Gundam Modeling 102

Figures and Toys

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chibi_unicorn1

Meet Chibi Gundam Unicorn. I put him here next to my Nenderoids for size comparison. It took me less than an hour to assemble this tiny transplant from Japantown—less than half the time it took me to fly him back from San Francisco.

I’m mentioning this because he’s very similar to the first Gundam model I ever built, also a chibi. But that one took me an entire afternoon. Three years later, I think I’m finally getting the hang of this Gundam building thing.

I bring this up because, after all this time, my Sept. 7, 2011 blog post, Gundam Modeling 101, is still the most popular post on Otaku Journalist. Is Gundam modeling getting more popular?

If it is, it isn’t getting more accessible. The instructions are still always in Japanese. I still make a lot of mistakes. In the years I’ve been building Gundams, I’ve learned there’s a damned steep learning curve.

The most important lesson I’ve learned though, is not to be such a perfectionist. I’m not trying to compete with the eight-year-old girl who won the Gundam Builder’s World Cup. My goal is just to get off the computer for a while and remember what it’s like to create something with my hands.

Here are some of the Gundams I’ve build recently and what I learned in the process:

exia1

 “SWAG.”

This is Gundam Exia, a 1/100 High Grade model. High Grade  means he’s the second easiest type to put together after chibis; the fraction means he’s 1/100 the size of a figurative “life size” Gundam.

I hadn’t seen Gundam 00 when I bought him; I just liked the pearl pink color. I was surprised to find out he is piloted by a guy! But I don’t put him in these wide-stanced, imposing poses because of gender. It’s more like, he’ll fall over if I put his legs too close together.

exia2

Now you see why. Just look at that rear view. Gundam Exia has no less than SIX swords on his person. I think this is why I have such a tough time keeping him balanced. Still, every time I move him to take photos, a part falls off.

Gundam Exia taught me:

  • There’s no shame in using a little superglue. Sure, Gundams are supposed to snap together, but my High Grades aren’t always the finest quality. It may make the pros cringe, but gluing a few pieces on keeps me from having to reassemble him completely every time I want to pick him up.
  • A larger scale means it’s harder, not easier, to build. I had only built 1/144 models before Exia, and I thought this one’s larger size would mean bigger, simpler parts. Wrong! It just has a lot more detail. This is why it’s so hard to find High Grade models that are 1/100 scale in the first place, and why I can’t even find a link to this particular model.

acguy1

This is Acguy, here placed next to a Clementine for size comparison. An HG model, he came in a three-pack of amphibious suits along with Char’s Z’gok and a Gogg. I bought it at Otakon 2012 exclusively for the Acguy (come on, does ANYONE like the Gogg?) and just got around to building it.

acguy2

John ended up building the other two because I sure wasn’t going to. They’re not nearly as cute! The Z’gok is okay, but I hate the Gogg. Sometimes to mess with me, John puts it on my nightstand while I’m asleep.

Acguy taught me:

  • Three-packs are not exactly a bargain. I bought all three of these guys for the same price as Gundam Exia. Even though both kits are High Grades, the Exia is significantly higher quality and had a lot more parts. You can tell just looking at him that Acguy’s torso is just two or three parts snapped together.
  • If you break it, you’re SOL. I’m not posing Acguy’s claw closed because I want to. It’s more like, I was a little rough with one of the talons and it bent. Now it doesn’t open anymore, so I can’t pose him with an open claw. Gundam kits don’t come with extra parts, so there’s nothing I can do now except buy a new Acguy, and it’s not worth doing that.

In sum, you’re not going to get any tips from me about smoothing out imperfections with sandpaper or using fancy, overpriced tools to assemble your Gundam. My philsophy to Gundam building is a leisurely one—if it’s not fun and takes too long, it’s not worth it for me.

Have you built any new Gundam models lately? I encourage you to brag!

Like Gunpla? Click the image below to visit my new blog, Gunpla 101. 

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Otaku Links: Getting schooled by Reddit, 12-year-olds, etc.

Otaku Links

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  • I admit I’ve spent a good part of this week thinking about and trying to learn from last week’s failure. I actually made a Reddit thread about it and the advice I got was pretty humbling. (I’m a little embarrassed to even be sharing it!)
  • On the same topic, one article that really resonated with me was Steven Savage’s post on the importance of marketing yourself in geek career fields, Are You A Fact?
  • Tomorrow I’m heading to my local card shop to play in the Magic: The Gathering Gatecrash prerelease tournament. There’s a young crowd which means I always end up losing to a lot of twelve-year-olds who insist they’re “going easy on me.” This time though, I’m boning up on Prerelease survival articles in advance. Wish me luck!
  • Sweet, more Genshiken anime! I bet Viga, the East Coast’s biggest Genshiken fan, is freaking out right about now. (And if you ever get a chance to see one of her panels on the series, they’re fantastic.)
  • Speaking of talented panelists, I’ve been lucky enough to attend Charles Dunbar‘s lecture on Yokai more than once, and he always mentions a Yokai-heavy anime called Natsume’s Book of Friends. I never realized the show is on Crunchyroll now. Guess I know how I’ll be spending my free time for the next few weeks.

(Simic guild gate image via Wizards of the Coast.)

Anime Trope Bingo!

Anime

[HorribleSubs]_Cuticle_Detective_Inaba_-_01_[1080p].mkv_001346.770_1

Glomping chibis, people with animal ears, and a host of perverted characters—at first glance, it’s hard to tell what makes Cuticle Detective Inaba at all offensive. After all, it’s all of the same stuff anime producers have been dishing out at us since I was twelve and watching my first anime show, The Slayers. Exaggerated faces and emotional responses, hapless villains and slapstick violence; over the years these tropes have become indiscernible from anime as a genre.

And that’s when it hit me—this stuff has been going on for decades. In every season—in nearly every title—you can expect to see a handful of the same old tropes. Some series are good at putting their own spin on tropes, or at least elbowing the viewer in acknowledgement, like Nichibros or Sergeant Frog. What makes Cuticle Detective Inaba so obnoxious is that it wholeheartedly embraces so many tropes without irony or comment.

Luckily, I’ve thought of a way to spice up this otherwise uncreative show. Last night with the help of Twitter, I brainstormed some of anime’s most tired tropes to create an anime trope bingo card.

Feel free to print it out and try your luck. I’m going for a blackout with Cuticle Detective Inaba.

What are you watching from the Winter 2013 anime season? I’d appreciate your recommendations for a show that doesn’t make my eyes roll so much.

Update: the talented NightMiles created a randomizing HTML/JavaScript version of my bingo card. Check it out!

My biggest blogging screw-up yet

Journalism

failure
One of the skills I work especially hard on as a journalist is transparency.

I don’t believe that journalists are the medium through which news is born but more like a filter—there’s a little of the reporter in every article. If you aren’t clear about who you could (and couldn’t) get in touch with, the facts you could (and couldn’t) find out, you’re obstructing the truth.

It’s easy to be transparent when I’m succeeding. I loved writing about my big wins in my The Inside Story column earlier this year and gushing about how I triumphantly pitched CNN. But when I screw something up, whether that be a typo, a fact error, or a story that’s less objective than it ought to be, I’d rather take a vow of silence and wait for people to forget about it.

Which is why I struggled with telling you this: I didn’t sell a SINGLE copy of my Building a Beat workbook. Not one.

I had high hopes for this workbook. The second of eight that make up my e-course, this is better researched and higher quality advice than I usually put into blog posts. More than 2,500 words of guidance that you can use right now, plus worksheets. And while there’s lots of advice for journalists online, for free even, how much of that is targeted exclusively toward aspiring geek and subculture journalists? Everyone I talked to about it sounded excited. And based on the survey, I really thought a lot of people were interested in buying it.

Having almost a week to process this rolicking failure has made me see my hubris. Here are some of the marketing mistakes I made:

  • I went too fast. After neglecting my blog for a year, I came back and tried to monetize it with products. I need to win readers’ trust back first.
  • I referred to the course in chapters of one big product. I thought this made it sound more cohesive, but it sounds more like you have to buy all of them to get anything out of them, when really, each workbook is on a different topic and stands alone.
  • I didn’t market enough. I really just put this out there. I didn’t send press releases because 1) I thought it was too soon with only one workbook out and 2) As a journalist, I hardly look at press releases that get sent to me. I should have sent personalized emails to journalism blogs that I wanted to write about my product.
  • At $10 for 18 pages of content, I probably priced this too high.

I’m sure there’s more I haven’t been able to see yet. But for now, here’s what I’m going to do to at least try to fix things:

  • I’m going to keep the price at $5 permanently instead of bringing it up to $10.
  • I created a sales page that makes it obvious that each workbook stands alone. I stopped referring to the workbooks as “chapters.”
  • I’m not going to break my back over these any more. I’ll release the workbooks I already wrote (everything up to Effective Interview Techniques) by Feb. 13, and take a hiatus while I see how people respond. Instead, I’ll focus on writing more free content.

I was worried you’d think I’m pathetic for having to put up this post at all. I could have just neglected to share this setback, and you’d be none the wiser. But even though the Internet lets us edit our public selves more carefully than ever before, I think the whole point of having a blog is to share my honest self, the better to connect with people. And just maybe, sharing my failings make my rare successes that much more worth celebrating.

Anyone else want to share a failure (blogging or otherwise) in the comments? Believe me, I won’t judge.

(Photo via [ heather ] on Flickr.)

Otaku Links: More like Kotaku links

Otaku Links

shinsekaiyori

“Do you consider citizen journalism a gift or threat to professional journalists?”
“A gift. It’s only a ‘threat’ if you can’t compete.”

  • In Star Wars: The Old Republic, players have to pay extra if they want to enjoy the game’s same-sex romance option. Does this seem fair to you? It didn’t to developer Anna Anthropy, who created her own game based on the controversy: hunt for the gay planet.

(Screenshot via Crunchyroll.)