1/1 scale fascination

Japan is really a crazy place. The people there more so, in a good way that is. And two really good crazy things that they have is anime and manga. Our Japanese brothers and sisters live and breath anime and manga on a daily basis. As such, anime and manga are a major facet of Japanese culture.

Speaking of breathing and living anime and manga, there has been some really awesome things sprouting around Japan recently and those are actual-sized models of popular anime and manga robots and characters. As a scale modeler, I've developed a fixation for these like the life-sized RX-78-2 Gundam in Shizouka (formerly from Odaiba):

1/1 scale RX-78-2 Gundam

Here's a quick lesson in scaling. If you recall your high school mathematics, scaling is done to represent the proportion of one object to another. You've seen those numbers before in model kit boxes: 1/100, 1/144, 1/60 etc. The number on the left represents  the actual size of the object while the number on the right represents the size of another object compared to the actual one. The lower the number on the right, the bigger the object (or model) is to the actual object. So, a 1/1 scale model is as close as one can get to the size of the actual object.  



Here's more of actual scaled models in Japan:

1/1 scale Evangelion unit 01 bust w/ Evangelion race queens

On your left is a 1/1 scale Evangelion Unit 01 head from the hit mecha anime Neon Genesis Evangelion. This one measures around 30 feet high (making the actual thing around 80 feet high, body and all). The installation depicts the scene where Shinji (the main character) first encounters the unit. It currently reside in an Evangelion theme park on the foot of Mt. Fuji along with a museum built around it.

More Gundam 1/1 scale installations:

1/1 Core Fighter

1/1 Zaku heathawk in the Niigata art museum. People shown to scale.

And more non-Gundam ones like:

Human-sized Rei, Asuka, Eva unit 01 and Astroboy.

Close-up of the life-sized Astroboy statue. Cute ain't he?

and an iconic life-sized Tetsujin-28 statue in Kobe.

So there, now you know what I'm going crazy these days. More to come!

We're moving and some other news...

First of all congratulations to the Phil. 24 hour Comic book Challenge Top Ten. I salute you guys!

Awryt, I was quite relieved when our Team Leader said that we will be moving upstairs into a new office. that means we would no longer be bothered by the eerie atmosphere down here at the basement. By the way, I've confirmed from a friend last weekend that someone did died on one of the rooms here. His story goes that one of the rooms here was a club back then and apparently a shoot out happened in that room, similar to the Padi's Point Los Baños incident almost a decade ago.

Ghosts: KISS fans

But well that's going to be over soon. We'll vacate the rooms by the weekends. Goodbye dark corridor!

REAL Grade 1/144 RX-78 Gundam

Also, I'll be acquiring an air compressor this weekend for my hobby needs. Now all I need is my own REAL Grade 1/144 RX-78 Gundam to try it on hehe.

That's all for now! Stay tuned.

I survived the Philipppine 24 hour comic book Challenge!

It was one crazy ride and boy, it was FUN!

I stayed at Dex'  (which was also a participant) place. First thing we did after receiving the theme was to plot out our stories. And while we're at it, we watched Spartacus along and was a ***bit*** distracted. Here are some pics:

I ran on Gatorade, bread, adrenaline and sheer willpower during those grueling 24 hours. My big mistake was to underestimate the whole thing, thinking that I can pull it off at half the time. I finished at 6am or 21 hours up the challenge, with everything done manually except for the scanning and uploading of course.

 The theme for the Challenge was: "Bakit Astig ang Pinoy? (Why is the Pinoy Hardcore). I chose to have it in Filipino to adhere more to the theme. The main inspiration for this work are those "Choose your own Adventure" books I've read when I was a high schooler. I thought that doing a linear comic would be too expected so I opted to do something that the reader might enjoy.

Here's the link to my comics by the way, enjoy! Just one piece of advise: read from the first page and follow the instructions carefully: "Tsong, Astig ka ba?"

And here's the link for the event itself with all the participant's works. It would be best to click on the name of the artist on the side bar for their complete work: Philipppine 24 hour comic book Challenge

And oh, I just found out over the weekend that a number of the participant's interviews (including yours truly) were published on the Philippine Online Chronicle. Here are the links:

Komiks Gladiators | Part 1 | Part2 | Part 3


To all other Challengers, kudos to you all and let's give ourselves a big pat on the back!

Bring on the Challenge!

...but not of the GoBots. This:

Check out the details here.

The Philippine 24-hour Comic Book Challenge!

 

Some gunpla news along the weekends

Ok, so I'll try to forget the spooky things me and my officemates experienced for the past few weeks by having a normal,carefree weekend. Or at least I'm going to try.

Anyways, I'll leave you with some good news; Bandai had released their Gundam 1/144 starter kit this July. The kit includes parts for a High Grade RX-78 Gundam and MS-06 Zaku. This is a good start for all the rookie gunpla builders everywhere as well as for those who doesn't have their own RX-78 and Zaku yet.

This is how the set looks like:

 The set has a lot of options and provides room for a lot of customization. And for 2,000 yen or roughly about a 1,000 pesos this set is a steal!

Awryt that's all for now, stay tuned!

Office horror part 2: 'Dark Corridor'

This video was taken last July 6,2010 around 3 A.M. Thought I might investigate the 'anomalous activities' running around our office area. So I borrowed a PSP Go Cam and decided to observe the corridor at the end of our office area.

If you observe closely, the end of the corridor (which should have a wall  with an exhaust fan attached to it) is not visible though there's ample lighting. The area where the anomalous sounds come from was 'silent' at that moment. And as far as I can tell, there's nothing on the video that is quite anomalous at the time that I shot it. On the other hand,I could be wrong.

So far I cannot extrapolate or conclude on the events that happened in our office 2 weeks ago. Perhaps more investigation is needed?

Project: TARDIS

I decided to break off from building little plastic robots and do a little something different.

I'm a new Doctor Who fan thanks to Gerry Alanguilan snd his wife Ilyn .I actually started w/ Torchwood season 3 (Childen of Earth), they explained to me that it was just a spin-off of the series (although Torchwood already blew my mind) so they introduced me to the 10th Doctor (played by David Tennant). It's all go from that point, so I'm gonna see most of the series hehe.

And now, for Project:TARDIS; the TARDIS is the Doctor's main mode of getting around almost, well everywhere and in any time period even! TARDIS stands for Time And Relative Dimension(s) In Space. It's a craft that's disguised (and remained as) a British Police box that the Doctor uses as a base of operations and transport. It's an icon in the series, let's say it's synonymous to Superman's phone booth or Batman's bat cave.

Anyhow, this weekend my hands just itched and I thought of building a mock-up of the TARDIS in 1:20 scale. Here's how it's doing so far:

It's like putting a jigsaw puzzle together, without the interlocking parts that is.

First,I converted the TARDIS' measurements (at least from those on reference pictures i got and a little help from a friend *wink!*) into 1:20 scale. Then , I got some illustration and proceeded to cut the sides for the TARDIS to spec, taking note of all the measurements I've done.

Yes, that's a bathroom tile. That serves as my palette.

Then, I prepared some plasticard (from spent game and phone cards, btw if any of you have some of these, please donate it or sell them to me XD) and proceeded to base paint them light grey. These would be used for the panes on all sides of the TARDIS.

Oh no! A cardboard...box!

So after all that, I put up all the sides together with double-sided tape. I had a rough time with the corners, but I managed it somehow.

Awryt so all's that is done. I'll be working on the roof,flooring and paint for this one over the rest of the weekends. This is just a mock-up btw, I plan to mass-produce this once the mock-up and templates are done. And I'm planning to do it all with thicker plasticard.

Stay tuned!

One word for these TRON toys:

AWESOME.

I'm crazy about toys, Especially the ones that remind me of my childhood when I'm not yet able to buy toys myself.

Fast forward to now and endowed with the ability to buy whatever I want (provided I can afford it of course), I can say that I'm catching up with the little kid inside of me.

I'm so excited with all the stuff that come out these days. I once thought that the new Transformer toy line was great until I stumbled upon these on Toy News International:



TRON as a movie was epic in itself back in the '80's. I've seen what they are planning to do with the remake. But the TRON toys are another story. take that action figure above for example. An action figure that lights up is good enough but a toy that lights up AAAAAAND has an animated face on it is truly a class on it's own.

But that doesn't stop there:

This baby over here is a R/C TRON Lightcycle that could run on walls. You heard me right. I repeat : the TRON action figures have animated faces and the light cycle clings and runs on walls. What would they think of next?

I'm all excited now...really, really excited.