Marry Christmas!

Hehe I know it's a little soon to post something like this, but oh wow. Think this as a remember that Christmas is less then a month away.

RX-178 Gundam Mk.2 WIP 1

This is my second gundam model I got from hobbywaze at the same time with my first one, RX-78-4. The box is a a little bigger then the G04 box, which am guessing because this one come with a skeleton unlike my first one. This model I plan to give a custom paint job to it.

The size of the box compare to a nomal house phone.

To Do List:
1. Prebuild Kit
2. Take apart kit
3. Give final sanding to parts
4. Prim parts & begin painting
5. Gloss Topcoat model
6. Add panel lining & Decals
7. Add Flat Coat
8. Find spot to display

Color Guide:
Red (Completed)
Blue (Working on)
Purple (Still have to do)

Color Scheme:
Here are some of my color schemes that I have came up with. Please let me know what you think about them.

My first scheme with a light Blue/Black/Gray scheme to it.

My second scheme with a darker Blue/Black/Gray scheme to it.

My thrid scheme with a Blue/Black/White/Gray scheme to it.

Star Wars: Speeder Bike

This is a Speeder Bike from Start Wars that I worked on while I was on my trip in Vancouver. About 80% of it is hand painted and the other 20% is done by spray cans. I didn't have my Air brush with me which is why it was all done by spray cans and hand painted. I must say that spray cans do not like as nice as air brush, but on the plus side it was nice not have to worry about getting my air brush working which was nice for a change. Also I love how the engine turned out with the chrome parts and the top panel in front of the Storm Trooper. Here are some pics of my model. Sorry for the bad pictures.

Getting ready to start Gunpla

My reason to start:
For those people who know me well, will know that I am a big mecha fan. When I was little I used to save up all my money and go to the store and buy the Gundam Wing action figures that were out at the time. I was able to collect almost all of them, other than one or two of them which were Leos any way so I didn't care too much. I would also buy most mech games like Armor Core, Front Mission, Mech Warrior, Mobile Suit Gundam, and so on, which I still do buy them whenever a new mech games comes out. Anyways, since I love mechs that much, it hit me, why don't I start building them as well. I not that big of a fan of models cars, I build the odd one every now and then, but if it was a mech that would be another story. I have known about gundam models for a while now, which I did build one when I was little, but didn't really like it then for a few reasons. The model I build then was a cheap NA made non graded model of the RX-78-2 Gundam that had very little detail on it. The reason I didn't like it then was that I put no work into it, all I did was snap it all together, so it was very ugly to look at which my action figures had much better detail on them my model did. Now that quite a few years have pass, I really want to get into gunpla and other mech models now like painting them, adding panel lines, basically trying to make them look nice. I have done some research and know of some of the different grades that are out there. I plan to start on mastergrades because I love all the detail that is on them. I think the first master grade I plan to start on will be the RX-79(G) Gundam because it is one of my favorites gundams, which it’s also one of the cheapest MG kits, and that it doesn’t look too hard to start on.

Update: Sept, 23/08
My Supplies so far:
This is a list of all the supplies that I have collect so far.

-Dual action gravity fed airbrush
-Airbrush Stand
-Air Compressor
-New 1/8 - 1/4 Air hose
-Spraybooth
-Razor Knife
-Homemade sanding sticks
-Paint brushes
-Testors Acrylic Paint
-Tamiya Flat Base
-Future
-Paint Trays
-Mr. Spare Bottle
-Testors Cement
-Gray Primer
-Masking Tape

This is some of my Supplies

Close up

My Air Compressor & Air hose

Will update list as I get more stuff. Also if by some chance someone finds my blog and knows of some more stuff that I will need, that I don't have listed, feel free to leave a comment letting me know. Your help will be great help to me.

Update: Sept, 23/08
Today my order from Hobbywave come in, which made me feel like it was a mini Christmas for me, as this is my first Gundam model I have ever done before. (I don't count that RX-78 as a model) For anyone who is looking for Gunpla or modeling supplies I would recommend Hobbywave as they are safe and has very fast shipping. I made my order on Saturday, which they got ready Monday, and was at my house by 2:30PM Tuesday. They also have flat shipping which was a plus to me.

For my order, I got a MG RX-78-4 Gundam x1, MG Mk-II Titans Ver.2.0 x1, Mr. Paint Tray x1, Mr. Spare Bottle 18ml x6, and Mr. Stand for Airbrush x1, and for not that much ether. I did change my plan a little bit as I was going to get the RX-79(G) Gundam as my first, but I have other plans for the kit so I got the RX-78-4 Gundam as my first and the Mk-II Titans Ver.2.0 will be my second model.

This is my order I got from Hobbywave

My Spray Booth Plan

This is my basic design for my spray desk that I plan to build. I have already change the design a little bit already making it a little smaller. So far I have only design it on the computer, so I have an idea what it is going to look like and have not started building it yet. The size I plan to build this spray booth is around L2', W1'6", H4'. For the design of this, I plan on making it mostly of wood, and plan on using cardboard for the sides as you can see in my picture to the right. For the air filter, I plan on using a bathroom fan attach to the back of the booth, which is the back wall hole shown in the picture. I then plan to attach a dryer hose to the fan, which will leaded out my bedroom window for the paint fumes to get out. I don't plan on putting on a top bathroom fan right away like I have shown in the picture, which will be a later upgrade. This is my basic plan, which may change as I start building this. Here are some more pics of my booth.

Update: August 29
Here is another update for my spray booth. I have made some changes to the overall design of my booth plan. One of the changes that I made was that I took out the top fan and made the back fan look more like a bathroom fan, then a hole and pipe that I had before. I also added on the dryer tube to the back which now points up to the sky. The biggest change that I made was that I added places to put paints, modeling tools, and so on. Here are some new pics of my updated booth.



Update: September, 6/08
I no longer need to build my spray booth from scratch anymore, as I found a easier and cheaper way now. There is this old desk that has been sitting in one of the rooms just collecting dust and is mostly covered in junk right now. It is a nice desk and needs very little work on it. The only problem with it is that the supports that hold it up are very weak and moving the desk too much will make it break apart, which is a simple fix. Other then that all I need to do is add the bathroom fan to it and some other things and it will be all done. The nice thing about using this desk into a spray booth is that it looks very nice (nicer then anything I could build), and has lots of room for other things like paint, tools and etc. Will add pictures when I move every thing off and move it into my room.

Update: September, 23/08
Funny how things change as you get going. My first plan was to build my spray booth from scratch, but then I found this old desk that was going to become my spray booth and now......... haha funny how it turned out. My friend first word was "Wow, I didn't think you could become any cheaper". My spray booth now is just a box with a bathroom fan on the back with a metal tube going out the window. The reason why I did this is that for one I am pretty cheap, two, it is easy to move and if I every need to switch the box for something it is super easy. Overall I am very happy how it turned out.

The Front View of my Spray Booth

The inside of my Spray Booth

The metal tube going out side the window

History of Dark Crystal

This is one of my games that I have made. This is by far my biggest and most complex game of them all, as well as my most favorite one that I am designing. I have been working on this one game for quite some time now, as it takes up a lot of my time making it. It also doesn't help that this game has been upgraded many times now, as I keep coming up with better ideas on how to make the story and its design better. This game is called Dark Crystal: Souls of Darkness, which was not its first name at all. The original name was called Final Elementals, which I mostly stole from Final Fantasy. I first started making this game on the game engine RM2K3, back when it was called Final Elementals. Funny thing is that I can still remember what my very first game look like. Boring story and just plain ugly maps lol. Well after a little while, I started a new game under the same title, which I also grew tired of its look and story, so I started another new game under the same name. This started to happen quite often, which ended up being quite a few games with the same name. After some time, I decided to make a whole new game with a new title with a goal to make a small simple game, so I could learn more about the program before I would start my ultimate game, Final Elementals. After thinking of many different tittles that I could use for my new game, I finally came up with one, Dark Crystal. My goal was to make a small simple game in the start, but as time grew on, so did my ideas, and my new game. Finally I decided to forget about my first game Final Elementals and just to focus on Dark Crystal as my new main game. My new Dark Crystal game was starting to turn out great, and I was happy with the design and the story. It was also the biggest game yet that I have made. Around this time, the new game engine called RMXP came out, but I was happy with my game, so I decided to stick with RM2K3. Well after some time, my old computer was so mess up that it was wipe clean, which ended up as me losing all my data. When I got my computer back, I didn't feel like making my game again on RM2k3, so I ended up using RMXP. It took me some time to get use to the new game engine, but after some time I started to get the hang of it. When I started to get better with RMXP, I started to redo my bad habit of restarting my game over again, which ended up of me making many copies of the game with upgrade story and design. One thing that was different this time then before was that I keep using the same places in all my new remakes, and I would just change the design and the story a little bit, which before I would make a new story and change everything around. After the first remake, I change the name of the game once again to Dark Crystal: Souls of Darkness, which I would keep through to my current one. After some time I did one final remake which is my current one that I am working on right now. My current one from the last one want through a major upgrade in both story and design, which I have no new plan of remaking it as I am very happy with my current one.

Kema City's design in all my RMXP game

Old style menu on left, and new menu on right

Breakout

I was cleaning up my computer the other day and found one of my games that I had made some time ago last year. This was my 2nd game that I had developed using a different game engine then RMXP, which I am more used too. My first game was a Megaman game that I had made about 3-4 years ago, which was loss when my old computer was wiped clean. When I decided to make this game, I wanted to try something a lot easier, due to all the problems I had making my Megaman game. After some thinking, I came up with the idea of making a remake of breakout. Overall, making this game was pretty simple then my other one problem, which was that for some reason when I tried to make another ball, the 2nd ball would just break though the point blocks and would not bounce back. I did figure out this as I was able to make a 2 player mode. When I look at this game now, I feel that this game needs an upgrade for the menus and some other things, as I had used back then paint, which now I have photoshop, so all of the menus feel too ugly for me now. Maybe when I get some more time, I will have to redesign the game a little bit to make it better and add some more levels to it as well.


About the Game:
This is a link to my breakout game. This is the full game I have on my on computer, but due to the size of this game am calling this a demo. Right now there is only 5 levels for one player mode, and 5 levels for two player mode. The levels are different from 1 player to 2 player mode so you won't be playing on the same levels. There is a save & load option on my game so you can take a break anytime during the game you want, but you can only hold up to one save at a time.

Game Goal:
Try to keep the ball from hitting the red blocks by using the bats to bounce the ball back up, while trying to hit all the different color stones in the map.

Stones:
50 Pts - Yellow
100 Pts - Orange
250 Pts - Gray
500 Pts - Purple
1000 Pts - Blue
Free Life - White

How to play:
S - Save
L - Load
Right - Move bat right
Left - Move bat left
D - Move 2nd bat right
A - Move 2nd bat left
H - Move ball up (cost 500 points)
Z - Move 2nd ball up (cost 500 points)
Esc - Quit game

Download the Demo

My Robot's Skeleton Frame

This is my robot that I design on the computer. This model is my robot's skeleton frame, which I still have to make the outer armor for it. It took me around 1 week to make, which I added a few updates to its design after it was done. My goal was to make this robot as human-like as possible, making it able to move any way a human can, which I think I did a pretty good job with that. The hardest thing to design was by far the thumb. The problem with the thumb is that a human thumb can move is so many different directions that it was the hardest piece to design, but after a couple of tries, I finally came up which a design that I was happy with. Another problem was that by the time I got to the head, it took a awhile to move objects around or render stuff because of all the different stuff that had to be process at once, and that my computer isn't made for stuff like this. So I end up making the head and the hands on separate files and porting them back to the main file when they were finish. The problem I had with that was when I ported the hands back, they were a little to small, so I had to make them bigger, which kinda give my robot a weird look to it. When I had finish my robot's skeleton frame, I decided to update it's feet to give them a more realistic and nicer feel to them. Now all that I have to do is complete the outer armor and I will be all done with this model.