I got godhands a while back and can't imagine going back to other nippers.
Are they really that much better than the Tamiya ones?
They go through plastic like a hot knife goes through butter. You feel no resistance, the stress mark is very small and easy clear up, and the cut is flat and goes right next to the piece leaving virtually no excess plastic.
I got godhands a while back and can't imagine going back to other nippers.
Are they really that much better than the Tamiya ones?
They go through plastic like a hot knife goes through butter. You feel no resistance, the stress mark is very small and easy clear up, and the cut is flat and goes right next to the piece leaving virtually no excess plastic.
They do go through plastic like a hot knife. The trade off is you have a very thin blade that has to be made of a very hard steel, and is thus very brittle. As with Timspork, I had a pair but they broke when one of the teeth snapped in half while removing a part from a sprue.
I prefer the Gundam Planet nippers because they are more robust and cut nearly as well.
I have the gw plastic snips I got on one of those bizarre deals on ebay. They were new but the spring inside the hinge fell out of the groove. They still work but have no bounceback
Still I like them. Though when I work on some of the older metal minis I have it's not fun to find a pair of snips I can use on them.
Basically a chunk of my summer was finding my old tools. Getting a new set of or tweezers the bent tip style was a pain as no one in the area had them.
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AthenorBattle Hardened OptimistThe Skies of HiigaraRegistered Userregular
... It's done.
Remind me to never panel line a fragging energy belt again.
Second to last page of runners. They are getting pretty sparse!
Okay. I've assembled this piece and I have no frakking clue what it does. Like.. I thought you might be able to attach one of the fins there, but nope! Maybe it is for attaching a gun? ... Actually thinking about it, I bet I could mount the hand cannon to that spot.
A couple of exhaust pipes? Not sure. They are attached by polycaps too, so maybe they can store things instead?
Vents on the top of the backpack. These things were a bear to try and paint, because I didn't realize my pen was going dead.
One of the assembled backpack pieces. I think it was here I realized that my pour type was just not pouring anymore, so I swapped out and it made ALL the difference.
The two backpack halves together.
A small little detail that goes on the connector for the backpack.
Where the energy belts are going to plug into the backpack.
This is it! THE FINAL PAGE!
The connector piece between the backpacks.
The assembled backpack!
With the vents open.
And here's with all the extra pieces attached.
All that was left... is the belts.
Oh god the belts. I decided to go all the way... and panel line ALL of them. 42 links, plus the connector plugs. If I didn't have the working pour marker I wouldn't have done this.
Halfway through belt 1...
Belt 1 about to be capped!
Belt finished and plugged into the backpack! I admit I was having troubles getting the wires to stick. Even with tweezers as they recommend, wire doesn't tie very well and it still needs to slide by itself.
Belt 2.
Belts attached!
....
And here it is. Assembled. Posing. Quite happy.
And the eternal rivals square off.
....
Thank you all for joining me on this journey. I'm going to get some more pics with the rest of my Zoids, as well as my year's output, once the light is better and my headache goes away. But it has been an amazing 3 weeks.
turtleantGunpla Dadis the best.Registered Userregular
edited January 2020
P-Bandai is in theory supposed to be for obscure variants of pre existing kits and such. edit: or (the good kind of) dumb shit like the 36 Maganacs box.
I say in theory because for the last like 3 years Bandai has had a real shit habit of making completely new kits P-Bandai only.
"The Origin" line in particular kept having color swap kits released at retail and very different ones be p-bandai. Such as the retail Zaku Cannon variant being just a brown Zaku 2 with a different backpack, and the p-bandai one having the actual Zaku Cannon head, chest, and weapons.
That sounds pretty shitty. Is the rationale that they can get away with producing less stock (and so keeping production costs lower) and charging more for the kits if they are P-Bandai?
It's supposed to be for kits they don't expect to sell all that well, so they manufacture fewer of them, passing the increased production costs directly to the customer. This also somewhat explains the difficulty in getting them outside of Japan.
There are certainly kits which fit these criteria exactly--my GM Sniper Custom II (White Dingo) is a color variant with slight modifications to an existing kit, from a fairly obscure video game. There are also kits that seem quite popular in the gunpla community, like most of the Advance of Zeta line, that seem to be popular enough that being P-Bandai makes much less sense.
Bandai Spirits doesn't charge more for P-Bandai kits than they do for retail kits. The problem is that P-Bandai kits, until very recently, have been exclusively available only through their webstore, which only delivers to Japan. This meant that if you wanted to buy a P-Bandai kit, you were paying a re-distributor that would buy the kit at retail from Bandai, then resell to you with a mark-up.
The kits are, in general, things that are supposed to be obscure or have limited popularity. The reason they follow this model is that they have contracts with their official distributors to provide a certain amount of retail models for sale, keep certain stock levels, etc. If the kits were released as retail, then stores would have to keep more stock, which could negatively affect them.
This also means that Bandai doesn't have to discount the P-Bandai kits to distributors, so fewer units are needed to sell to make up for any investments in new molds, etc.
Yeah, the biggest P(remium)-Bandai hurdles are the lack of availability outside Japan (which I thought Bluefin was working on but their offerings are still only a few kits out of, well, a metric shitton of what's produced, and then thanks to that any way to get them is almost assuredly going to throw you into scalper territory if you want to buy the things.
I need to reinforce: Hobby Lobby's cotton swabs SUCK. Holy cow, I burned through half of my supply on that!
I actually special ordered some Tamiya ones for my next project.
I just use Wal Mart's brand they are acceptable
It's... hard to explain. The tips get mushy, the cotton unfurls when wet and leaves behind a lot of slop... I was going through like 2 swabs a day of building, compared to 1 Tamiya swab lasting for multiple days if I was careful.
Yeah, the biggest P(remium)-Bandai hurdles are the lack of availability outside Japan (which I thought Bluefin was working on but their offerings are still only a few kits out of, well, a metric shitton of what's produced, and then thanks to that any way to get them is almost assuredly going to throw you into scalper territory if you want to buy the things.
So enjoy paying $80 for that HGUC kit
Yeah, P-bandai kits aren't any more expensive than comparable retail kits if you can get them directly. The prices for the few that have made it to the US Blufin store are quite good, honestly.
I mean the HAZE’N-THLEY II-RAH is $60 for a high grade, but it's a BIG high grade (that I'm very excited for)
That Turtle Zoid looks like it could fit in a WH40K Ork army perfectly.
Anyhow, every good kit starts with the frame:
The grey one is the CS version, the white one is the SD version (SD frame is the one supplied in SD CS kits, you have to buy the CS frame separately).
The shoulders have more horizontal movement:
It's nice to have elbows and knees!
Prolly want to pick up a sharp scalpel type knife such as an X-Acto, and potentially some sanding sticks of various grits, but otherwise that Tamiya kit has what's needed. I also recommend getting yourself something to protect your table as you work. Your kitchen cutting board is perfectly fine, but you can also consider a cutting mat too.
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AthenorBattle Hardened OptimistThe Skies of HiigaraRegistered Userregular
First off, this is absolutely the right place to talk about Bandai's Star Wars models! There was a bit a couple pages back about their Star Destroyer that was epic. I've personally considered getting some of their 1/72 scale TIEs and X-wings because they are in scale to my Zoids.
As far as tools needed, as has been said it's entirely up to personal preference. For the longest time I just had some Citadel nippers and an X-acto knife, and just tried to cut close to minimize the nubs/stress marks. I currently use Tamiya nippers. I don't use sanding sticks much because I never found one I liked and it added a bit too much time to my work that didn't seem to be much payoff. If I ever go full-hog and paint my models, though, I'll definitely make sure things are smooth.
I highly recommend fine point gundam markers to start with. They are easy to control, and more importantly easy to rub off with your hand or a swab or something before they dry. The main reason I was bitching about cotton swabs is because I was using what are known as pour markers, which are a bit more advanced and require a bit of set time - and thus need water or alcohol to clean up after the fact.
I would use a wash instead of pour markers, panel liner, or panel line pens. Much more forgiving, less effort, and makes things grimy like Star Wars stuff should.
The Vallejo wash he uses in that video is acrylic, and it goes right on top of the model. It's what I use, and I've always been happy with the results.
I will say that the star wars models need something to not look super plain. I built a bwing and it ended up looking like white plastic and got me to panel line for the first time
Here's how it looks partially lined so you can compare the wings to the center fuselage
Posts
Are they really that much better than the Tamiya ones?
They go through plastic like a hot knife goes through butter. You feel no resistance, the stress mark is very small and easy clear up, and the cut is flat and goes right next to the piece leaving virtually no excess plastic.
The 'P' in P-Bandai stands for "phuck you pthese pkits are phideously pexpensive and pvery pdifficult to pfind".
They do go through plastic like a hot knife. The trade off is you have a very thin blade that has to be made of a very hard steel, and is thus very brittle. As with Timspork, I had a pair but they broke when one of the teeth snapped in half while removing a part from a sprue.
I prefer the Gundam Planet nippers because they are more robust and cut nearly as well.
A lot of it is also just pallet swapped and maybe an extra runner and costs like 50% more.
Still I like them. Though when I work on some of the older metal minis I have it's not fun to find a pair of snips I can use on them.
Basically a chunk of my summer was finding my old tools. Getting a new set of or tweezers the bent tip style was a pain as no one in the area had them.
Remind me to never panel line a fragging energy belt again.
Second to last page of runners. They are getting pretty sparse!
Okay. I've assembled this piece and I have no frakking clue what it does. Like.. I thought you might be able to attach one of the fins there, but nope! Maybe it is for attaching a gun? ... Actually thinking about it, I bet I could mount the hand cannon to that spot.
A couple of exhaust pipes? Not sure. They are attached by polycaps too, so maybe they can store things instead?
Vents on the top of the backpack. These things were a bear to try and paint, because I didn't realize my pen was going dead.
One of the assembled backpack pieces. I think it was here I realized that my pour type was just not pouring anymore, so I swapped out and it made ALL the difference.
The two backpack halves together.
A small little detail that goes on the connector for the backpack.
Where the energy belts are going to plug into the backpack.
This is it! THE FINAL PAGE!
The connector piece between the backpacks.
The assembled backpack!
With the vents open.
And here's with all the extra pieces attached.
All that was left... is the belts.
Oh god the belts. I decided to go all the way... and panel line ALL of them. 42 links, plus the connector plugs. If I didn't have the working pour marker I wouldn't have done this.
Halfway through belt 1...
Belt 1 about to be capped!
Belt finished and plugged into the backpack! I admit I was having troubles getting the wires to stick. Even with tweezers as they recommend, wire doesn't tie very well and it still needs to slide by itself.
Belt 2.
Belts attached!
....
And here it is. Assembled. Posing. Quite happy.
And the eternal rivals square off.
....
Thank you all for joining me on this journey. I'm going to get some more pics with the rest of my Zoids, as well as my year's output, once the light is better and my headache goes away. But it has been an amazing 3 weeks.
There's just one more boss to tackle.
I need to reinforce: Hobby Lobby's cotton swabs SUCK. Holy cow, I burned through half of my supply on that!
I actually special ordered some Tamiya ones for my next project.
I say in theory because for the last like 3 years Bandai has had a real shit habit of making completely new kits P-Bandai only.
"The Origin" line in particular kept having color swap kits released at retail and very different ones be p-bandai. Such as the retail Zaku Cannon variant being just a brown Zaku 2 with a different backpack, and the p-bandai one having the actual Zaku Cannon head, chest, and weapons.
There are certainly kits which fit these criteria exactly--my GM Sniper Custom II (White Dingo) is a color variant with slight modifications to an existing kit, from a fairly obscure video game. There are also kits that seem quite popular in the gunpla community, like most of the Advance of Zeta line, that seem to be popular enough that being P-Bandai makes much less sense.
The kits are, in general, things that are supposed to be obscure or have limited popularity. The reason they follow this model is that they have contracts with their official distributors to provide a certain amount of retail models for sale, keep certain stock levels, etc. If the kits were released as retail, then stores would have to keep more stock, which could negatively affect them.
This also means that Bandai doesn't have to discount the P-Bandai kits to distributors, so fewer units are needed to sell to make up for any investments in new molds, etc.
So enjoy paying $80 for that HGUC kit
I just use Wal Mart's brand they are acceptable
It's... hard to explain. The tips get mushy, the cotton unfurls when wet and leaves behind a lot of slop... I was going through like 2 swabs a day of building, compared to 1 Tamiya swab lasting for multiple days if I was careful.
Courtesy of Sir Renzo
I didn't really pose them, but I wanted to pull out my Zoids collection and see where it was today. It's grown massively in the last couple of years.
... I need to dust, and I need to take another stab at repairing.
Yeah, P-bandai kits aren't any more expensive than comparable retail kits if you can get them directly. The prices for the few that have made it to the US Blufin store are quite good, honestly.
I mean the HAZE’N-THLEY II-RAH is $60 for a high grade, but it's a BIG high grade (that I'm very excited for)
Anyhow, every good kit starts with the frame:
The grey one is the CS version, the white one is the SD version (SD frame is the one supplied in SD CS kits, you have to buy the CS frame separately).
The shoulders have more horizontal movement:
It's nice to have elbows and knees!
Because there's a part of me that wants to start building some Bandai Star Wars models
What would I need to do that
I have this basic Tamiya toolkit that has pretty much everything you'll need to get started, but other people might have their own recommendations
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01AND0FRG/ref=cm_sw_r_other_apa_i_AW1dEbS9H2AVD
You may also want to search for "Gundam markers" and get the thin ones for panel lining, if you want to try that at all
And then just grab a model I guess!
As far as tools needed, as has been said it's entirely up to personal preference. For the longest time I just had some Citadel nippers and an X-acto knife, and just tried to cut close to minimize the nubs/stress marks. I currently use Tamiya nippers. I don't use sanding sticks much because I never found one I liked and it added a bit too much time to my work that didn't seem to be much payoff. If I ever go full-hog and paint my models, though, I'll definitely make sure things are smooth.
I highly recommend fine point gundam markers to start with. They are easy to control, and more importantly easy to rub off with your hand or a swab or something before they dry. The main reason I was bitching about cotton swabs is because I was using what are known as pour markers, which are a bit more advanced and require a bit of set time - and thus need water or alcohol to clean up after the fact.
A good example of wash usage, on a Star Wars kit no less:
Here's how it looks partially lined so you can compare the wings to the center fuselage
So get a wash and apply it!
No glue, no paint, but definitely panel lining.
Another quick one but he shows off how the kit goes together and the dry brushing as well as line work he does