The Duckpond

    1/48 Air frame Aestivalis from Martian successor Nadesico. This kit was released by Bandai in 1997. The sticker sheet for this kit includes a 1/48 scale version of one of those Gekiganger stickers Gai was going to put on his machine. That’s a really neat detail. I didn’t put one on mine, since I didn’t know a good place for it and also Gai never got to stick on his either :(  Comparing the painted model to the unpainted one

  I wasn’t a huge fan of the Zaku I initially. To me, it never really looked like a predecessor to the Zaku II, rather just a stripped down version of it. But the design eventually grew on me and I liked it enough to build a model of it. This isn’t actually a Zaku I model kit. It was built out of a HG Zaku II from the 08th ms team line. It was a simple conversion, since the Zaku I is just a Zaku II with some bits taken off. Mostly, I just had to fill in the holes left by the power cables and do some scratchbuilding. I built joint covers for the elbows and built a new armour part for the cockpit hatch. The machine gun was made by cutting up the old gun and rearranging the pieces to make the Zaku I machine gun. The spikes on the shield are the spikes that were cut off of the shoulder ball. I also made new shoulder and ankle joints for the model. The model was painted with a brush and then I added some decals and weathering. Comparing the unpainted model and the finished version New a...

I was kind of hesitant to try out Valkyria chronicles. I liked X-com and Valkyria chronicles was a similar strategy game, but I just didn't like the anime theming of the game. Even so, I eventually got around to playing it. And I'm glad I did. I ended up really liking the game, despite the anime theme. In some ways I even prefer it to X-com. Since I liked the game so much, I wanted to build something from it. I chose the main characters tank, the Edelweiss. The Edelweiss is not based on any real tank. It has design elements taken from real tanks mixed up in it's design, But it really doesnt resemble any tank that closely. That would mean, that I would have to scratch build a lot for this project. So far, this one has the most extensive scratch building of any of my projects. Aside from the turret, everything above the treads is scratch built. This was also my first time building a tank. Im more familiar with planes, so I didn't instantly know which kit would be a good b...

  I'm a huge fan of the Area 88 ova from 1985. The high quality plane animation is nice to look at. And the tone and setpieces have inspired the Ace combat games I also like very much. Since I'm such a fan It's only natural that I would want to build a model based on the main characters plane. Well one of them atleast. In the ova there are 3 main planes The F-8, F-5 and this one. I chose the F-20 because I think that it has the best color scheme. The little bits of blue on the sides make it look better to my eyes. The base model is Hasegawas basic 1/72 F-20. They also made a special Area 88 version with the correct decals in the box, but that one is out of print and also more expensive. So I would build mine out of the basic version and print my own decals. I started working on this kit by printing the decals, the most important ones were the unicorns on the tail fin. I Looked up references from the internet and screenshots from the ova. I made the decals in inkscape and pr...

This is an older 1/100 high grade model of the Gundam X. From the After war Gundam X TV show. Despite being an older kit it is still color separated and snap fit assembled. But still, it would need some work to look its best. I removed the seam lines as best I could, installed some LEDs in the head and chest and painted it. For this kit I decided to go with a two tone white and light gray color scheme, inspired by Bandais Real grade series. Like most of the kits made by Bandai in the 90s, the kit is covered in panel lines. These panel lines gave a good guideline for painting the gray parts. I was considering if I would paint the yellow parts in gold. I thought that the gold paint might look tacky, but I decided to go with it since with the chrome parts and the crazy 90s style panel lines, the kit was going to look tacky either way. The result ended up looking pretty great. The paint ended up being kind of sloppy and the Less could have been used better. But It still looks nice on my sh...