Our Gunpla group on Guam had a little meet up in January to check out some of the projects each of us was working on. I also wanted to distribute the storm trooper kits I had for a contest I'm holding in the group, but of course everyone had fun just talking and hanging out while discussing all the gunpla we brought.
Master Grade Gundam the Origin ver. and my Evangelion x Gundam project, Asuka's Gouf Custom.
Some work in progress. We had a couple of Star Wars kits present besides the storm troopers. Most of these have already been completed since this meet up, namely the Nightingale that was a work in progress for a LONG time.
I mentioned in the last post that the winner of the customization contest won an AGE-2 mega scale kit. She finished painting it and it looks gorgeous!
Here's a Shiranui kit from Muv-Luv. One of our members is a huge fan of the series and has a ton of the kits that have been released.
Besides the first picture in this post, we had a lot of fun with the storm trooper heads. Customizing at its finest.
Stay tuned for more model kits from Guam!
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Chris
Otaku Recon is Guam's own convention catering to fans of cosplay, video games, Japanese popular culture, and more. It's been a tradition for the Gunpla building group to have a booth to display our member's latest builds and every year the turnout gets better. This isn't just in terms of the number of kits we (quite literally) bring to the table: it's also in terms of the quality of work by long time members and those new to the hobby. Our first tables were mostly new and old kits we had display at home but recently we've been getting more custom kits and a variety of paint jobs. As a builder, it's been a great way not just to showcase my own kits for others to see what I've been working on in person, but for me to get an idea of what everyone else has been doing, too. There's the opportunity to see new kits, too, before I buy them, that others may have already purchased. For builders and the regular attendees to the convention the booth has been a hit.
Our booth at the long awaited 2015 Otaku Recon was special: it was featuring our first Gunpla build off. The rules were based off the concept of kit customizing that stemmed from the latest Gundam series, Gundam Build Fighters. Entrants were required to customize any Gundam kit at 1/144 scale or an SD kit, and place it on the Build Fighters Action Base to qualify for the contest. There were about 10 kits submitted for the contest and we utilized our center table to display all of them.
Here are the entrants for the contest in no particular order:
Which kit should have won?
My kit was the orange GP01 which I customized using a ton of different old spare parts from old kits I recently uncovered. I based the orange color scheme off a Japanese Gundam Mook that had a professionally built GP01 in orange and labeled it as a "test color." Anyway, I'll try to have some better picture of it in later posts with how I did my customization.
We also had a great deal of miscellaneous kits not part of the contest on display. Master Grades, High Grades, and I put up a Votoms Brutish Dog kit I had just finished inspired by Mogami Moga.
We just can't have a large scale display without the Neo Zeong.
Most of us were excited to meet the famous cosplayer Vampy Bit Me who was going to be at the two day convention. On day two she unveiled an outfit for the first time and to our surprise it was none other than Char Aznable!
The highlight of the convention was definitely getting tons of pictures with Vampy and later getting a shoutout on her Instagram!
A member donated two Mega Scale kits to the group. A few members put together the RX-78-2 kit during the convention and had it signed by all of us, with Vampy gladly signing the shield. The kit was overhauled a little by Kent, on of our members, and the final product looked pretty awesome:
The AGE-2 Mega Scale kit was awarded to the winner of the aforementioned contest. The winner was based on a couple of things and I think weighed heavily on the fact that Vampy was quick to notice this kit out of all the others. Congrat to Tanya, who build the customized Haman-colored SD Kshatriya! We had a little get together to give her the kit and to reconvene after the convention.
