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mikeszekely

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Everything posted by mikeszekely

  1. mikeszekely
    Hmm... I could see that. Or green. Since I've only worked with cheapy Walmart paint pens, I decided to try out the Gundam markers. Red, cool (although not as red as the cheapy one?), yellow, perfect, was able to touch up some of the canary paint I'd put on F91. The gray is fine, but still a brush type. Thin, but not sure I want to try panel lining with it. And the black? Well, turns out I grabbed two grays. Not driving an hour one way to exchange it, either. As for the spray paints... Krylon has a ton of different kinds, and none of them say "matte." The Color Guard stuff was like a buck cheaper, and said flat, but the Fusion stuff says "bonds to plastics." That seems more in line with what I want, so I settled on Fusion. The finish is "Satin". Is that right?
  2. mikeszekely
    Well, maybe I'll rethink the red. Even if it's just for effects, that still similar to the X1 anyway. Instead, maybe I'll paint the red parts blue, and use the foil stickers after all. Still thinking that I'm going to paint the torso and the tops of the shoulders black, though. As for the gray limbs, in photos they look like they have a hint of purple, but not so much at home. It's more of a want to than a have to. I dig the colors on the X1, X2, and X3, but Maoh looks too purplish.
  3. mikeszekely
    Well... I'd say they suckered me, but that still seems like a reasonable price.
  4. mikeszekely
    Far as I know, company-wide. I saw it on their website first and was about to order them, but they wanted $140 in shipping. So, off to the store...My IKEA looked like they still had several. The clearance price is $64.99. But I wouldn't worry; last time IKEA clearanced something popular like that, it was because they were replacing it with a newer version.
  5. mikeszekely
    Thanks for the feedback. Yeah, the red on the Mk-II's thrusters doesn't bother me too much, so in my mind I haven't needed any paint on any of the RGs. Meanwhile, I don't think I painted my HG Zaku I (Black Tri Stars), HGUC RX-78-2 (until I wanted it to be a RX-78-1), Gouf Custom, or Nu Gundam. The rest all needed everything from minor detailing to whole parts being the wrong color. Crossbone Maoh looks like it should be pretty accurate out of the box... but I don't like the purplish-gray. I was thinking about grabbing cans of black and white paint, and spraying the purplish-gray to white and the darker blue torso, head, and shoulder bits black. Then I was thinking that instead of using the blue foil stickers for the shoulders, arms, legs, and skirts, that I might paint them red, with a Gundam marker. Thoughts? As for the HGUC Crossbone X1, I haven't seen any reviews yet to know how much needs painted. But it's actually a brand new kit, derived from the Crossbone Maoh kit (instead of the other way around, for a change), so I'm hoping it's ok. If not, I've got red, yellow, black, and gray Gundam markers, plus red, black, blue, green, white, gray, and yellow paint markers I found in the crafts section at Walmart. I'll make due, same as I did with F91/Victory/V2.
  6. mikeszekely
    If you're like me, (I built a few HGs years ago then didn't get back into it this summer), i very strongly recommend the Real Grade kits. They're the same scale as the HGs, and reasonably priced (usually between $25-$35 and readily available on Amazon). They're a little more advanced, though (an RG foot might have more parts than an entire HG leg), but they're vastly more detailed. No paint is required because all the parts are molded in the correct color, and they come with a ton of decals, so the finished model looks almost PG good. That said, buy and build what makes you happy. The joy of Gunpla is that you can do what you want with it. EDIT: Speaking of customizing... as most of you know, I'm usually into straight builds with just a little paint to get some of the detail on HGs, because I suck pretty bad at the painting thing. I'm certainly not into the paint thing enough to go out and buy a nice airbrush or anything. That said... it might be kind of fun to do a Crossbone Gundam Mike instead of a Crossbone Gundam Maoh. Have any of you tried the regular plain ol' cans of spraypaint? Like the kind they have at Walmart? I mean, if they say they're for plastic, they ought to work, so I guess the question is how well?
  7. mikeszekely
    Lucky me, they just opened a Burgatory near me. I stopped for lunch. Grats on the find. Me, I went to IKEA today, since they're clearancing out the Detolfs. It was really a special trip for that, since the closest IKEA is an hour or so away, but it turns out there's a Hobbytown USA in the strip mall nearby. I picked up a HGBF Crossbone Gundam Maoh. It's not the sort of kit I'd go out of my way for (I'm sticking to mostly UC), but on a whim at a real hobby store I was all for it. Grabbed a few Gundam Markers, too. Might try panel lining some of the HG kits I've built.
  8. mikeszekely
    Could be worse. I'm trying to keep my models on the 1/144 scale, so without any RGs, I went with the HGUC Victory and Victory 2. Instead of giving you the parts to do the variants, they're going to sell new kits for the V-Dash and V2 Assault Buster. Unless the V-Dash comes with heard parts for a Hexa (or unless I rewatch Victory and get a hankering for it's MS), I'll probably pass on it. On the fence with the Assault Buster. As for Crossbone, what I'd do in your shoes (and what I'd love to do if they do more HGUC Crossbone kits) is built it as the XM-X1 straight, with the Crossbone Vanguard emblem, then build the Skull Heart Full Cloth. As far as the other variants go, the X1 Kai is just a slight weapon/skirt mod from the straight X1, and while all the Crossbone Gundams are based on the F97 design, the X2/X2 Kai and X3 are separate machines from X1. They were released as web exclusives, so I'm not saying you should or shouldn't rush out to get them, but I am saying that I'd want RG or HGUCs of X1, X2 Kai, X3, and Skull Heart Full Cloth to feel like I got them all.
  9. mikeszekely
    I don't really know beans about what's in the MG line, but I'm pretty familiar with Crossbone Gundam. If I had to guess, you're not building the XM-X1 Crossbone Gundam, you're building the XM-X1 Crossbone Gundam Kai Kai, aka Skull Heart. EDIT: I looked up the MGs, and there are two for Crossbone. There's the XM-X1 Ver. Ka, and the XM-X1 Full Cloth. Full Cloth in the manga was always Skull Heart. If it's the XM-X7 Ver. Ka, it should include extra skirt and chest parts to do it as either the original XM-X1 or as Skull Heart.
  10. mikeszekely
    Couldn't you just request a new one? My bank sent me a new one just because I told them some places were having trouble swiping it. The replacement came two days after I called.
  11. mikeszekely
    Well, I bought a book on Amazon, and I needed something to hit the "Super Saver" mark for the shipping. Since (then) the HGUC Crossbone wasn't available directly from Amazon, I decided to look for a different HG I might like. I settled on Shin Matsunaga's Zaku II R-1A, because I love Zaku's, I like the beefier look of the R-1A and R-2, and I love Shin Matsunaga's white and gray color scheme. In the spectrum of HG's I've built, it's hard to pin down where exactly it fits. I mean, you could get away without painting it at all... but I wound up painting the insides of all the thrusters on the backpack and legs, and all the verniers on the legs, plus the inside of its snout. The kit includes tons of stickers for detail, though. Not as many as an RG, obviously, but more than any other HG I've worked on. The details help break up all the white, and the results don't look out of place next to the RG Zakus. I also really di the weapon rack that mounts on its shield. There's some odd stuff going on, though. For one, the angle of the back of the Zaku machine gun seems different than the RGs. On an RG, you can put the gun in the Zaku's hand and the back of the rifle can rest on top of the inside of the elbow joint. There's no way to do that on the R-1A, though. Trying to put the gun there will cause the hand to pop out of the joint, so the gun has to be angled so the back is between the Zaku's arm and body, limiting its poses. Another oddity is that the hand parts come on two different runners. Three hands (the right trigger finger, the left clenched fist, and the left open fist) are on the gray that's used for most of the inner joint parts, similar in color to the polycaps. Two of them, though (right open fist and left trigger finger) are the darker gray that the weapons are made from. If you're like me and try to paint as little as possible you'll want to select two hands that match in color for posing. Subjectively, it's the best HG (until I get Crossbone, maybe?) because white Zakus are awesome. Objectively, its still a good HG kit that, like Victory, you can get away without painting but you'll probably want to paint a little, with a few quirks that let Victory (and the Gouf Custom) stay above it.
  12. mikeszekely
    You say to the man with a Pepsi Optimus Prime... That's pretty much how I feel. I mean, if I walked into a 7/11 in the States and they had a stack of these for $20 or so, I'd happily grab one. Heck, if I heard US 7/11s were selling them I'd go so far as to make a special trip to a few in my area to look for them. But I'm not going to go out of my way to import one from Japan.
  13. mikeszekely
    Given that I'm a little underwhelmed by Dragon Age Inquisition, it might end up being my pick for Game of the Year.
  14. mikeszekely
    Honestly, it works for me either way. I kept my PS3 hooked up after I got my PS4 so I'd be set for Dynasty Warriors Gundam Reborn, Assassin's Creed Rogue, and (eventually) Persona 5. This is just icing on the cake for me.
  15. mikeszekely
    Might want to temper that enthusiasm. I'm hearing PlayStation 3, not 4.
  16. mikeszekely
    Hmm. I'm a bit busy today, so maybe I'll check and see if the deal is still good tomorrow. The problem is deciding which TRU. My house is equidistant from two of them, but they're in opposite directions. So, it's a half hour drive to one, but if they don't have one and I want to check the other, it'll be an hour from one to the other. Oddly, I checked the link again to see if the price was still good, and the "ship to home" option looked active now. I tried it, but the price goes back up to $70 at the checkout. Not cool, TRU.
  17. mikeszekely
    After you liberate your first outpost, when you come out of the fast travel room, walk around the building then east along the road, up the hill and outside the outpost. Where the road starts to turn north, there's a tree or a utility pole, and there's always a buzzer there. If you lose it, you can always fast travel back and grab a new one. Later, when you unlock the Ghale homestead, you can buy a buzzer that will always appear there, too. Trees will damage the buzzer, but buildings oddly enough don't. So it's possible to fly the buzzer to most of the belltowers, then carefully fly into and land on the floor where the radio transmitter is. I actually finished the game over the weekend. Took me about 42 hours. I'll admit that near the end I was starting to side stuff. I did all the belltowers, outposts, fortresses, Hurk missions, Longinus missions, Kyrat Fashion Week missions, hostage missions, bomb disposals, revenge quests, and assassinations. I missed at least on Yogi mission, skipped a few hijacks and supply drops, and didn't bother trying to find all the collectibles. I'm kind of curious about how many possible endings there are. Spoilers for anyone who hasn't finished.
  18. mikeszekely
    Weird. The link is to the mobile site. If I go there, it shows up discounted but doesn't show any stores. If I go to the regular site, it tells me one of the two TRUs near me has it, but shows full price.
  19. mikeszekely
    Dunno how good it is, but there's a Photoshop Express app for Android.
  20. mikeszekely
    The trailer looks awesome. The Optimus not so much.
  21. mikeszekely
    And... now I'm done with V2. I guess I don't have a lot to say about. It's got a lot of the engineering improvements that regular Victory has, and like Victory it's a fairly simple kit. The only thing that stands out as being very different is the backpack, but even that's cake after building RG Freedom's. I was a little disappointed, though. While regular Victory included black stickers for the large verniers on the front of the skirt armor and the shoulders (but not the ankles or knees, which got a little paint), Victory is back to the F91 route of being all but stickerless. So V2 took a little longer than regular Victory because I had to wait for paint to dry enough to handle different parts, but overall wasn't as bad as F91. Here's a pick of all three. They're mostly straight builds... there's no gloss clear coat or anything like that. The only paint is black vernier spots on Victory and Victory 2 (knees, hips, elbows, and ankles on both, backpack and crotch on V2), black vernier lines with yellow trim on F91's shoulders and front skirt armor, black lines on F91's midsection and feet, little dabs of black on the cheek vents of all three, yellow paint on F91's head vulcans, gold Sharpie on V2's head vulcans, green sights on F91's VSBRs, yellow thrusters on F91's backpack, and blue on the canopy of Victory's Core Fighter. Note the sloppy application, poor technique, and how the light yellow on F91 doesn't really match the yellow on the triangle stickers. (In all seriousness, I'm actually pretty satisfied with V2's head vulcans...)
  22. mikeszekely
    I mean they have the resources to make it without adversely affecting their two main series, More Than Meets the Eye and Robots in Disguise. I never bothered to read it, and if they made a G1 cartoon series, I probably wouldn't read that, either. As big a part of my childhood as Transformers was, and as much as the G1 characters are the definitive versions of said characters to me, the plain fact is that what IDW's been doing has been much more interesting for a long time (minus a few missteps, like the abrupt ending to Furman's run).
  23. mikeszekely
    Kinda this. I mean, if IDW can do ReGeneration One, they could in theory some series that fill in the G1 cartoon gaps. I'm not opposed to them doing that if they have extra resources for it, but More than Meets the Eye has been so ridiculously good that I prefer what they're doing now.
  24. mikeszekely
    I can only answer two of your questions (and maybe part of another). 1. Stickers. You'll need a pair of pointy tweezers and your hobby knife, but with a little practice it's pretty easy to get the sticker decals that come with HG and RG kits on. For most, I bend the decal paper so that an edge comes up, then grab it with the tweezers. Carefully place the opposite edge of the decal on the model, then roll the decal toward the edge your pinching. The idea is that you want the decal to stick to the model more than the tweezers. If the model is stable enough, you can pin it down with the point of your knife when you pull the tweezers away. Most will also slide on the model enough that you can use the knife to tweak it a little before you rub it flat. For very small ones, work the tip of your knife under the edge of the decal on the paper, then roll it back so that the decal comes off. Position the decal on the model, then carefully roll it the other way to lay it down. This may not work for waterslides. 4. Not for the stickers in the HG and RG kits. I've yet to use them, and I've built every RG except the Skygrasper. A few decals, especially the red marks on beam saber hilts, do like to peel, though, so it could be helpful. 5-ish. Very, very carefully work the tip of your hobby knife between the decal and the model. You don't want to damage the decal. On HG kits (maybe MG) panel lines can really make the kit pop. But I think that they're totally unnecessary on RG kits. They have enough parts that there are plenty of actual seams and lines, and drawn on panel lines tend to give them a cartoonish look that, IMO, defeats the point of RG kits (that is, that they look like scale models of actual robots instead of representations of animation).
  25. mikeszekely
    Well, they included the extra stickers so you could pick whatever you like best. But the "more right" one would be Eternal. And Electric Indigo, my Victory isn't even close to looking that good. It's basically the straight build, but I added some black to vents and verniers. Did you use decals for that?
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