly and installing them into the backpack, the stress marks were front and center.

Since this type of plastic doesn’t lend itself to easily sanding & buffing out the marks, the only option is to airbrush them or use what’s called a “Gundam Marker” to basically paint over them and hope it color matches.

I’m going to leave them be for now, since I think they may be covered by a weapon or something that’ll be inserted at the end of all this.

With the completion of the backpack, I also emptied out several more sprues and it looks like the only ones with parts left are for the weapons and shield, which I’ll hit next time.

Two Arms! Two Arms!

Posted on November 10, 2024November 10, 2024 by pauliegon

After a couple of minor disappointments last time, I sat down wondering if the issues I experienced were a fluke, or if they would continue as I worked on completing the arms and shoulders of the model.

Since the internal frames were already complete, most of the work this time around involved a lot of gold-plated plastic with undergates to give this gundam his big, shiny limbs.

The right arm went off without a hitch and given the number of pieces and some of the more complex fits compared to the rest of the model, whatever tension I felt melted away and I was humming along once again.

The cool thing about this section of the model is that the instructions have you building both arms at the same time, so if you spent longer than normal on one section or piece to figure out orientation or fit, you’d get all the bugs worked out and build the duplicate part in a quarter of the time.

The only trepidation I felt was on the left arm, which is where I had the piece that kept backing out of its spot like a cat that doesn’t want to be held.

And sure enough, as I started putting the outer gold pieces on the arm, the process was made a bit more difficult since it didn’t stay where I needed it to stay so I could get the pieces on.

Thankfully, those same pieces went around the recalcitrant joint piece and it was forced to remain affixed to the elbow against its will.

I let out a grunt of satisfaction.

Always celebrate the small victories.

Next on the agenda were the shoulder pieces and if you know anything about gundams, these can be outrageously wacky or somewhat subdued, but they’re never shy and retreating.

Since this was a Unicorn model, it features a transformation mode and this proved to be my undoing on one of the shoulders.

The problems started almost immediately and were entirely of my own creation. Each shoulder is built around a core with a couple of pieces on hinges. On a normal gundam like an RX-78 or similar, the process is fairly simple and straightforward, but since this features a transformation, it was a bit more complex.

The problem I encountered wasn’t a stranger to me, but a well-known and unwelcome visitor — figuring out the proper orientation of pieces when fitting them together, especially when there’s a hinge and moving parts.

After I got the pieces together in what I thought was the correct configuration, the instructions say to rotate a couple of pieces to allow the placement of another piece, and I just could not figure out why nothing was rotating the way it was supposed to according to the manual.

Picture if you will a man seated at a small desk. His face a contorted mix of confusion and concentration as he peers intently at a small piece of gilded plastic. He turns it in his fingers and then stares at an instruction manual before returning his attention back to the piece. He repeats this minor ritual in the vain hope of completing the prescribed steps so he can finally move on from this place of banal torment.

Unbeknownst to him, but beknownst to us, he will remain firmly affixed in this limbo of his own design until such a time that fate, and perhaps inspiration from beyond, finally release him from this small corner of…The Twilight Zone.

Anyway.

At a certain point, I’d taken apart and reassembled the shoulder piece until parts that once fit snugly together started to loosen and eventually started falling off more easily than they should. Luckily, I cracked the code before things got too bad and I had to reach for the Tamiya cement.

Like I mentioned earlier, the advantage of doing two duplicate pieces one right after the other is that the second shoulder went a lot faster than the first.

I also hit a major milestone as the last piece to complete the left shoulder meant that I’d emptied my first sprue.

At this point, all that’s really left is to put a good head on these shoulders and build out the weapons, which I’ll get to in the next session.

The Real Grade Flaws Finally Manifest

Posted on November 3, 2024November 3, 2024 by pauliegon

I got way too used to how smooth this model was going. I couldn’t believe it, a Real Grade model that didn’t want to fall apart if you looked at it wrong? Where the pieces actually stayed together?!

Alas, the dream is over. The Real Grade just couldn’t hold out any longer and finally revealed its weaknesses.

If there was any portion of the model where I thought I’d encounter any major issues, it was going to be the waist. After I completed it without too much trouble, I thought I was home free.

I started on the torso (or Chest Unit, as Bandai calls it) for the Unicorn Gundam, which also includes the internal frame pieces for both arms.

I completed the first arm without incident and I was humming happily along and listening to something from Bach on KUSC when it finally happened: the other arm had an issue with two of the pieces staying together.

Those two pieces you see in the picture, G6 & G7, would not stay together. At first I thought that maybe I’d left some excess sprue material on one or both, or on the piece they connect through, but I disassembled everything and didn’t see anything after inspecting them.

I decided to put those two pieces together on their own to see how they’d fit without the other pieces, but right after squeezing them together, they began pushing each other apart.

At last, the model couldn’t take it any longer and finally admitted it was a true Real Grade after all.

I shook my head, but any disappointment I may have felt immediately faded away as Howard Shore’s Concerning Hobbits came on the radio. It’s always a pleasant surprise when the classical station plays something from a movie score, and KUSC these days is especially fond of Howard Shore’s The Lord of the Rings music.

I’m not complaining.

It was quickly followed-up by Holst’s Mercury, The Winged Messenger, and I was in a great mood as I pressed on, hoping that the arm piece was the only flaw in what up to this point had been an exceptional model building experience.

Luckily, all the other pieces fit together fine and stayed together, but the moment I tried to manipulate that one arm, the affected piece fell out.

The rest of the torso went by without incident as KUSC played it’s “Saturday Morning Cartoons” program. This episode focused on the pipe organ and its versatility across all genres of music. It’s fantastic at establishing ominous moods, but just as easily occupies the opposite end of the spectrum as playful music at amusement parks and in cartoons. And of course, who can forget its inextricable link to baseball.

As I was wrapping up for the day, I attached the torso to the rest of the body and discovered that the Real Grade wasn’t finished coming into its own.

I was trying to get it to stand straight and take its picture, but I just could not get the waist piece to appear straight. It was tilted to the side. I made some minor adjustments to the legs and one of the gold pieces fell off.

I was putting that back on and straightening everything out when one of the skirt pieces on the waist fell off. It took forever to get that back on without anything else falling off, and now the model was even more off kilter than it was when I started.

I was 10 minutes into something that should’ve taken a few seconds and finally gave up. I got it into good enough shape, snapped the pics, and quickly put it back in its box.

It’s safe to say the seal has been broken on this one. I was walking on cloud nine, but I quickly fell back down to earth and realized that no matter what, a Real Grade is gonna Real Grade.

It’s a shame because I was always looking forward to my next session, but after today I’m wondering what other issues are going to arise and what compromises I’ll need to make with it when it’s finally completed.

I’ve all but given up on getting nice action poses with Real Grades and I don’t even buy stands for them anymore — it’s not worth the trouble, especially as pieces continually fall off as you try to move joints to get it to look just right. You kind of just get it to standup straight and maybe hold a weapon without it falling out of the hand and call it a success.

I had high hopes for this one, and maybe it will prove that its issues are minor, but I’m not holding out any great hopes.

Time to Waist

Posted on October 27, 2024October 27, 2024 by pauliegon

I finally got back to the model this week with the intent of completing the other leg and the waist. It had been a couple of weeks since I had the chance to work on it, and I completely forgot all the stuff I learned on the other leg, so it didn’t got faster.

Just as with the other leg, I was really vibing with this Real Grade kit, which is unusual for me, because me and Real Grades just do not get along without considerable friction.

Actually, friction is the wrong word — RG’s tend to never want to stay together for me and fall apart if you look at them the wrong way.

But the legs are solid and have a satisfying feel in hand. I’m not afraid pieces are going to fly off into the ether if I dare to manipulate the limbs as designed.

After the leg was done, I switched the radio from classical KUSC to AM 570 and Game 2 of the World Series. I was still riding the high off Freddie Freeman’s grand slam last night and I was really hoping the Dodgers could take Game 2 before going to New York for three games.

As Rick Monday provided his analysis of tonight’s pitchers, I started in on the Gundam waist (or “Waist Unit” as Bandai likes to call it in the manual).

When it comes to Bandai Gundam models, this is typically the part I hate the most, no matter the grade. The waists provide the main connection interface for the torso and legs, sure, but they have these skirt flaps that connect via a ball & socket connection that is always prone to issues.

_{It’s never this easy}

The main issue is that the ball parts are ABS plastic with very thin stems, so trying to connect them to the sockets on the flaps is a challenge, because if you try to force them on, the stem can break. But without forcing it, the connection isn’t set, so the flap can easily fall off (especially when you’re connecting four other flaps the exact same way, along with the legs themselves).

Oh, and the ball part of the connection is on a hinge and moves up and down while you’re trying to connect it. And you have to do this six times, all while trying not to pop-off any of the other pieces you’ve already connected while fighting to get the current one in place.

Again, not my favorite part of any Gundam build and this one was no exception.

The Dodgers were well into the 3rd inning and Tommy Edman had just hit a home run by the time I finished wrestling with the waist unit pieces to get it assembled without breaking anything.

This seemed like a natural stopping point, especially after the typical frustration of assembling the waist piece, so I connected the legs and called it a day.

Next up will be the Chest piece, which will likely be a full session on its own. I’m looking forward to seeing if the great experiences assembling the legs continues with the chest.

He Got Legs

Posted on October 20, 2024 by pauliegon

I was wary of this model at first for a couple reasons. First, the obvious: it’s gold plated and the danger of stress marks and other marks is really high with a model like this. Second, I’ve never really had a Real Grade that I enjoyed putting together.

I’ve just never had any real luck with the RG models. Either a few pieces never fit quite right and constantly fall off, or they’re just not fun to assemble.

So I’ve been putting this one off for awhile. I think I bought it during one of the Gundam Base’s online sales a couple years back, but after going through a couple other Real Grades, this one kept finding itself at the bottom of the stack.

I’d glance at it occasionally, knowing I’d have to get to it at some time, but another model would catch my eye instead and be placed atop this one. And then another. And another.

After completing my new hobby area, I figured it was time to bite the bullet and finally assemble this model. The gold plating gave me some pause, mostly because it was a Real Grade model. I’ve completed the Hyaku-Shiki and it’s one of my favorite builds, but that was a Master Grade, with larger pieces and a step-up in design and manufacturing. I was worried that the RG wouldn’t have the same attention to detail and would be more susceptible to visible mars that I’d have to correct.

I’m happy to report that after assembling one of the legs, this has been one of my favorite builds. The quality of this Real Grade is amazing and I haven’t run into any issues with the plating. The pieces are under gated where they need to be, and those that aren’t have their connection points positioned in a way that any visible marks are covered by other pieces.

The piece design and assembly have been a joy, and I had to stop myself to take a break. It became quickly apparent that this is one of those builds where you want to take your time and savor the process, instead of just getting through it.

The pieces fit together snugly and there aren’t any awkward connections or weird fits. The finished piece is solid and there isn’t a fear that parts will start falling off if I try to manipulate the joints on the leg.

I still have the other leg to finish, but like I said, I’m going to be taking my time with this one and I really hope the rest of the model remains as fun as the leg has been.