HMM Cannon Tortoise My thoughts and semi WIP part 1

As some of you guys may know last week a large package from Japan arrived for me, Koala and Tofu and since I just started my holidays I thought it’s as good a time to get a start on my project.

From Onderon's gallery

My portion of the parcel included several cans of spray paint and top coat as well as the pretty smex Cannon Tortoise by Kotobukiya. Incidentally Tim ordered 2 cans of Light gun metal for me instead of normal gun metal...not that there was much difference as I came to realise after testing out my 4 different cans of silver shade sadly.

From Onderon's gallery

The Tortoise itself is a rather straight forward kit but provided enough challenge and no small amount of patience from yours truly. A rather small kit compared to what I’m usually familiar with (sits comfortably on my palm and I have pretty small hands) it does no detract from the brilliance of this kit as it is packed with minute details and screaming kickass.

From Onderon's gallery

The main draw point of this kit is the cannon on its back and although it is only 7cm long it does not feel disproportioned overall. One note of interest was that I had to do some slight modding to actually get one of the golden pistons to fit thanks to Koto’s moulding inconsistencies. There wasn’t a lot and overall number of faults in the plastic was kept to a minimum but compared to what Bandai pumps out it’s already a few too many.

From Onderon's gallery

The cannon sits snugly on the back of the tortoises shell and acts like a turrent which can spin 360 with some minor up and down movement of the barrel which is cool. If you look closely you can notice some plugs and holes on the shell and the main body. There are suppose to be extra plating, machinery and small headlights which I haven’t put together yet so I don’t have to worry about those when I’m doing base painting.

From Onderon's gallery

The innards is very simple with some nice details of grating on the floor (the zoid is suppose to be able to carry personnel and other stuff inside and that big gaping hole is where the zoid core fits inside (again I haven’t bothered to make that yet). The 2 flaps in the middle flips down and when combined with even more missing parts forms a makeshift ramp.

From Onderon's gallery

From Onderon's gallery

No mecha squirtle is complete without some type of withdrawal mechanism so the head can slide in to some extend when it’s in barrage mode.

From Onderon's gallery

From Onderon's gallery

Legs a very straightforward build with 3 points of articulation and the feet are connected via ball joint with a bulky armour casing go on top.

From Onderon's gallery

Obvious differences compared to the old Tomy zoids besides the articulation are those little gray servo caps. The Tomy kits where soft rubber caps while the Kotobukiya zoids uses hard ABS (hooray for painting!)

Same deal with hind legs.

From Onderon's gallery

The underside of the zoid is not left out in the details department. It’s loaded with bolts, grating and insulation tubing which are all molded in brown so painting is a must.

From Onderon's gallery

Close up of the cannon turret with some obvious plastic faults.

From Onderon's gallery

Those little turrets on the side and the radar thingo can swivel.

From Onderon's gallery

Today was such a shitty day to paint but I just had to get started on it before I put if off for even longer. My Original plan was to do a steam punk type colour scheme with a predominate silver and gold layout and thought that the Champagne Gold would be more vibrant if I under layered it with some aluminium and this was when shit hits the fan.

As you can see there is not much difference with the bottom plate painted in gold. Clearly the aluminium was too strong and the shade of gold was just piss weak. I forgot to mention that I was trying to replace all the green with the gold but I’m more inclined to strip and repaint it now.

From Onderon's gallery

I was extremely happy with how the leg plating turned out. It has a very rough and cool metal effect almost bordering on cut pewter look. What I did was vary the distance at which the paint was applied and some prepainting texturing was done with some fine sanding paper.

From Onderon's gallery

Before I went any further I put everything back together it get an idea of what the colours looked like and it turned out better than I thought

From Onderon's gallery

The slight tinge of gold is barely noticeable here.

From Onderon's gallery

The tortoise can do some dynamic shots although it really only has the one pose. Oh I forgot to mention the soles of the feet are actually those 2 brown plates above the head. The kit comes with 6 and 2 of them are used for extra armour which is a really nice touch imo.

From Onderon's gallery

Look forward to part 2 when i hopefully strip the gold paint without melting the plastic.

♦

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My official first run on BG

pretty hard out..but i guess it's alright

gotta patch up some mistakes tho

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Mailroom !

ems unbox

Kinda busy today so i cant post more but r10's packaging is the best ! even the paint has been boxed and bagged incase of leaks... all the paints ! it even comes with a used japanese newspaper !

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Snow trip preparation!

Woohoo! We've gotten over 1000 visitors within the last 2 months!
Well, not much exciting things from the past few weeks during my long study break.
Most of you would be in the middle of exams right now, so i guess you wont be visiting this blog as frequently as you have before.
Unfortunately, i got capped last month so was unable to do that unmetered downloading experiment. Its also quite annoying to be capped during study break.
So for the rest of my spare time, i have been workin my are off to save up enough money for our anual snow trip
I've also as part of preparation for the trip, i have been experimenting with how well my computer could run outside its box.

From General

So far, its been running good for a week, and hasnt encountered any problems, so i guess it should be fine, particularly in a colder environment like the snow.
Other issues im running into now is the lack of hard drive space. So starting to make use of 100 dvd's to migrate some of my anime collection, to make more room.
Would be looking forward to getting 1.5tb drives after i saved up enough for a MG exia.

Also, for those who did not understand tim's previous post, it is refering to large shipment on paint an hobby materials from japan.

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its coming.

http://tracking.post.japanpost.jp/service/singleSearch.do?searchKind=S004&locale=en&reqCodeNo1=EI491551956JP&x=78&y=17

tracking code EMS No.EI491551956JP

with love from

customer No. is 113329

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Rant in Progress

I was watching a few youtube videos and I came across something that annoys me to no end. Pretentious downies who overdramatise or exaggerate movement when playing instruments especially guitar (headbanging) and piano (looking like schizophrenics).

I really hate it when you have total idiot comments which spout of bullshit such as "you need to put more emotion into playing that so move around some more and dont look like a wooden board"

Excuse me? Do I need your permission to enjoy a piece of music that I play my way? Anyone can play any piece of music perfectly without "putting everything"into it. Not jumping up and down on the seat or waving my hands like I'm out to gouge someones eyes out does not mean I suck. Most of the people who even say shit like that are usually ignorant fools who pretend to enjoy classical music like they own it. And headbanging is just retarded imo if not for its extremely high comedic value such as these guys.



Some of you might not agree with me but this is just my opinion on one of the most pathetic attempts at performance ever. Keep it nice and simple your playing a song don't pretend like its giving you an orgasm.

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<3 russia

* > sytycd

I love how you can see the end before they ever knew it

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Freaky Video

yeah....this is quite freaky dudes...

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coffee.

this morning i stayed home instead of going to class because i wanted to make another cup of coffee before i left and missed the bus . GG

that sidamo was sooo good though. and all i have left is one hand in for the subject.

the albums getting a bit big big as well >.>

coffee

From coffee

tim.

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random post

so i was going to post another chess thing up, but it seems noone else has quite the same enthusiasm for it so i'm gonna move on to something completely different.

Chinese chess.
Also known as xiangqi, it is in my opinion, a decent variation of regular chess. I have played it, and the novelty of the pieces was quite interesting - but all in all my first impressions of it was that it lacks a real amount of depth in comparison to the western kind. Logic may state that elephants can't cross rivers and kings cannot leave their palaces, but all these restrictions just felt as though i was very limited in the control of my pieces. Cardinals seem like a waste of a piece, and i reckon if they could move outside the palace they would be much better suited. The inability of knights to jump over pieces was a factor i kept overlooking, and many times this frustrated me - again, even though the board still has 64 squares, it felt as though i was playing on a 4x4 board. Of course, this may be due to my severe n00bness, but it doesn't change the fact space IS more cramped in chinese chess.
On the plus side though, the cannons were awesome fun to play with. For those who don't know what it is, it has the moves of a castle in regular chess and can jump over a piece like a regular knight. It's interesting to note that if you had to remove one piece from the game, removing the cannon would result in a game that, mathematically, loses more % of depth from the game than any other piece. And although it makes no sense, i really liked how pawns can move left and right after they cross the 'river' - though this awesomeness is diminished when you come to realise it comes to nothing once it reaches the end of the board.

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Kururu Yabui review

From Onderon's gallery

Out of the Keroro platoon one of the more interesting characteres is Kururu the resident mad scientist type...frog? Despite his maniacal ideas and sinister outlook he is absolutely adorable. Unless his drilling a huge hole into your head.

This version of Kurur like Keroro has a very traditional japanese theme as seen in his orange and white haori and black hakama.

This kit utilizes the same inner frame we saw in Keroro but I was lazy and did not feel like disassembling the body to take a pic XD. One of the difference between the two kits even though they use the same articulated frame, its range of movement is greatly impeded as we shall see abit later.

From Onderon's gallery

The back of the Haori has two mechanical appendages which allow the coat to part in half and this allows the arms to move freely so he can go about doing what he does best unhindered.

From Onderon's gallery

From Onderon's gallery

From Onderon's gallery

and it might not look like it but that white thing in his right hand is a hack saw and a mallet in the other.

Just because his wearing old fashion clothing does not mean his without tricks up his sleeves or in this case...

From Onderon's gallery

his head?

The two white caps on the side of his head actaully slides out without part swapping *huzaah* and on the left is a missle pod while the right, which does require you to attach an additional part, is a grappling arm which I'm guessing is for harassing his fellow frogmen.

From Onderon's gallery

I'm sorry about this blurry pic but you will have to make do =P In this picture you can see further mechanical detail on the side of his hakama and what looks like integrated machinary for ribs? *Do frogs even have ribs?*

Overall this kit was fairly enjoyable to build with many quirks which is a plus although its articulation is held back by design but makes up with all the snazzy gadgets.

From Onderon's gallery

Kururu Full Burst Mode!!!!

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WIth love, from japan !

My sister and brother in law bought me something awesome when they went to japan !

My own limited edition Gundam 30th anniversary shirt ! XD

In a jar ! ! super futuristic ! ! And shiny too !

XD more awesome pics

XL is japanese fit so its japanese XL= AU L = HK XXL = US M (small doesnt exist in america)

CHARRRRR !!!!!!!!!!!!

Jealous ?

Tim

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Keroro Musha review

From Onderon's gallery

This little kit surprised me a whole lot when I was putting it together. I thought it would kinda be similar to the SDs that Bandai makes but was I wrong!

From Onderon's gallery

Samanosuke eat your heart out

To start things off I have to say that this model is very accurate to its animated self and with articulation to put every SD and *kero* some very old MGs to shame *kerokerokero*

From Onderon's gallery

I choose to do a review on the Musha ver. due to the fact that it has more gimmicks than the normal ver. that I have.


What really sets this kit apart from gundam SDs was the inclusion of this uber smexy stand with 3 points of articulation which easily smashes to dodgy chunk of plastic the O raiser comes with.

From Onderon's gallery

From Onderon's gallery

From Onderon's gallery

Because this ver. of Keroro only came with the kabuto and not his standard yellow hat thing I had to borrow the head from the 1.0 Keroro and as you can see underneath the samurai armor there is a intact body and from the comparison picture the old body was stiff as wooden bat.

From Onderon's gallery

From Onderon's gallery

From Onderon's gallery

This is probably the major attraction for this line of Keroro plamo.

From Onderon's gallery

As you can see it utilises a fully articulated skeleton undernearth the body and like the MG RX-78-2 pre ver.2.0 it comes assembled on the sprue but without the hassle that came with the RX.

From Onderon's gallery

The bare model of 8 pieces with the head comprised of 4 pieces.

From Onderon's gallery

The backpack is dettachable from the armor and comes with 2 beamsaber swords which I haven't painted yet and Keroro's hands are interchangable with gauntlets ( 2 right hands and 1 left hand)

From Onderon's gallery

From Onderon's gallery

As I said before I am very happy with this kit and pleased with the amount of detail and articulation and better yet this is one of the more simplistic kits of the Musha line.

Look foward to the rest of the invasion party!

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