[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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[WIP] Mechanical Chain Base LED custom WIP 5

Just a small update regarding this project. 

Aside from painting the base with gun metal. I've tried my hand on masking/ painting.

I've decided to add warning strips at the floor of the chain base. The flooring already had those details so I just followed them during the masking.

First thing I did was mask the flooring, exposing only the areas where I want to paint the black stripes.

Next thing was to mask the part again. This time covering the areas where I want to keep the black paint.

This can actually be done any other way. If desired, The yellow parts could be painted first so it's just a matter of preference.

Once the paint dries, we can now peel off the tape.

I really looks good when seen from afar but upon closer inspection, we can see the imperfections. Apparently my masking was a bit off that's why some areas over the details were painted.

This was a really tedious task but the results are very satisfying. Next time I'll have to be more careful when masking to have cleaner details.

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[REVIEW] Anubis Multi Function Base

I recently got my hands on this cool looking action base called the Anubis Multi Function Base. So I'm sharing with you guys this sort of unboxing/review.

Unlike the regular action bases that we usually see, this comes in a box. The box feels thick and solid. And most of the text is in chinese(I think). 

The primary reason why I got this was because of the raised base. I measured the base and it's roughly 33 mm or 1.2 inches. My caliper wasn't able to fully measure the diameter of the base. The base's body measures about 141.6 mm or 5.5 inches. there is some extra lip at the bottom part so maybe that's where it got the 7 inch label in the box.

We get 2 base plates. 1 detailed and 1 plain.

And felt sticker. Maybe for the plain base plate.

We also got 3 identical runners. These are for the sub arms.

There's quite a screws to be used for the sub arms.

The manual is just 1 piece printed on both sides. Luckily the instructions and images are clearly displayed since the part numbering in the manual and in the runners are not the same. Though you can follow the instructions since you should be able to determine which part was used based on the pics in the manual.

Assembling the pieces, you get 3 of these sub arms.

Here's a pic with the 1/144 FG Age 1 Normal gunpla.

After doing some research, I found that they also released versions for the Unicorn Gundam. Sinanju, and the Gaia gundam

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[WIP] Mechanical Chain Base LED custom WIP 4

Finally done some wiring on this. 

I forgot to take pics of the back side but same as what I showed before, the LEDs are connected in parallel connection. I like the effect the light gives on the wall's details specially on the left side. the right wide wall has that bar that blocks the light which makes the wall darker.

Here's some test shots using a 1/144 AG Age 1 Normal Gundam kit. The chain base's accessories appear to be in 1/144 scale. So far I'm very satisfied with the result of the light in the wall.

I've also wired the ceiling with LEDs. I'm olny using 2 plates for the ceiling so that I could also use natural light and not make the base look too dark. I connected those LEDs in parallel and put a connector near the adjacent wall so the LED in the ceiling will also be connected to the LEDs in the walls.

Here's some test shots of what's already been done. I'm still researching how to light up the other adjacent wall. Also I'm planning on doing some detail lighting in a few areas using fiber optics when my drill bits arrive. Plus I still have to do a bit of dry brushing to better display the details.

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[WIP] Mechanical Chain Base LED custom WIP 3

So I finally bought the remaining pieces of my chain base project.

These are all the add on parts from all the chain bases.

My plan was to make a display base for my 1/100 scale kits that I'm going to use specially for taking photos of my kits. With that I decided to make a 4x4x4 mechanical chain base which used:

1 x CB2

1 x CB3

1 x CB4

1 x CB5

2 x CB6

1 x CB7

1 x CB8

I've already wired one of the bases before but after putting everything together, I did not expect it to be that big.

Here it's show with a 1/144 FG Age 1 Gundam and a 1/100 MG Hazel Custom.

Also here's some perspective shots of the kits. I'm very satisfied with how the images turn out. Having a backdrop like this really looks better than just random stuff in my room. hopefully I can take better pics of my kits with this. 

For now the base looks plain plastic but I think some dry brushing would bring out the details and give it that realistic look. I'm not planning on fully painting this(yet) since this was originally just a minor project that I can work on in between the other projects. 

On the next update, I should at least finished putting lights on one side of the walls and maybe started on the dry brushing.

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[WIP] HG Unicorn Gundam (Unicorn Mode) WIP 3

It's been 10 months since I last worked on this. I've put this project on hold for quite a few reasons. 

1.) This project required some painting to deal with the light bleeding and to make the kit look better.

2.) I didn't have the right size of LED I wanted to use.

3.) I haven't worked out a plan how to pace and wire the LED.

Obviously, there has been some improvements with this project hence the update.

After working on so many other kits, I think I've thought of a way how to light the kit. 

For the head part, I'm using 0603 SMD LEDs. These are white LEDs and I just painted them with clear paints to get the color I need. Here I used Tamiya clear green. The number of coats depend on how intense the required color.

The chest part was one of the easiest part to do since it just needed minimal cutting to make space inside. I used 3528 SMD LED here because the I need to light up a big bit of seam here. The consequence here would be the ugly light bleeding which would be fixed by painting.

Next thing I worked on would be one of the hardest parts of the project, the legs. I had to do multiple trials to get the appropriate LED positions to get the lighting I wanted.

So far the pieces look a bit dirty due to the black paints I put on the insides to deal with the light bleeding. This will still be cleaned up and painted. Hopefully by the next blog update I've finished wiring the whole kit so this project can proceed to the painting phase. I'm still unable to do paint sessions due to busy work-life stuff so I might have to commission the painting for this.

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