RG GP01 Zephyranthes - WIP 6 (Final)

All finally comes together

With all the painting works completed for the Kamiki Burning Gundam and the completion of the head and weapons in the previous post, we will now explore how the core fighter fits as the body for the Zephyranthes. The transformation of the core fighter was covered in WIP 2.

Parts of the gundam to be assembled

Some preparations are need to attach the core block. The front and the back are lifted up and hands are at a 90° angle for easier access

RG GP01 Zephyranthes - WIP 5

 Most relaxing build

After rebooting the build after 8 years with the completion of the waist and arms, body unit and the X-acto blade drew blood I can say this part of the build is the most relaxing as there are no very tiny parts for my big choky hands. This will be the building of the helmet and weapons which will mark the end of the build process.

[Head Unit]

Parts of the head

Completed head assembly

The most difficult part of the head unit is getting the red forehead tab into its assigned place. Had to do a bit of fiddling but finally managed to get it into place.

[Weapons]

Parts of the beam rifle

Beam rifle with the Jitte

Beam rifle

Parts of the shield

   

Completed shield with decals. The shield has a gimmick of extending and 

Waiting for the matte coat to dry

Gundam head on a spike.

Next post will be how the core fighter II bring together both the upper and lower body to form the Zephyranthes.

RG GP01 Zephyranthes - WIP 4

 Confusion at its finest

After waiting 8 years since the completion of the waist section and with the recent completion of the waist for Full Burnern, it is now time for Zephyranthes's build to resume.

[Body Unit]

The construction of the body unit is next in the manual. Found some assembled parts in one of the boxes and kept it aside as I did not know which part it belongs to until now. Apparently I have started the assembly of the body unit and stopped. I did the usual removal of necessary parts before assembly and when I wanted to assemble it, I got confused on which part is which number.

Was confused between part C19 and C20

Attached it correctly in the first place, doubted myself, removed and swapped parts, checked with GP01fb, confirmed had it right originally, removed and swapped again and found out the part was loose due to stress of the bigger bar dimension on part C19.

RG GP01Fb Full Burnern - WIP 3

I forgot how tiny RG kits were

A lot was going on in my life and scale model took a backseat for quite some time. There was a few times where I wanted to continue with this build but after taking it out from the box and looking at the instructions, I did not have the spark or motivation to build it so back into the box it went. I kinda lost interest until recently where I visited a small-scale model shops and they were selling military kits instead of gunplas and somehow that ignited my passion again. Maybe it reminded me of my roots and how I got into this hobby in the first place.

Recently I went back to my hometown and packed some of the smaller scale kits and took it back with me back. The plan was to practice/improve my brush painting skills and techniques on the smaller kits since they were more inexpensive and also work to reduce the backlog. Obviously this and the GP01 was in the list of kits to take back as they are still in WIP.

On the way back I stopped at a new gaming/hobby shop called Impulse Gaming at Juru Autocity and went for a little look, a little see. Spotted something which I was eyeing and knew I had to get it as there were not a lot of shops which are selling this anymore. This will be the first kit added to my backlog after a long time

HMM Buster Tortoise

RG GP01 Zephyranthes - WIP 3

A little intermission before the actual program

 

Recently I went to a shopping mall near my area and they had a funko exhibition booth. The missus was attracted to 2 series, Nightmare Before Christmas and Alice through the Looking Glass, which both happens to be in blind boxes.

Alice through the Looking Glass list of characters

Nightmare Before Christmas list of characters

She wanted the bottom Mad Hatter from Alice through the Looking Glass and the pumpkin man from Nightmare Before Christmas. The booth had a weighing scale and we were there taking out boxes after boxes to weigh them and comparing them to the ones on display. In the end, this was what we got from the boxes:

RG GP01(s) - WIP 2

Core Fighters, Transform and block-up!!

 

Mentioned in the previous post, we will make a quick size comparison between the two core fighters and have a look at their transformation process.

 

Comparison between the two core fighter-II.  As you can see, the CFII is way slimmer than the Fb. I understand that the CFII design is for it to be agile but the design makes it looks anorexic and out of proportion.

 

RG GP01Fb Full Burnern - WIP 1

 Same same but different

Originally I wanted to panel line all the whites using the pencil method like what I did for Zephyranthes. It was around this time that an idea hit me. Instead of using pencil, I will be using the Tamiya Accent (Gray) for panel lining and comparing it with the pencil.

 

The first thing I did was taking out all the runners which contain white and panel lined them.

 

All white pieces panel lined. Sorry for the unclear pictures. My phone recently died so I'm currently using a temporary phone for the pictures

  

RG GP01 Zephyranthes - WIP 1

Building two kits together (again?)

This is not the first time I'm building 2 kits simultaneously. Remember the PG Astrays? That is still in the WIP stage when I did not manage to complete it before my work schedule went bonkers. A few days ago I did mentioned that I took out an RG kit and was about to start building but didn't have all the necessary stuff with me at the time. The day after, I to take the kit out together with its brother.  I have decided to start restart the hobby with:

The GP01 brothers

Updates (17)

A little update on what's happening in my life

Hello everyone and I apologise for not updating this blog regularly. Mentioned in this post, this year will be a very busy year for me, I have completed my training in Thailand and a week after that the SHO course started. That was in the beginning of May.

 

In the middle of May, my mum had to go overseas for a month thus I was left with taking care of her pets for an entire month. I had to get up an hour earlier to go over to her place before going to work and going over there again after work before going back home to do my own chores. All I can say is that I'm glad it is over and it was the longest month in my life. Time really seem to pass at an extremely slow pace.

 

I'm delaying the diving course until after the SHO which would be after August. The new workplace is good but there are lots of things to do before audit. The best new I've had since transferring is that  my audit has been postponed to July. This gives me some extra time to prepare.

RG Exia - WIP 10 (Final)

 Make the last post of the year a good one

 

Usually I will end the review and WIP of the kit after going through the weapons. For this kit, I suddenly had an idea which is very obvious but did not occur to me. This post I will do some poses with the Exia. This will also give you a brief idea on how posable this kit is.

 

Usually I do not pose my kits much because 1) I do not know how to pose and 2) I'm scared of the paint chipping. Decided to tackle the first issue which is posing. What I did was follow the poses shown in the manual.

 

The first pose to cover will be the beam saber handle attached at the back skirt. Believe it or not, Exia is able to reach the back beam saber handle.

Front and back view of Exia reaching for the back beam saber

 

RG Exia - WIP 9

Getting ready for battle

Now that the Exia is completed, we will take a look at all the available weapons for this kit and attaching them on to the Exia. All I can say is that this kit has lots of it.

Weapons for the Exia

I did not notice that the Exia has a total of 4 beam saber handle attached. The picture above shows 6 but in reality only 2 has the peg for Exia to hold. A more in depth review of the weapons can be found in WIP 5.

RG Exia - WIP 8

Too many of the same views 

 

Returning to work on the Exia after a short break with the Gustav. With the armouring of the Exia completed in the previous post, then only thing left to do is to assemble.

 

Exia still in pieces

 

My working process for any gunpla is the same: Work from the bottom up. Therefore the first thing to assemble are the legs.

 

Just attach the legs into the pegs are the hips. Make sure they are fully in. Do not be afraid to put a little pressure on the leg as they are sometimes tight.

Front and back

RG Exia - WIP 7

Obstacles here and there

Coming back to work on the RG Exia while I try to figure out the dilemma for the D-Style Gustav. With the head, weapons and legs done, the next section to assemble would be the chest and waist.

Pieces for the chest

I would like to point out some difficult parts I encountered during the assembling process. The first issue are the front and rear skirts area. The pieces are a bit tricky to assemble. Not only they are small but the way they go together really test out your patience. Just remember to keep calm and all will go well. It took me some tries before I finally got it in place.

The other issue I encountered was the loose 'antenna' on the chest. It does not stay in place and it always wants to be folded down. The hard part is you will need something sharp to hook it up. The last issue I encountered will be the GN drive. This is not really an issue but just something to be on the lookout for.

RG Exia - WIP 6

 A change of heart

 

This will be the first time I will be assembling the inner frame for the RG line.

 

Inner frames ready and waiting

 

The inner frame when put together makes Exia looks anorexic.

RG Exia - WIP 5

Plated parts finally revealed

 

With the work for the MS completed in the previous post, this post will be about the weapons and the highly anticipated plated weapons.

Since there is no inner frame to work with, the first work to be done with this kit is to panel line the pieces and start the decaling process after cleaning the excess panel line.

 

Left: Pieces after panel lining

Right: Excess panel line cleaned and  pieces decaled

Since the work for all the parts are now officially completed, I will show the pilot or the 1/144 scale Setsuna F. Seiei.

1/144 scale Setsuna

RG Exia - WIP 4

Confusion leads to mistake

On to the next and final part for the RG Exia (excluding the weapons) after completing the body.

Parts of the hand

 

With all the nub marks removed, inner frame of the hand is actually very simple. All you have to do is to remove the wrist which is the same process as the RG RX 78-2. After removing the wrist, just bend the inner frame up to lock some pieces together and viola! A completed inner frame.

 

The only difference between this inner frame and the one with the RG RX 78-2 is that the Exia inner frame requires a foil sticker followed by the clear blue transparent piece.

RG Exia - WIP 3

The Fantastic Four

 

Mentioned in the previous post, the waist and the chest are next. Original plan was to do both the waist and chest in different post but when I looked through the manual, I found it pointless to do them separately.

 

Tools on stand-by for the nub removal process for the waist and chest parts

 

With all the nubs removed, the next stage is to assemble the inner frame.

 

Top 3: Chest inner frame

Bottom 3: Waist inner frame

 

RG Exia - WIP 2

Not the usual process and procedure

 

Work for the head will start after the completion for the work on the leg. I know the head is usually left last to signify the end of the build but I was afraid that the same incident like what happened to the RX 78-2 will happen to this kit. So to put my mind at ease, I decided to build the head first.

 

The first piece I picked up to clean the nubs was the V-fin. I was surprised at how large the nub mark was.

 

My, what big nub you have?

 

This does not make sense because the V-fin is so small. Why did the designer have to design such a big nub mark for such a small piece? The thoughts that went through my mind was the designer was either drunk, too tired or had just developed some eye sight problem.

RG Exia - WIP 1

An old highly anticipated gunpla

 

Decided to start on another RG kit since the completion last RG kit was in March and I feel of having an OOB built to distress from working on the PG Red Frames. Was looking through the backlogs to see which kits I would keep and which to sell. That was when I saw this RG and decided to build it since it was famous for being the First RG to have plated weapons. Do you know which RG I'm referring to? It is none other than the RG Exia.

 

Manual and tools prepared for the build

RG 1/144 Gundam Astray Red Frame - On Display @ Shizouka Hobby Show 2015

RG of everybody's favourite mech

 

It is safe to say that this is everyone's favourite mech. No matter what type of mech you like, you will surely have this one either in your collection or in your wishlist. Release Date: Aug 2015 with the price of 2700 yen.

 

Let's get on with the photos of this mech which was on display @ Shizouka Hobby Show 2015: