Fantastic Builds and How to Find Them

I've never been to Japan. Well, technically I have set foot in Japan but connecting flights through Narita don't really count as visits. I don't speak or read Japanese, and my vocabulary is limited to about a dozen words and phrases that I've picked up from anime, such as "sugoi!", "nani?!?!", "kusoo.."  and admittedly, "yameteeee!" . But in my quest to uncover the ultimate mecha modeling techniques I found myself in the Japanese cyberspace wonderland.

For a while I was lost - It seemed like every link I clicked on led to strange fetish porn (what is up with all that goo?!), or an ad for pills that claim to grow your junk a couple of inches. Eventually I learned to adapt - and I began to find blog after blog, website after website of mecha plamo at it's finest... and there I came to realize the truth - the best mecha modelers are from Japan, and no one can ever convince me otherwise.

I began following Japanese modelers on social media. Many even maintain their own blogs, some of which I've already featured in the Superbuilds series. Their pages are treasure troves of information and mecha eye candy that will keep you browsing for hours. The formats differ and the layouts can be quite confusing to navigate, but all you need is patience and persistence - and modelers such as ourselves already have those two traits in spades.

Will you choose to stay within the confines of facebook, and continue to believe that the best builds in the world can already be found in mainstream competitions such as the GBWC - or will you take the time and effort to dig deeper? The choice is yours.

"You take the blue pill—the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. 

You take the red pill—you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes..."

-Morpheus (The Matrix)

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Meijin Modeler - Win Eiam Ong

For many of us, upgrading to an airbrush is the logical choice if we intend to get better at painting our models...But once in a while an artist comes along with enough talent to succeed using the most humble of tools - a good old fashioned paintbrush. He has conquered Thailand's GBWC twice in a row with his mind bending concepts and excellent craftsmanship, and went on to take home the title of GBWC grand champion for 2015. His entry this year is just as awesome if not even better, and he is off to Japan once again to compete with the rest of the world's plamo elite. Ladies and gentlemen, today we get to know more about the one they call The Paint Pusher...our featured Meijin Modeler, Mr. Win Eiam-Ong!

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Weathering - Sponge Chipping

Greetings and salutations plamo nerds! One of the final steps in the Boros build was some minor weathering to make it look fairly used, and to match the wreckage base I prepared for it. I snapped some pics along the way so I could share my preferred paint chipping technique - the tried and tested sponge method - which is easy to do and can give great results if you really put your heart into it!



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Tallgeese Boros

Ohayou gozaimasu my lovely weeaboos! I'm sure everyone is in a festive holiday mood - it's that time of the year when the expanding of our waistlines is inversely proportional to that of our wallets - that 2-3 week window when we can bring home new kits and get a little less flak for it from our significant others, because they're "self-gifts".  

Me? I won't be growing my backlog (...much). I already have too much to be thankful for this year - a healthy family, a stable job, a new house...and the cherry on top of my triple-scoop sundae? the Boros is finally complete! After almost a year of working on this thing, and more than a few mishaps that almost made me want to rage-quit the project...it is finished. 

Ladies, gentlemen, everyone who identifies as some other obscure gender or thing (hey, Setsuna identifies as a gundam), I give you my best effort yet...
the Tallgeese Boros!

warning: pic heavy!



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Field Report - G.B.P. 3rd Anniversary Event

It was high noon...the perfect time for a showdown as far as gun-slinging cowboys are concerned. But the gathering was meant for a different kind of gunslinger - instead of revolvers, we holstered our airbushes and rattle cans. Instead of .28, .38 or .45 caliber bullets, we used lacquers, acrylics, and enamels. Because the day was not about guns...it was about Gundams! That's right folks, yesterday, GBP (Gundam Bootleg Pilipinas) celebrated it's 3rd anniversary with a build-off and gathering of epic proportions. The people were friendly, the food was great, and the builds? The builds were handsome AF. Hold on to your panties fellas, they're about to drop like Axis...


Warning: Pic Heavy

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Decanting Paint from Spray Cans

What's up plamo nerds? I hope you haven't blown your holiday bonuses on kits that will sit on your backlog shelf for at least 2 years! Remember that you don't just need kits, you'll need other modeling supplies too. Paint in particular is a fast-moving consumable in this hobby, and you can easily go through several jars on a single project. Good thing there are cheap alternatives to hobby-grade paints - the most accessible of which is the humble rattle can. Available at almost every hardware and DIY store, these cans are the typical weapon of choice for a modeler's first foray into painting. Eventually though, many of us graduate to airbrushing, and a bunch of half-empty cans end up collecting dust under our work tables. You can still make the most of those old cans by decanting the paint instead!


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A̶d̶d̶i̶n̶g̶ Removing Detail - Waterslide Decals

Hello again plamo nerds! Due to insistent public demand (actually just one reader, persistent fellow, by the name of Clyde..) I'm doing a double feature today, demonstrating how to remove an already dry waterslide decal. Note however that this method may not work on all decal brands, but I've had success with both Bandai and self-printed decals, provided the decal solution has not fully cured and the model was not topcoated after the decals were placed.



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Adding Detail - Waterslide Decals

Greetings and salutations plamo nerds! I've finished repainting the leg I messed up last week, and it suddenly occurred to me that I never did follow up that Custom Decals tutorial with a proper how-to on waterslide decal application. This is all common knowledge to many experienced builders, but I'm determined to fill this blog with every technique I've learned from the hobby community as a way of giving back, so here you go!

Here's what you'll need:

1. Sharp scissors
2. Hobby knife with a new blade
3. Cutting mat
4. A small, shallow dish for water
5. Hobby tweezers 
6. Cotton swabs and paper towel
7. Your waterslide decal sheet
8. (Optional) Decal solution like Microsol / Mr. Mark Softer, or just plain white vinegar

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Murphy's Law

Hey everyone, I had a spectacularly unsuccessful round of plamo yesterday, and I've been getting some questions about what had happened, so I thought I'd write about it here instead - in annoyingly vivid detail. I find writing about shit that happens to me in this manner is kind of therapeutic...and yes, this is more relevant than the ongoing US elections.

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Featured Seller - GreattoysOnline

Hello plamo fans! Today I'll be featuring another well known store that has been around longer than many of us have been into plastic modeling: GreattoysOnline.com!

Established back in 2001 by enthusiasts just like us, GreattoysOnline has been nurturing otaku / collector culture in the Philippines by providing easy access to Japan and US sourced toys and collectibles for 15 solid years. They have a chain of stores spread out strategically across the metro, and an online store where you can shop in case none of the branches are within an easy commute from where you live. Let's take a closer look at what this store has to offer!

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Cleaning Your Airbrush

Good day plamo nerds! Allow me to share how I clean my airbrush after every painting session. No fancy-schmansy cleaning equipment or chemicals here, just some cheapo hardware store Acrylic Thinner, a small paint dish or cup, some paper towels and a couple of cotton swabs and we're good to go!

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Tallgeese Boros WIP 5

Hello plamo nerds! Here's an update on my current project, the Boros. I finally got around to painting the damn thing after nearly a month of grueling clean up and paint prep. I may have spent more time getting this kit ready for paint than I've spent actually painting previous projects. For a while it felt like an endless cycle of puttying, sanding, priming, sanding, puttying, sanding, priming - but with the recent conclusion of the Back to Basics series, I've gained a new appreciation of the process. I now find mini-bursts of satisfaction just looking at a primed part and feeling how smooth the surface is, and I must confess I've wasted precious build time doing just that. 

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Back to Basics 5: Paint Prep

Greetings plamo nerds, and welcome to the 5th and final installment of Back to Basics! If you've been following the series, you'll recall that every topic up to this point has been about assembly and getting the model's exposed surfaces to look as sharp and clean as possible. We've covered everything from proper removal from the sprue, denubbing, seam fixing, smoothing out surface defects, and getting everything to line up properly. Today we'll focus on a few more steps a modeler can take before finally loading up his brush (or airbrush) with paint.
Hop in!

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Mecha Design Preferences and Peeves

We all love looking at models on the web ( i'm talking about plamo here not victoria's secret) You scroll through your timeline and when you see a build that blows your mind, you Like it, Share it, or even save it for future inspiration. But sometimes you come across a project that, despite all the great feedback it's getting from the community, or how well built or painted it is - just doesn't do anything for you. It's not that you don't appreciate the work or recognize the ability of the builder - it's something about the look or maybe even the pose of the kit that simply doesn't get your mecha mojo going. I'm talking about design preferences - elements of a model that give you a proverbial mecha boner, and peeves - things that annoy the be-jeezus-yamato out of you.



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Back to Basics 4: Fixing Surface Defects

Plastic injection is a very efficient and highly accurate method of mass-producing model kits. However the process is not perfect, and some physical flaws can still appear on the surface of some parts. The most common flaws we might find are mold lines, flash and sink marks. These surface defects are easy to address and doing so will be well worth the time spent fixing them before painting your model. In this guide, we'll go over each type of defect and discuss a solution.






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Superbuilds III

Good day plamo nerds, it's time for a long overdue episode of Superbuilds! Cleanliness is next to godliness, as the old saying goes, and it couldn't be more true for the godlike abilities of the builders we're going to check out today. Their work is so clean even the sharpest and most experienced eyes would be hard pressed to find faults in their finishes. Let's go!

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Back to Basics 3: Fixing Seams

For the uninitiated, seams are those unsightly gaps between adjoining pieces that are the result of parts not snapping completely flush against each other. Like Nubs they are inevitable, considering this is injection-molded plastic we are working with and not some laser cut metal precise down to the nanometer. They are frequently found running along the barrels of weapons, or armor sections designed to sandwich something in between. They can be negligible if small and inconspicuous enough - but left unattended they can mean the difference between a professional finish and just another model on your shelf that "could have been better". Luckily they are typically easy to fix. Here's one of the most common ways to deal with them.





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Tallgeese Boros WIP 4

Hello plamo nerds! It's been a while since my last post, I've been too busy with a major non-plamo WIP and haven't had the time to share a progress update on the Boros. It's coming together really well, with just some cleanup and detailing still unchecked on the weapon before I can head to paint prep. Here's what I've been up to...







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Business or Pleasure? Bit of both!

Hello plamo nerds! I apologize for the lack of updates on the blog recently - I've been away on business/pleasure for nearly two months and was supposed to bring a WIP to work on, but I had the opportunity to take my family with me instead, so I decided it best to leave the hobby at home and just enjoy the trip with my wife and son.

Feel free to bail if you were looking for a good plamo read - I should have one of those up soon too. Today I'm trying my hand at travel blogging. Commencing poor attempt in 3...2...1...









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Tallgeese Boros WIP 3

Greetings fellow otakus! I've been busy working on the Boros and have made significant progress over the past couple of weeks. After making the decision to switch to Garazzo shoulders which extended the arm length, I figured I'd go all the way with proportion mods on this project. Here's what I've done so far!











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Magnetic Hydraulics

Greetings plamo otakus! I've been working on a bunch of mods for my Tallgeese Boros project and a WIP post is imminent, but before that I thought I'd squeeze in a quick tutorial on how I make working hydraulics. Let's get cracking!

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Featured Seller - Magnet Manila

Hello plamo fans! I'd like to introduce you all to Magnet Manila, an online store that sells - you guessed it - magnets! But these aren't your typical souvenir thingamabobs holding up a collection of fast food delivery flyers on the fridge door. They sell NdFeb (aka Neodymium) - lightweight yet extremely powerful magnets that should be a staple in a custom modeler's toolbox!




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Tallgeese III Custom WIP 2

Good day plamates! This is WIP 2 for this project. Previous WIPs can be found here:

Tallgeese III Custom WIP 1

      I wasn't comfortable calling this a Tallgeese III anymore after making significant changes to the design, so I came up with a name - Tallgeese Boros - after my favorite Magic:the Gathering deck.

I played Magic for about 15 years, and while I've been retired from the game for some time now, I'll always remember the days when I was a planeswalker in search of glory and power. Good times.

 For the uninitiated, the Boros deck is a red/white aggressive strategy designed to win the game in 3 to 5 turns by rushing the opponent with fast creatures and direct damage spells. Speed is the name of the game, and so shall it be the theme of this build.


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Meijin Modeler - Joshua Darrah

Greetings plamates! Welcome to another edition of Meijin Modeler- where we get up-close and personal with some of our most admired mecha builders, to gain insight on how they work, how they play, and possibly get an idea of why they're so damn good at what they do!

      Our featured modeler for today has a very unique way of customizing his kits: a technique that requires the ultimate in plamo surgery precision, which catapulted his one-of-a-kind entry to the top spot in the Australian leg of last year's GBWC, earning him a shot at the world title. Ladies, gents, and everything in between - I give you the one man who went and won himself a GBWC trophy with an unpainted kit...
Joshua Darrah!



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Tallgeese III Custom WIP 1

Hey plamo nerds, It's been too long since my last WIP post! Just a tiny update for today, but I'm glad I'm able to share my work again. This one's a personal project, meant only for myself and my shelf, haha. I've been working on it in short 30-minute sessions, which was all I could spare for the longest time. These days though I get to put in at least a couple of hours a week. Yay!

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Poor Man's Hobby Chisels

Greetings my fellow otakus! I'm finally starting to gain momentum with my projects, thanks to a much improved work/life balance - and what better way to celebrate my return than by sharing with you a wallet friendly guide on how to "simulate" one of the most coveted tools of the plamo trade - the modeling chisel!

(Sadly I don't own these..pic borrowed from google images..*sigh*)

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Android Overdose

Greetings and salutations my fellow Otakus, thanks for dropping by! First off, if you couldn't tell by the title and header photo, this isn't a plamo related post and you're most welcome to bail. But for those of  you who have been kind enough to follow even my non-build related ramblings, you'd know that I'm also a huge fan of the Android OS. Since the Froyo days (Android 2.2 circa 2010) I've been fascinated by the level of customization one can achieve with an Android device, and through the years, the platform has matured into a mobile computing powerhouse that has given a certain fruit company a run for its money.


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