The Duckpond

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...

So, a few days ago my youtube channel hit 30 000 subscribers. I got a huge boost in views and subscribers a few months ago, when I released a stop motion video based on the hugely popular Among us videogame. Usually I only have time to make one video in a year, but now I think that I should start uploading more often. Something with less effort put into it, but uploaded more often. I'm not a huge fan of this idea, since I would prefer for my youtube channel to be a colletion of my best work, with no extra filler in between. But it would be a shame to waste the momentum I've gained from the Among us video by spending a year on another video. I've been thinking if I would upload these smaller videos on some other site as a test and then upload them to youutbe if the response is positive. I just recently started an instagram account. I haven't gotten a handle on how the site works yet, but it could be a good place to upload some smaller, lower effort content. At the moment...

  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...

It’s been a while since started making Zeons secret asteroid base, so I’ve forgotten where the urge to make it came from. But I can tell you something else that inspired its creation. I saw a Bollywood movie. There were quite a few oddities compared to the regular American action movies I’m used to. But the big one that stood out to me, was how they were more concerned with putting up a good show than with making it look real. An American movie might avoid something too flashy since it might end up looking cheap and tacky. But in Bollywood a silly looking special effect won’t be a problem. With my previous Gundam stop motion video I chose the setting to be a barren asteroid. Since I could build somewhat realistic looking fake rocks. Anything else would have looked silly. This time I went in and made whatever I wanted, no matter how cheap it would look. I also chose a more stylised and cartoony animation style for this video, since I wasn’t going for realism this time. The original Gund...

The models and sets The first thing did was build the sets and models. The planes were built out of regular model kits. For Ciphers plane the F-15 I used a 1/144 scale F-15 model. The only thing I had to modify was making a hole for a stand at the bottom of the plane to be used in filming. But for Pixy it was more complicated, since there are no model kits of Pixys plane ”Morgan”. The Morgan was built out of a 1/144 Macross VF-31C kit made by Bandai. The VF was pretty close to the desired shape so I just had to do some light modifications to the plane and build the laser cannon. I made the decals for the planes by printing them on regular paper. Then I peeled the top layer of the paper and cut them to the right shape. It’s not as elengant as a waterslide decal, but it’s good enought for the video.  The sets were built out of cardboard and tissue paper. For the big dam set in the opening I would make the rough shape with cardboard and then add some paper that was we...

 I'm going to be trying out new social medias again. This time I'll be trying out a Google blog. Hopefully I'll be writing here in the near future