Why Snap Fit?

Why Snap Fit? A review of 00 Gundam Raiser No-grade 1:100 has the answers why I rebuilt it. Certainly if you're going to simply make an out of the box build and not go beyond it then there is nothing to talk about it except of course certain ways on how to make a smooth and clean straight-build. But there are questions come to play on why do we commonly Snap-Fit our kits.

What will be the Paint/Color Scheme? Visualisation takes a better place once the model is in the palm of your hands after the snap fitting it. Choosing which kind of color will suit or not in each part of the kit gives you a more in-depth idea and concept so that it can be more tailored to your taste. It's also good to take a picture. I even play with the colors in photoshop so I can imagine vividly the colors.

Any Modifications? If you're a hard core gunpla maker then snap fitting is a sure kind of way to study all the parts- proportions, scale, articulations, etc. before starting the mods. This method really takes out a hell of imagination and artistic sense. And sometimes it's a make or break thing when dealing with mods. I have seen some awesome modifications and messy ones. So if you want take it to another level then snap fitting before the mods is the way to go.

Which Part/s to Paint or not? During the time when I built my first kit, I was so eager to custom paint it. Not paying attention to the value of snap fitting.  A grave mistake! I painted each part first before assembling them. And when assembling took place.... there are parts that are so difficult to fit together. It was because I even had painted the pegs and some of the joints. Bandai was so damn good that the parts are really measured to last millimeter so that when fitting the parts they snap perfectly.

Then, I finally realized that I had ruined my first kit's paint job after I had already assembled other kits. So I decided to rebuild it and fix the paint job. I disassembled and painted again the messed-up parts. So the photos you see here are my 00gundam's re-incarnation. The Raiser is not yet finished so for now here they are. No photoshop tricks here... these are all raw pics:)

Astraea Type-F Review in Full Detail

A side story to the Gundam 00 Series is the Mobile Suite Gundam 00F. The Astraea Type-F piloted by Fon Spaak. The manga never made it to the anime. I just hope Sunrise would do someday. This is an interesting piece of model kit compared to the other Non-grade gundam kits I have seen and have assembled. This one is far better than other older MG kits or equally at par with the current MG kits nowadays. The package has lots of runners! Also, since this is a different version of the Astraea, it has some parts of the Exia as well. Most of all, I like its articulations including its weapons - GN rifle and GN bazooka!

Because I custom made this, I veered away from its stock red color. I used a different paint scheme. I prepped the kit especially the joints with graphite spray paint and then have it finished with a Yamaha Red Spray paint. The tricky part in the painting is having the two mixtures of paint react evenly together. So in effect, the red translucent paint has to eat-up with the graphite's mixture.

But before I further discuss later the customisations I did, here are the pics! or see them featured at hobbylink.tv