HG Revive RX-78-2 Gundam / Gundam Ace magazine Beam Javelin parts

So its been a few weeks since i have put a post up again and I have been quite busy doing a lot of Gunpla. But this was a project that wasn't planned at all but it ended up being a really fun build and I enjoyed it a lot. It started with buying the Gundam Ace magazine mostly because I wanted the weapons. In the end the magazine itself had some really good research materials, i have always found that some Gundam Weapons magazines are really great when it comes to ideas for customs or inspiration. 

I put the weapons together and i was happy unfortunately I didn't know what kit to put them on so I ended up looking online at the new Revive Grandpa and it looked pretty good so i bought it. In the meantime I had this idea how about I do a poor man's version of the Full Armour gundam from Gundam Thunderbolt... well maybe not from Thunderbolt but something similar where it has extra weapons and a backpack but its more of a watered down version. 

And this is what i came up with:

Now this was just a straight build mostly with the only modifications being some small paint apps on the knee vents, thrusters, eyes, the frame of the elbow knees. 
The other modifications were just some small Kotobukiya parts like the missile pod and the backpack arms. The beam cannon on the shoulder which I got from build fighters Kunernai weapon set. The decals were just some stickers that I got free from a hobby shop in Auckland so I thought I might as well use them. there were a few other little modifications that I did but they were abit more than at a basic level but it was nice to experiment on smaller kit with them.

Now to the build itself

This is the box the parts came in I like the simple cardboard box. There were two options for the parts either the beam Javelin or the Gundam hammer. But I read the Gundam hammer's chain was solid plastic so I went for the beam javelin. I also saw the way that GM II handled the beam javelin in the fourth episode of Unicorn OVA and i think my mind was already made up :).

Now this is what the Revive Grandpa's kit looks like. I think this was a real breath of fresh air because it only had two major runners, the other was the multi colour runner, then the beam saber and the poly caps. Its a big change from a master grade box which was good for a change.

It didn't really take me long to put the whole thing together in the end I think I was 80% done in an evening which is very fast for me. And even just as a basic kit it is quite fun to pose.

One other minor modification I did was lightly scraping off the edge of the seem line on each calf. This is something I had been thinking about for a long time. And this kit had only one seem line so I gave it a shot and I can honesty say it was liberating not having to glue and sand for a change i wish i had done it sooner. My only tip would be to give a very thin light panel lining nothing too thick.

Originally it was going to have a over the shoulder bazooka but i decided it was too big for it and just looked over done.

Now the one other thing I tried was creating notches and this does require some skill involving modeling chisels. I wanted it to have the that look of the newer GM kits with notches on the toes. For this I will put a up a tutorial on how to do it at a later date.

And its all finished the action base I borrowed from another kit that is in progress.

Now the beam javelin can have various different combinations with the extra parts that come with it. it even comes with an extra beam saber which would be powering it.

But as you can see you can have a beam trident or even if the beam saber at the end is turned around it can make a long double edged beam javelin. I was really glad I picked this up over the Gundam hammer.

Once it is all completed you can get some pretty nifty poses out of it too. This kits was really fun to build and I had a great time doing it I still look at it and and am quite proud of what I have done. This is proof that you don't have to be an expert to have fun with Gunpla and you can build a kit with some simple and easy techniques to give it a bit of flare.
Just as a reminder, I don't use paints or airbrushes. I only use Gundam markers to get the results I have on my kits even on master grade ones.
I will leave you with a small gallery of the kit itself with all the options that you can do with it. 

Happy Gunpla...ing

More Zaku work

Wow it has nearly been a month without an update. I have been doing a bit of work on this Zaku because with all the other kits that i have in my backlog its this one that has been holding the rest up. 

So let me share abit of an update on some of the work I have done. 

I trimed some of the bicep armor down to create a gap so the inner frame could be slightly seen. I just anted to do some armor separation just for some various reasons but mostly to have a go at trimming some of it down to get a feel for it especially when it comes to other builds that would look good with armour separation.

Next was supposed to be the more armour separation. I cut the T section then found a small piece of runner and filed it to fit so i could reattach it together with the gap in the middle. But the whole ended up bugging me for ages and I wasn't happy with the outcome then one day when I was trying to pull the T section off it broke at the glued part so I thought I would reinforce it abit with some extras.

So I put some parts from the Kotobukiya J sensor runner on to reinforce the two parts but they ended up looking not bad kind of like extra sensors that have been put on the mobile suit as field upgrade. I also put on some antenna on the backpack.

Also with the builders parts I have picked up I created a new mono eye. For this all I did was get the right housing part and paint the inside of it white. Then cut the tab off where the original clear lens fitted on and glue the housing in. Then painted the outside of the housing grey and finally fitted the lens I wanted. I bought the pink lens builders parts because I wanted it to be fairly accurate. but I have since changed the colour because i wasn't happy with the white behind the eyes.

The next thing I have done is added some extra armour to the shoulder shield. This was done just using the Builders parts armour 01 kit. I just split a few of the sections off cleaned them up and painted them with a grey gundam marker then just went over the with a black wash to pick out he panel lines and details. So it can be a kind of reactive armour for the Zaku.

Next I went through and did some panel lines on it since it is quite a blank canvas when it comes to them. i was going to do more but I was quite happy with the amount I have done. Also i have lost my small ruler so I had to wing it when it came to placement. The easiest thing i found was to use pre-exsiting details as a guide so if you are needing to put multiple of the same lines on you can easily line up your dymo tape with the pre-existing details. once this done just runa black wash in the lines and clean the excess off with some nail polish remover and some cotton buds.

This was a bit of a fluke when i did it. I was just trying to put a pink lens that was painted on the back with a meta purple gundam marker into the bazooka's sight but it wouldn't sit in properly and kept falling in. So I thought instead i will stuff it down the back of the lens and just fit the original clear lens in. And this gave it the sense-of-depth look so that the lens looks different when you look at it from different angles.

I have begun doing decals now which is going to be a long process since I have a lot to put on. I was going to put on HiQ grey/orange RB02 caution decals on but they were abit dark against the green colour so i might have to use the white\orange decals since they show up more and reserve the grey/orange decals for the Gundam kits and my White Ogre.

Next time will have some progress with my reZEL :)