@NWAN322 don’t sell yourself short. That’s pretty good!
I randomly found an Initial D car model build, in my YouTube feed. It was an Aoshima pre-painted kit. I was kind of stalled, and needed a nudge to get back into building. The pre-painted aspect was just what I needed. Enjoyed the build, and it got me kick started. I have since purchased another kit from the series. I watched one episode. But I’m 70, and it’s not for me. But I appreciate that I would have loved it as a kid. I did watch Speed Racer in the 60’s. The figure is 3D printed… I ordered it online.
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That’s so cool, @ctruss53. The shadow and sketching on the paper pad is a glorious touch, too.
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Cover model for the July/August 2024 FSM. Chad shows you how he did it in that issue.
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As with almost any sci-fi subject, you can just decide you want to do it your way and shrug off any naysayers. You don’t have to be into the e various shows or universes to think that big robots/fighting suits are cool, and I’d like to see one like this or like that. Aaron and I developed a whole universe around how we would classify the different mecha and how they fit into endurance combat racing of 2199.
Maybe you’d like to dress one up like a P-47D in all bare metal with invasion stripes? Or you could finish one that looks like it’s been abandoned at the bottom of a lake, cover it with lichen and seaweed and encase it in clear resin with a little boat on the surface with a boy fishing, completely unaware of what’s below.
I think the biggest challenge for folks who don’t recognize what they’re looking at is the sheer volume and attack of colors when you see a wall of Gundam models in a store.
The best thing to do is ask for help: I’m an experienced modeler but new to Gundam. What’s a good place to start?
My advice: Pick an HG (High Grade) or a 30 Minutes Mission model that catches your eye and don’t think about it too hard. Put it together. Don’t worry about paint or any other stuff. Just assemble and get to know what you’re working with and just enjoy like you did when you first started modeling. Either it’s for you or it’s not!
Sorry! Didn’t mean to hijack the thread.
I’m also a big anime fan, but I’ll leave that for another time.
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Cel shaded models like that car look fantastic. I find the technique to be intriguing yet terrifying. And you really need to be up to the task of brush painting, which I am certainly not!
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@ctruss53
That car is awesome! When I first saw it long ago in FSM magazine, my first thought was that it was a paper model that had been colored with markers or something.
@Tim_Kidwell1
What anime do you like? You can talk about it in this thread. This isn’t just for anime models.
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My tastes are all over the place. I grew up watching it—Robotech, Voltron, etc. I spent a lot of time in the late ‘80s and through the ‘90s buying VHS tapes through places like AD Vision and reading New Type. Before stores like Media Play and Suncoast started carrying anime, you had to know the shops that would. And even then, only the top of the waves would be available at those places. Luckily, there was a hobby shop within an hour’s drive that carried a bunch. Back when you had to drop $40 or $50 for a VHS with a 28 minute episode. Those were the days.
I’m pretty much up to date on the new popular anime—Dr. Stone, Kaiju No. 8, Demon Slayer, Frieren, Solo Leveling, etc. Waiting for the final Bleach: 1KYBW season, the next MHA, Jujutsu Kaisen, Chainsaw Man, etc. Fantasy, sci-fi, mechs, ninjas, superheroes, that’s all good. Sports, slice of life, I don’t do.
I have seen a few gundam series, like most americans, it was gundam wing and then endless waltz. Watched Robotech when i was a kid. Recently watched Gundam Seed and the Witch from Mercury and Iron Blooded Orphans. I like building gundams and when i see something that i find interesting i will look up clips of it in action just to get some background on it. That sometimes leads to watching the whole series.
I would also like to see models from video games, i know some gundams come from that and mangas, but i would like to see something from games like Armored Core and such.
As it is i have HG, RG and MG kits that are finished, waiting for paint or still in the box waiting to be built. It is quite fun tobuild these and you can get a lot of inspiration by looking at the Gundam World Builders Cup. I’d like to see Finescale do some coverage on one of those events, eh, eh, what do ya say Tim?
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This guy. As if I hadn’t thought about this or talked
to Bandai or anything starting 6 years ago—say when we started having GBWC champs write for us.
Let me just say, nothing is off the table, but everything FSM has to make business sense. Things are always moving behind the scenes even if they don’t appear to be.
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I totally agree! It would be pretty awesome! The 2023 USA O21 Champion and I actually both submitted stuff to FineScale’s BAMM (George won the mecha category haha).
It may be a little harder to do though because most of it is out of the US and it probably would be harder to get people to cover the out of US regional finals. But hey, I trust Tim haha 
If you were interested, though it isn’t GBWC, I can send photos for SCGMC! That’s the big one on the West Coast, and I’m in the area for college! Would love to help out any way I can!
Seems we share the same interests. I too watched Robotech and Voltron in the 80’s. A friend got me hooked on Robotech during high school. And ever since then, I’ve been a die hard Robotech/Macross fan.
I also bought and read the NewType anime magazine too.
Also bought a lot of anime on VHS tapes too. Bought a bunch of Robotech from Pallidium Books when they were at the Gen Con Game Fair in Milwaukee.
Also loved going to Suncoast video store when they were at Brookfield Square Mall during the early 2000’s. I miss that place. 
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I’m working on the mug art. 
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Welcome to the community. It won’t take long to post more pictures. Looking forward to seeing the other one.
We have criteria for publishing photos of models taken at shows—we do not publish table shots. It’s usually easiest if we work with the organizers to get a space where a booth can be set up for still photography. I can reach out to them and see what, if anything, would be possible, the number of models in the contest on average, etc.
I saw this in the magazine, really enjoyed the article. Very well executed. I watched some YouTube or Netflix show where they did it with a real car. Takes some skills to pull it off in any scale.
Just a few. I’m picky in my tastes, and I like the series that are more “realistic”, could I say. Series like the “Ghost in the Shell” franchise and “Cowboy BeBop”.
When I was a kid in the 70s, a local Philly UHF station picked up “Star Blazers”-that’s right, we had never heard of “Space Battleship Yamato”, or even the word “anime” at that point. A bunch of us in my neighborhood used to rush home from school to watch it every day.
Before that, when I was a little kid, we had earlier series that I watched, like “Marine Boy”, “Kimba the White Lion” (I still say Disney ripped this off, however the lawsuit came out), “Tobor the Eight Man”, and of course, “Speed Racer”. Again-never heard the word “anime” in 1970, they were just “Japanese cartoons”. (No such thing as “kaiju”, either; those were “monster movies”.)
I think the only model I have, though, is the Wave Tachikoma kit, with the resin figure of Kusanagi. I wasn’t really aware of any anime kits till I was an adult and got back into modeling. When I was a kid, my local hobby shop did carry some, but I remember that they were in the room where all of their Japanese product was, all the kits from Hasegawa, Tamiya, Bandai, Fujimi, etc. I never really paid any of them too much notice, since I built models from the American makers-Monogram, Revell, Aurora, etc. It just worked out that way.