Not an actual show, just our monthly meeting

[Edbert]

Just wanted to share some seriously good work brought to today's monthly meeting by members of my local IPMS chapter.
https://www.austinsms.org/index.htm

I'm not sure what this is, but he's over a foot tall. Builder said he threw some of the snap-pops that kids play with for explosion marks.

Detail was amazing.

This French Battleship blew me away. The group build here really opened my eyes to shipbuilders!

There are oars inside the lifeboats, and the life preservers have little red stripes on them. Yeah this is 1/350th.

This is a Warhammer chaplain, he's tiny, less than 2 inches tall.

 

[Edbert]

Yesterday's club meeting had to be held at a restaraunt. We usually use a community center in Austin, but had to relocate since the center is open to homeless when there's a winter storm. I did get to 28F overnight ya know.

One of the subjects was a "Zaku Challenge". Yeah I had to look it up too, Zakus are essentially the stormtroopers of the Gundam/Gunpla world. They cannot hit anything and die in droves, the cannon-fodder so to speak. One member had about a dozen of the smaller/cheaper ones he offered for free to anyone entering the contest. I figured to expand my horizons and see what I could come up with.

Initial thought was to paint it like a WWII soldier. But on examination that idea flew away quickly. I know the deadline for completion was January-2026 so I decided to make a "Semiquincentennial" homage to the USA. At the contest they all called it the Captain America edition. Here's a few pics of it.

Painted in Alclad gloss-black-base them multiple shades of Alclad metals, once dry the color came from transparent Tamiya acrylics. Color modulation was harder than I expected, but made for some variation that I declared intentional, cough.

I was displeased with those hoses, Bandai makes some great detail usually, but these were ugly. I tried using some evergreen dowels, bent with heat and cut some nylon hose in small washer-like bits. It looked MUCH better, but attaching them back to the kit was too much so I stuck with the kit parts. The bazooka thing had a scope, but it was solid, so I drilled it out, but then it was just a tube, so I created a lens and tinted it. The "eye" was just a sticker (not decal, a sticker) which was underwhelming, so I put an LED in there, which was a bit overwhelming, at least for photography. I was going to hide the wires in the stand but there was no room, I got them through to bottom part of that support, but the top-half was solid and a no-go so I ran them up his backside and called it good.

I bought a set of decals for it too, but there were no instructions as to where they went. I googled around and found there are THOUSANDS of variations, and none fit mine so I just winged it.

Anyway, happy to say I won 1st place. I think it was a pity vote from the Gundam folks, maybe they were happy to see an airplane guy even try, I didn't ask.

 

[Edbert]

We had a vote on the subject matter of our Show this year. Had to have a run-off between the top two choices.

The choice that did not win was "Revell", 2026 is their 75th anniversary. The last Revell kit I built was way over 30 years ago and my general opinion is low. But as a prize for winning the Zaku challenge I got to grab something from the pile of donations. Guess I'll be entering my 1st ever model show with a kit from a company I'm not a big fan of. Feeling the need to challenge my prejudices it seems.

The box was so small I did not realize until I got home it is a 1/48 scale kit. Better go buy some jugs of putty!