[TUTORIAL] HG Geirail Head LED tutorial

Finally had some time for a new post. Here's another sort of tutorial/ guide on how to add LEDs on heads of HG kits. This time, it's the HG Geirail from the Iron Blooded Orphans anime.

Drill a hole on the "main" head frame. This is where I will be attaching the LED. Though the actual sensor of the MS is rectangular, I decided to go with just a small hole for simplicity and since there is still a piece that will diffuse the light.

For this I will be using white 0603 SMD LEDs, wires are 30AWG wires. Total radius of the wires will be 1mm. So I need a 1mm or bigger drill bit. I decided to use 1.2mm to give it a bit of clearance and so the wires don't get stuck in the holes. I mostly get them online since these stuff isn't available locally here where I live.

Once the part is drilled, its time to glue the LED in place.

Next we plan on how the wires will exit the head, towards the body. There's actually plenty of space in the HG Geirail for this.

Testing the LED after putting the head together. It's good practice to test if the LED after putting together a section of the kit. It would suck so bad if you just find out that the LED or wiring broke after putting the whole kit together.

Next would be passing the wires through the body, luckily, plenty of space here.

I decided to stop here, below the body since I still don't have a specific plan for this kit. I can continue passing the wires through to the feet to hide wires while standing display or anywhere where it will not be noticeable.

The red clear piece diffused the light really well giving a cool effect.

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[RANDOM] Toy Photographer Wannabe

Been down with some cough and colds this past week. Literally slept the whole weekend off so I didn't get to work on anything. 

Now I'm feeling a bit better but still not up to going back to sniffing paint or soldering lead. So instead I tried to do some toy photography with my kits.

Damn... Cameras really do add 10 lbs. :P

The setup. Don't have any fancy equipment. But my laptop hooked to my tv for the background works just as well. Also I can easily change backgrounds as fast as my internet loads them. :P Also I'm using just my phone, a Samsung S6 as the camera, set to auto. :P The kits I used here are the RG Sinanju ans HG Unicorn Destroy Mode.

Those are some of the best shots I got. It's was hard to get a good shot of the Sinanju specially when I want to focus on its thrusters (because whats the point of lighting them up if they're not shown right :P). 

The shots are not edited in any way, just cropped and trimmed the edges. I don't like editing my pics. 

This is the inspiration for this photoshoot. This is a scene from both the OVA and the series. Episode 2 in the OVA and Episode 5 in the series.

Close enough.

The RG Sinanju's waist was really weak making posing difficult. The HG Unicorn was a tight build so posing wasn't an issue but as can be seen in the pics there are already areas where the LEDs stopped working. I might have broken a connection somewhere. Unfortunately, it's really hard to troubleshoot these kinds of issues once the kit was already fully assembled. Overall it was a very satisfying experience since I was able to get good shots. I'll have to do this more often.

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[DISPLAY] RG Amazing Red Warrior

Painting is finally finished. It isn't perfect but this project turned out better than what I expected.

I do plan on putting decals, maybe that for a different time.

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[WIP] RG Amazing Red Warrior WIP 4

It's been quite a while since I worked on this kit. Primarily because I haven't got the time and skill to start painting my kits. But thanks to the previous long weekend, I finally had the chance to setup my airbrush set and start painting this.

I first primed the parts using an industrial grade primer in a spray can.

I'm using a DIY airbrush set. You can see I have multiple pumps connected together just so I can get the pressure I needed. This setup actually ended being more expensive than just buying a hobby grade air pump. But I don't want to waste any more money so I'm making the most out of this.

I'm using polyurethane paints, commonly used in automobiles. I got this from a paint shop where the owner is also a plamo builder.

I've managed to paint most of the kit during the weekend.Though there a few rough spots and some paint inconsistencies, I'm really satisfied with what I achieved here.

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[WIP] HG Shia Qan[T] WIP 2

Just a small update for this. 

I've already finished putting LEDs on the parts individually except the head. So here's some WIP pics of it.

Since the kit comes with some scrap pieces from the HG Qant specifically the head clear parts, I decided to use those so that lighting up the face would be easier.

After some cutting, I was finally able to fit the new pieces for the eyes, forehead, and lack sensors. I had to glue them in place since they really don't have anything to attach to.

Aside from cutting and fitting the pieces, the challenge here was to How to light up the pieces properly, and painting the eyes.

Now that everything's been wired up. All that's left is to put it all together.

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[WIP] HG Shia Qan[T] WIP 1

So I saw this kit, the HGBF Gundam OO Shia Qan[T], in one of the toy stores and those clear parts just kept calling to me. And since it was on sale, I decided to get one and try to light it up.

I don't plan on painting this kit, maybe just a flat coat afterwards, since I'm considering this as a minor project since I kind of feel exhausted with the ones I'm currently working on.(actually I'm just tired of thinking how to wire those kits... :P)

I started working on various pieces. I don't plan on finishing any specific section first. Just trying to wire up all pieces first.

One of the first pieces I worked on was the leg areas. I initially thought it would be easy and straightforward since there was plenty of space inside the lower legs but I found out there wasn't really any place behind the clear part to place the LED. 1.) The area behind the clear piece is occupied by the knee joint so there's no way I can place the LED there without sacrificing the knee articulation. 2.) I didn't want to place the LED directly behind the clear piece because aside from poorly lighting up the big clear piece, it would also create a bright dot that doesn't look well with the effect I wanted.

Instead of directly behind the clear piece, what I did was drill a hole, the same size as the LED, on the edge of the area covered by the clear piece. In this case, it's the edge of the foil sticker.

The effect was way better than I expected. Though I'm not sure why it appears that the foil sticker isn't reflecting any light towards the clear piece.

And since I'm already working on the leg area, I decided to finish working on the legs and work on wiring through the knee joints. The knee joint has a unique construction and luckily, there was enough room to pass through the wires

One of the tricky parts of this kit was the arm areas since there are 2 areas that need to be lit up and that there wasn't much space inside to work with. What made it much harder was that one of the clear pieces is on the joint itself.

Same with the leg piece, I placed the LED on the edge of the clear part so it light up from the edges.

This shot was taken with the low brightness setting to simulate how the piece would actually look like in personal. I guess it can't be helped with the bright spots where the LED is.

I've also finished working on the GN Sword. For this I used a 3mm LED filed ti fit inside the part.

Here's a shot of the rear skirt piece. I'm really liking the effect it gives on the blueparts. I'm only using white LED.

Next thing I worked on was the GN binder. This I think will be the hardest section of this kit.

Wiring the individual sections of the GN binder wasn't really hard. I just have to plan accordingly where the wires would be coming from to help prepare when putting them all together.

The GN sword bits would have to be the hardest part to light up. There are too many tiny pieces packed together. I may have found a way to light it up but I ended up having too much wires coming out of the part. I'll have to plan how to manage those wirings.

Since it appears that I'm done working on the lower body of the kit, I decided to assemble it for now to see how it would look like. And I'm really liking the effect on the blue parts. Hope it continues to look good throughout the project.

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