We've been doing a lot of shopping with my wife here in Singapore. I think this must be the national sport of the country since there are countless shopping malls and shops all over the place. Every metro station seems to have a mall the size of the biggest one in Greece. This might not be seem much for,say, North Americans but to me it is quite amazing.
Anyway, it seems that in every mall there is always a little comic book/asian memorabilia/hobby store. They usually pack a lot of anime DVD, manga books, figurines, generic cute stuff, trading card games and Gundam miniatures. The latter category drew my attention. I wasn't quite sure what it was at the beginning. The packaging looks a lot like a historical scale model's but my initial impression was that they were already assembled and pre-painted.
I was completely wrong though. I bought a cheap kit to check out what the heck all this stuff looked like(because I couldn't ask or something more simple). I must say they are fantastic. They come in sprues like your average kit from GW but the quality of the plastics seems much superior. There are many small parts to it and it must be quite a task putting everything together. The various sprues have different colours so if you put them together just like that you would get a fairly okayish result. If you paint them of course, they will turn out looking very good.
These models are quite large and have many wide flat areas and a lot of panel lines. They scream to be painted with scale modelling techniques (varnishing, enamel washing, weathering). I can't wait to get my hand on it and start painting when I am back in Greece. Here are some pictures of various kits for your viewing pleasure:
Well spotted. It's hard to admit that there's a whole country which takes miniatures way more seriously than westerners do.
ReplyDeleteThen you learn there are about six of them...
Gundam type minis are awesome.
Most kits are HUGE, too. I bought one as a joke and discovered it's like 2 feet tall!
ReplyDelete@ GDMNW: There are some Asian people that can do amazing stuff when it comes to scale modelling. I've been watching videos all day and I must say I am left astonished.
ReplyDelete@ Loquacious: That would depend on the scale I guess. And the price! I bought a couple of cheapish ones so that my wife wouldn't kill me :P They are both on the 1/100 which is around 7-8'' tall. Seems that the standar scale for these models is 1/144 but they are a bit small for my taste. What did you do with the 2' model?
I'm a westerner and also discovered Gundam a while back, I would like to invite you to check
ReplyDeleteout some great Gundam kits and one inparticular which was Handbrushed by a buddy from UK who is a wargamer.
There are a ton of interesting links at my blog encompassing all types of modeling that might interest you.
http://kriz-kreativemindz.blogspot.com/2010/11/mg-o-frostbite-ver-kamm.html
happy holidays.