Gunpla, Gunpla Everywhere

Ok, it would probably be a good idea to add some flavour to the previous posts:

Firstly these are all 1/144 scale High Grade (HG) kits. If you are not familiar with Gunpla, Bandai produce kits of the mecha suits from the Gundam franchise (and others to be fair) in 3 main scales – 1/144, 1/100 & 1/60, and in levels of complexity (or Grades) that range from ungraded, High Grade, Real Grade, Master Grade and Perfect Grade, with some outliers at either end of the scale. Personally my current Gunpla collection is focused on the 1/144 scale, mainly HG kits with the odd RG thrown in if it’s one I particularly like (looking at you Tallgeese III). Now I do have some older 1/100 kits from Gundam Wing Endless Waltz, and a single 1/60 of the Strike, but honestly I’ve come to prefer the smaller 1/144 scale for three main reasons; even at the Real Grade they are still generally cheaper than kits from the larger scales by a significant amount; they don’t take up as much space (the average 1/144 being the same size as a Deluxe-class Transformer); and engineering – the HG kits released in the last decade under the “Revive” project have been astonishingly good for the most part, featuring excellent colour separation on the plastics (minimizing the need to use stickers) and expressive articulation. As a rule if a kit has two additional letters after the grading (think HGCE, HGAC etc) then these are more recent kits and should see you right.

Second, for this last batch of kits I’ve gone a bit further than normal by using the included sticker sheets to get a more accurate result, and have done a basic clean up of any nub marks left over from gutting the parts off of the sprues.

And thirdly, a quick breakdown of the tools I’ve been using – nothing more complex than a set of basic clippers, a needle file and some tweezers. I do have a few Gundam panel markers but almost never use them (I did use the black on the Strike Freedom to block out the eyes instead of using a sticker)