The smell of fireworks is still in the air, and for the first time in recent memory, it isn't raining the day after July 4th. Yesterday I ended up taking a huuuuuugggeee trip down memory lane by digging up relics from my pre-teen years. So I decided to post some of my earliest Gundams in the next few entries - as a way of documenting my still amateurish journey in the GunPla world from the very beginning. As such, today's Gundam is the HG 1/144 Heavy Arms Custom from Endless Waltz. Back in middle school, I remember seeing the movie on Cartoon Network and being obsessed with getting the figures - eventually during the summer of 8th grade, I did get to start building the Endless Waltz line, and this one was the first. As you guys may already surmise, it is an atrocity from a painting and assembling standpoint - and indeed, it is.
One of my first Gunpla kits!
The assembly of the group of GunPla that this kit was a part of was an exercise in child-like experimentation, curiosity and of course, trial and error. As a middle schooler, I had no access to things like plastic cement, design knives, gate nippers or sandpaper. In their place, I used my hands to tear the parts from the runners and a kitchen knife that was sharp enough to do the work of carving off the flash. Impatiently, yet meticulously snap-built, this Gundam turned out pretty good - for being assembled with a what can be considered caveman tools.
Detailing this kit involved what I had learned from slapping (*headdesk*) poster paint onto the 3 or 4 kits I built before this one - which meant painting directly from the bottle, a nasty habit that I didn't get rid of for a veeeeeeery long time. This model was hand painted with the same Testors enamels that I use on my more recent work - the paint kit managed to last me from around 2002, when I got my first GunPla until now. You'll see various mistakes that I made during the painting process, which include painting light colors over dark (shoulder pads), not separating the parts properly (the camera above the antennae) and not thinning the damn paint (every freakin' where).
The panel lines were done with one of those Sanford rollerball pens with the water-based ink - I didn't even know what the Gundam Markers were at this point in my hobby days and they were the only pens that were thin enough to get the job finished. As you may tell, that did NOT work out too well. The finer details, such as the face and the light blue highlights on the various panels on the body were done up with a toothpick, a trick that I picked up on my early days of forum sifting.
The panel lines were done with one of those Sanford rollerball pens with the water-based ink - I didn't even know what the Gundam Markers were at this point in my hobby days and they were the only pens that were thin enough to get the job finished. As you may tell, that did NOT work out too well. The finer details, such as the face and the light blue highlights on the various panels on the body were done up with a toothpick, a trick that I picked up on my early days of forum sifting.
See all of those ugly mistakes?
Massive chainguns
Better hope you're never on this end of those barrels
RELOOOOAAAAAAAD!!!!11!!1!
The part of this model that I so fondly remember is painting the dozens and dozens of missiles and inner workings of the Gundam Heavyarms underneath the coverings - using the equivalent of a Q-tip, I managed to get all of those little tiny dots in after much RAGE and frustration. It lends a bit of charm to the finished product, if there is any charm to this ugly duckling to begin with. More photos of the finished kit:
2 hours of pain results in a lot of nothing...
Close up of the gunk inside the chainguns
Add some more guns... Open the other hatches...
The pose inside the display case
This model came out at a time when "HG" didn't really imply that the model was at the same level of quality as even the earliest HGUC models. If the parts were separated a little more, I would have probably been able to paint the pieces a lot better than the gunkified mess that you see in the closeup shots. The seams were pretty tight though, if I did end up using glue and a proper flash trimming tool back then, the model would have probably ended up looking much more appealing than what is seen here. However, I don't really recall the building experience, seeing as how I finished this GunPla around 2003 or 2004.
Other issues include extremely loose joints after just a few pose changes - and that's not only for this particular kit, most of my other Endless Waltz kits from around this time also suffered the same fate. Further quips I have about this kit is how many of the covers are handled - all of the hatches that cover the missiles from the hips down all need to be swapped out with "opened" variants of the same part, leading to a lot of pain during posing (and of course, during this photo session...). It's understandable though, because implementing those minuscule joints to attach the covers would have been extremely delicate and annoying during the build process anyway.
It's joints may be loose now, but the model still has a lot of life in it, looking pretty damn good inside the display case alongside my more recent work. For a GunPla made with a kitchen knife and painted with those elementary school-style Crayola brushes, it turned out pretty well.
Other issues include extremely loose joints after just a few pose changes - and that's not only for this particular kit, most of my other Endless Waltz kits from around this time also suffered the same fate. Further quips I have about this kit is how many of the covers are handled - all of the hatches that cover the missiles from the hips down all need to be swapped out with "opened" variants of the same part, leading to a lot of pain during posing (and of course, during this photo session...). It's understandable though, because implementing those minuscule joints to attach the covers would have been extremely delicate and annoying during the build process anyway.
It's joints may be loose now, but the model still has a lot of life in it, looking pretty damn good inside the display case alongside my more recent work. For a GunPla made with a kitchen knife and painted with those elementary school-style Crayola brushes, it turned out pretty well.
"Until next time, folks~"
