I was hoping this would have more (or any) pictures but alas I am a lazy person who has not taken any and am not a very good blogger. If you actually read this and want to see more please feel free to add a comment. I will do my best to answer or add some pictures to showcase a lot of what I am talking about.
This feels like cheating…almost like I am cheating on my hobby. I started this blog to write about board games and it is…sometimes successful. Ultimately though we are not defined by a single thing in our lives, at least we shouldn’t be. Variety is the spice of life, or something to that effect. About once a year I decide to try a new hobby. Not necessarily something I will stick with but something I can try that is new. It doesn’t have to be completely new, it can be an adjacent “hobby”. Some years, I try a new RPG out and play a few sessions (with a busy life it never goes much farther than that unfortunately), one year I tried out speed running, but it both wasn’t quite what I expected nor did I find it particularly enjoyable but it was worth trying.
This year for Father’s Day I decided that I wanted to try out my new hobby. Model Building. Now this isn’t my first foray into the space. Back in university I shared a few short stints with Warhammer Fantasy (before it was Age of Sigmar) and have attempted to get into miniature painting about ten to twenty times, never successfully. But, this time I decided to go into one of the biggest model hobbies with a lot of support that would end up with something cool whether I wanted to put in the minimum amount of work, or whether I wanted to go all out and put in TONS of work into the project. The specific version of the hobby I decided to try out was Gunpla.
What is Gunpla?
If you are reading this, (insert canned joke about no person actually reading my blog), you probably aren’t familiar with Gunpla. And if you are….do we share two hobbies in common? Reach out then, we should get in touch!
In 1979 Clover Entertainment created a TV show in Japan aired called Mobile Suite Gundam. But like a lot of animated TV shows from the late seventies and early eighties the point of the show wasn’t just to be a show, it was to sell toys. Shortly afterwards in 1980 tere were a few groups that got the rights to make toys, Clover’s toys were akin to children toys fully assembled and ready to go like action figures. Bandai on the other hand went and created their toys as Gunpla (which apparently stands for Gundam Plamo, where Plamo standards for plastic model, thanks Wikipedia) which were sold as plastic pieces that have to be cut out and assembled. At the end of it you get a figure of a posable giant robot that is pretty cool. The robots are obviously all ones with tie in to the shows. And as the years have gone by so has the number of figures available. Gunpla currently boasts thousands of individual models that are separated by “build classes.” These range from Entry Grade which are very simplistic models to put together, to the Perfect grade which are 1/60th scale of the (fictional) robots sizes with many options in between the two.
My Experience With It
I have been treating the hobby with an idea that it is about the journey and not destination. When you write out the process it sounds really simple. For each step in the (mostly understandable) instructions, you cut out the pieces, clean them up and put them together. Eventually you have a model, then you can do some modifications to it if you want (spruce it up) and then you are done. Sounds pretty easy right? And it is for the most part but every single thing in that list is usually a multi step and often a somewhat meditative process. Even cutting the pieces out the “runners” or plastic sprues is usually a two step process with a first rough cut with some cheap snippers and then a more clean cut (or like 5 if you need to slowly shave off the plastic) with single edge snippers. Then the cleaning of the pieces is often some sanding those specific places you cut or mould lines (lines left over from the manufacturing process). Even sanding is often a multi step process where you might start by shaving off larger pieces of plastic with a hobby knife and then work your way up with sandpaper or glass files or little metal model files really until you are essentially just buffing the plastic to get it to be nice and shiny again. The funniest thing is that it often still ends up looking not great if you hold it up to your face but if you stand the model back a bit you really can’t see any of the imperfections. After all that you have your pieces ready and can put them together and move on to the next step. So easy….
As I said above the focus on the journey rather then the finished product has been enjoyable. As you do each of these steps you can often get yourself into also a zen state of relaxation where you are just listening to music or a podcast and your hands are moving doing all the cleaning and cutting that you need which is very relaxing. I imagine if I could do some of these activities for longer than 30 minutes at a time the effect would also be heightened but such is parent life. Even if a single step of building ends up taking me 10-20 minutes it can be quite relaxing to go through the work to put it together. Then you get a robot and you are done….right? RIGHT???
You are never done!
Well sure the Gunpla at this point is built, but with a bit of work you can get it looking even better. First is panel lining, a very simple and honestly quite relaxing activity where you put either very flowy ink or just a special type of pen into lines along the model to make the part separation more visible from a distance and give your robot some more visual definition. For both the effort and the time it takes, this is probably the biggest visual improvement you can make to your models. The other foray that I am playing around with is watersliders or water decals. These are little stickers that are applied almost like temporary tattoos to the model. You apply them using some water and they eventually shrink into place. They end up looking quite clean and can give a lot of visual definition to the robot. Though it should be noted this is a much more time consuming process even when you get used to it. The thing about this process is while there are some sticker recommendations, they are at the end of the day recommendations. This is definitely a place where you can make your design your own and choose how your final model will look visually. It can be quite rewarding when you get a look you want working out and quite frustrating when that little sticker slides out of it’s place for the third freaking time!
Now there other things here that I haven’t dipped my toes into yet, such as painting (whether using the markers or airbrushing) which is almost a whole hobby within itself. Also weathering and scribing can make the model even more your own than the stickers and decals. Then if you want to go crazy, kit bashing and modifying your models by cutting and re-gluing pieces is an option but that is way too rich for my blood, not even sure if I have the vision for that at this point.
And after all that you are done, you just have to pose your new little cool looking robot and display it. Posing it is actually quite a bit of it’s own fun as there are guides about how to make it look better, stands that you can build so that you can make the robot have a more dynamic flying pose or a standing pose. You can select what weapons and accessories it has equipped (most models come with several as these giant robots generally have a variety of weapons) and after all that you can just display it….or change it’s pose every time you feel like it.
Final Thoughts?
I think I enjoyed my foray into this hobby. I feel that there is a lot of interesting work here and it is quite relaxing. To bring it a bit back to board games it gives me the feelings I wished to get from solo board gaming. I have never really been able to get into solo gaming since it feels like a chore and not a relaxing exploration of something. I find that I enjoy board games most with other people and is less fun for me as an exploration of the game system in a solo setting. Gunpla, on the other hand, feels relaxing to do and to complete even though if the final product isn’t something I will always want to play with later. That being said I may have already purchased a Master Grade Gunpla (which reportedly take about 6 times longer to complete than a High Grade which is what I went with for the first build) so who knows maybe this will burn me out, or give me a new hobby to do alongside my board game time.