My Bandai AT-AT finally turned up yesterday (after the ***** at the post office had fleeced me to the tune of £12 for VAT and misshandling). Before I get going on the build, I thought I'd post up some sprue shots and close ups (there are plenty of other sprue shots out there on the net, so you're probably not seeing anything new here), and today, May 4th, seemed as good a day as any to post them. To see how it all looks built up, jump over to John's multi AT-AT build The box is quite large, but that's mainly taken up by the sprue holding the head and body sections, which have each been slide moulded in one piece. The rest of the sprues are pretty standard Bandai fare Sprue A The neck, parts for the head, the cheek guns, and other assorted bits, including all new 1/144 scale Mr Flatty, now in AT-AT driver disguise (he really is the Mr Benn of the Star Wars world) Sprue B1 The lower body sections that slip inside the main body moulding, and provide some internal detail behind the separate body panels Sprue B2 The chassis parts, including a nice representation of the Pegasus engine used on the original filming models Sprue C This is the one that requires the box to be as big as it is, due to the orientation they've moulded the parts in. You've got the main body, the upper head, the base of the head, and the main chin cannons Sprue D (x2) The last two AT-AT sprues supply all the leg parts, together with the two, microscopically small, seated driver figures The final sprue is for the standard Bandai base, this time in white to represent Hoth. This is the same size base that was supplied with the 1/144 Falcon Some close-ups of the parts, starting with the head and it's base plate The main cannons. These have been slide moulded to leave an open barrel You get a choice of two (slightly) different cheek guns Internal cockpit rear wall. Nicely detailed, considering you won't actually see any of it And no doubt also invisible on the final build, the AT-AT driver. Pretty well detailed for the size (about 8mm high), although someone seems to have amputated his hands The neck. This comes in two halves, split vertically, so there'll be a seam to fill on the top and bottom Main body moulding. Being one-piece, it will at least keep everything square. This is the right-hand side, with the hatches moulded in place. The left side has them separate Lower body inserts, with the detail panels that sit behind the open hatches on the main body There's a small moulding flaw on mine, in the upper left corner of the detail panel. Quite rare for a Bandai kit. Looks like something's hit the part after coming out of the mould. Not a big deal, as I'll probably have the hatches closed. Underside of the chassis and, yes, they are jerry cans on either side More chassis detailing The Pegasus engine And, of course, the 222 hull for the rear panel... ...and the accompanying gun shields The upper parts of the feet are split vertically, so more seams to fill, although the lower foot parts are single mouldings And to give you an idea of just how small an AT-AT is in 1/144... It really is a bit smaller than I'd prefer, which is what stopped me ordering it earlier. I don't think there's much chance we'll see a bigger one from Bandai though, so we'll have to make the most of it. To give you another comparison, this is the Bandai head compared to a Wizards of the Coast AT-AT that I repainted a few years ago. That one is (depending on the measurements you use) just under 1/48 More when I get started on construction Andy

This is somthing new for me an online building comp. Its over on the Mecha lounge here is the link and im sure there will some amazing builds in the GM vs Zaku comp. http://mecha-lounge.com/index.php?board=20.0 So for my build im going for a 1/144 RGC-80 GM but the only kit available is a really old Bandai kit, its so old you need to glue it together and with not much in the way of details im going to try and bring it a little more up to date by bashing it with a HG GM kit, and when i say bashing i mean cutting to bits and stick back together ( well thats the plan). Work so far..... http://mecha-lounge.com/index.php

As a massive Star Wars fan I was delighted when Bandai started doing these kits. Loved putting the kit together and posing it exactly as I wanted. Hope you like. IMG_2069 by Phillip Loughlin, on Flickr IMG_2070 by Phillip Loughlin, on Flickr IMG_2071 by Phillip Loughlin, on Flickr IMG_2072 by Phillip Loughlin, on Flickr IMG_2073 by Phillip Loughlin, on Flickr IMG_2073 by Phillip Loughlin, on Flickr

Hi all, This box has been nagging at me for a while now: So I thought I'd get on and build it as a bit of light relief. I'm still umming and ah-ing a bit about the breakdown by colour - the masking looks quite hard, and the fit is good, but I'll end up with a weird panel line between the red and silver. So far I've put together some parts and filled gaps around the rear fuselage insert and between the nose and red fuselage section. I also attached the missile tubes to the wingtips, which was weird - I used thin CA and on both sides they cracked in half almost immediately along a jagged line. I think maybe it was a flow line? I put them back together with CA, sanded it all back, and one fitted OK while the other broke again. Third time lucky though. I wonder if this is another reason why the Bandai and Kotobukiya kits are so vulnerable to enamel thinner? If the flow lines are really hairline cracks they provide some good places for fluids to run into. The idea is to sculpt the head and shoulders of Atomic Monster Bemular (from Ultraman episode one) emerging from the water and have his deadly beam support the VTOL in flight, but let's just start with what we have https://youtu.be/4x7_DBzBetM Cheers, Will

Ahoy all, Taking a bit of inspiration from Gekko_1's thread on AT-ST and AT-AT camouflage... ...I decided to apply a camouflage to my own AT-ST. Since I love green camo, I wanted to try out a jungle-style pattern and my first real attempt at masking a hard edged camouflage. I ran into a few pitfalls whereby the intended curves ended up being more like angled splinters, and with the colour choices, made it look decidedly Swedish But I touched it up a bit and I'm happy with the outcome, even if some of my Maskol remains because it wouldn't come off at the time, and came off more in the final weathering stages >< Still have to finish up the base with a bit of turf and vegetation and maybe add some mud spatters to the feet. Enjoy Just wish my camera could pick out more of the detailing. Gaz

This is BC-44, otherwise known as 'Blue' for fairly obvious reasons. It's another re-paint of Bandai's C-3P0, and the idea for it came about while I was working on Boris. I'd given him some fetching blue leg stripes, and I though a droid done entirely in blue would look interesting. I got the kit just after christmas, and the plating has been stripped off for a few months, but I've only just got around to painting him. Actually, I say him, but I'd thought of making Blue a female protocol. There isn't actually any difference in the body panels, so he/she could go either way. At the moment Blue is err... undecided. Boris has been making some advances though, and he doesn't seem to be that picky one way or the other Thanks for looking Andy

I've already completed this, so it won't necessarily be a step-by-step build (I'm hopeless for doing them since I get ahead of myself before trying to take a pic :P), but I put up some WIP shots Thanks for looking Gaz

Hello again. Taking a break from the tiny 144 star fighters to start on this AT-AT. Ive seen a few of these being built, and couldn't wait to start mine! Here is the base coat over the preshade. I used Tamiya NATO black as the preshade, and used Tamiya Light Grey as the base coat. Then I gave everything a gloss varnish, followed by an oil wash. Once the oil has completely dried, everything will get a second coat of gloss varnish, followed by some more oil streaks in different colors. I'm liking the way its coming together so far. Ill try to keep the weathering subtle so it matches the scale of this thing. Thanks for looking!

Hello everyone! My first entry into the Sci Fi section of this amazing forum! I have built pretty much all of Bandai's 1/72 Star Wars vehicles, but these are my first in the smaller 1/144 scale. I am very impressed with the amount of detail in these little things! So far I have two X-Wings, one Y-wing, the Tie Fighter set, the Millennium Falcon, and the new AT-AT in 1/144. My plan is to put the Falcon and the Rebel Fighters together with the Ties. I have other plans for the AT-AT. Here are the three main ships I started on. The Y-wing has to wait, because I only have 20 alligator clips for painting I started by building most of the sub-assemblies and priming them. I tired using a new Vallejo black primer. In the past, I had tried using alcohol based thinners to thin Vallejo, such as Mr. Levelling Thinner and Tamiya X-20A. I was never able to get the Vallejo to airbrush well with this method. There was always clogging issues and splattering problems. So this time, I just used distilled water. It worked so much better! I had some issues to start with, but once I worked out the right water to paint ratio, it actually sprayed pretty smooth. Nice thin layers and it leveled itself out and looked nice! I had read that others on this forum and others across the net where seeing flaws in the 144th Tie solar panel wings. Unfortunately mine had the same flaw. I was hoping that the black primer would hide some of this, but it doesn't look like it. Next step is the dreaded masking of the Tie wings and all of the cockpit glass. As for the base coats, I'm thinking Tamiya Ocean Grey RAF for the Ties and somw Vallejo White Gray for the X-wing. Need to do some tests first to see how they look over the black primer. Thanks for looking! Hopefully get some more paint on these soon!

Hi there, Long time listener, first time caller, as they say on call-in radio shows. I recently got back into plastic kit modeling after an absence of....oh, let's call it a round three decades. My dad got me the 1/72 + 1/144 Bandai Red Squadron 2-pack for the holidays last year, and after a few months putting off doing anything waiting until I'd picked up an airbrush and made a good workspace in my apartment, I said "Ah, hell..." and jumped into building the tiny X-wing, on account of it being tiny and having water-slide decals. Well, needless to say I was completely hooked immediately. I'll post some of the other vehicles as well, but to start off here's some progress on my latest, my first Gold Squadron Y-wing. This Y-wing I decided would depart from canonical accuracy in a few ways - I like my engine nozzles to look more like real-world engine nozzles, so this one is a dark-ish metal base with sooty pastel weathering. Rather than the yellow stripe on the engine nacelle, I decided this Y-wing once upon a time had fully yellow painted nacelle nose cones, but much of the paint flaked off quite a bit from one too many hyperspace jumps. I also detailed some of the other greeblie bits on the engine pods with metallic paints (mostly shades of Vallejo Duraluminum). Here they are assembled, but with the main engine body pre-weathering. And for the body, I similarly put in a lot of metallic accents. It doesn't make sense to me that all the innards would be painted white under the armor plating that the Rebel Alliance inexplicably removed.... (I need to get way better at detailing those R2-units, though) Still more weathering to be done, but I love how this is coming together. The vehicle model kits are *so* much fun to build! And the skills-rebuilding mistakes hurt a lot less with how inexpensive these kits are :). Full size pics on my Flickr Photostream, along with more that I'll post in this thread eventually. Thanks so much to all the amazing modelers posting on this forum! It's been really inspirational, and gives me so much to draw on.

This is my repainted gundam universal unit Zaku. Just a quick repaint of gashapon kit. There are some nice details on this little kit. And unlike a lot of other Gundam he can hold his gun up. And next to a 1/100 Gera Doga for size.

Here is my Bandai X-Wing. These little kits are fantastic, easy to build and a cracking level of detail. Painted in Humbrol enamels & washed with PLW black night by Ammo. I wanted to go with a different paint scheme and seemed to have come up with one Boba Fett would be happy with. Please enjoy the following. Time to start on the AT-ST. C&Cs welcomed. Thanks for looking.

Here's my completed custom color scheme Bandai Vehicle Model X-Wing. I dubbed this the NATO Squadron, because of all the NATO Black I used on it. Halfway through shooting these pictures I realized I'd forgotten to paint the R2 unit, and attempted to detail it....and I just shouldn't have. There's an extra splotch on the canopy now, where the paint pen leaked. And while I've gotten pretty good at free-hand panel painting, I apparently still have absolutely no skill whatsoever when it comes to detailing those bastardy R2 units. Oh well. A 1/144th scale mechanic was clumsy with a teeny tiny paint can on a wee gantry. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.... I might have over-done the paint chipping a little...the Vallejo metallic acrylics just brush paint so nicely.... A couple of in-progress shots are over here. And this last one is from before the final weathering pass, but I think it captured the pink pearl color in the engines better:

From BANDAI's site; http://bandai-hobby.net/sw/jp/products/millenniumfalcon_72_1.html Two things you can say, it is going to bee good, and its going to be expensive! Julien

A quick build. this was finished over a week. the wet splotches you see on the solar panels are a black wash. Tried to vary the fuselage colours, but the camera doesnt really capture it well. things to improve >> Colour Variance on the solar panels, tried experimenting with splotches of black wash without luck (they were basecoated with Tamiya Rubber Black) Greater modulation on the fuselage Never rush a project comments and criticism welcome as always Cheers Shane

MS-06F ZAKU II Gundam Suit 1:100 Bandai Master Grade Gundam or as often referred to Gundam Series is a sci-fi franchise created by Sunrise in Japan that features giant robots or "mobile suits", that carry the name "Gundam." The franchise began in the late 1970s as an anime TV series called Mobile Suit Gundam, this featured the giant robots in a militaristic war setting. The popularity of this genre has spiralled from there, and they have since appeared in multiple television series, movies, manga, novels, and video games. The franchise has also led to the creation of one of the biggest toy and hobby franchises in the Japanese toy industry currently pulling in approximately £100 million a year in sales. The Principality of Zeon, also referred to as the Duchy of Zeon and Zeon Dukedom; is a nation featured in Mobile Suit Gundam. It was in control off the colonies of Side 3 and fought against the Earth Federation. The MS-06FS Zaku II is one of many variants of the standard MS-06F Zaku II created by the Principality of Zeon during the One Year War. The suit features head mounted 40mm Vulcan Guns. The suit features a shoulder mounted ballistic shield to block incoming ballistic and explosive projectiles, and can also be used in close quarters battle with enemy mobile suits. Other hand held weapons include A Heat Hawk axe-shaped close combat weapon, which uses a super-heated blade to cut through the enemy's armour, the thermal energy being generated by suit's thermonuclear reactor. The machine gun is the standard 120mm weapon for Zaku type mobile suits. This is a shell firing gun that does not require energy to be used, its effectiveness against heavy armour is very limited and it holds 100 rounds per drum, with spare drums that can be stored on waist armour racks. The other major hand held weapon is the 280mm Bazooka, and super bazooka. These fire explosive rounds that are quite effective against the armour of Earth Federation mobile suits and battleships. These can an be stored on the rear waist armour of the suit when not in use. The Kit The kit comes in a bigger box than I thought which gives some idea of how large the suit will be even in 1:100 scale. Inside there are six sprues of light grey plastic and four sprues of light green plastic. There is a clever spure which combines Dark grey, light grey, green and clear plastic all on the same sprue. Finally there are two sprues of a flexible plastic, one of these has a second colour plastic moulded around the primary colour. All of the parts are extremely well moulded with no imperfections that I can see. It should noted that the kit is designed to be put together without paint, or glue. In the instructions they suggest only the pilot be painted if you wish. As this kit will be the subject of a build review I will leave you with the sprue shots and combine the construction notes into the build review. Conclusion Gundam is a new genre of the hobby to me, and when researched it has a massive following in Japan which now seems to be taking off in the west. There are it seems a vast array of kits in different scales, as well as TV series, films, books etc. It would seem the sky is the limit. There are even an array of tools available for building the kits (See Japan Cool's Website) This looks to be a well engineered kit which should fit together with no problems (I hope! build review coming soon). Very highly recommended. Review sample courtesy of

AT-ST Walker Bandai 1/48 I've just received this in the post, fresh from Japan and although I've got other things on the go I wanted to get stuck in as soon as I'd opened the box and seen the contents. I have to admit when I first heard that the SW licence had switched to Bandai from Finemolds I was expecting a load of pre-painted toy-like models in the Revell mould (no pun intended) but having seen some of the builds others have done of the earlier releases, I think these are probably the best SW models yet produced. They also seem to be great value. This was around £10 + postage from HLJ. As I mentioned above, I've got other builds in progress so work on this one may be a little drawn out but to begin with I thought I'd upload some sprue shots to show what Bandai have managed with this release It all comes in a smallish box (12" x 7") and it's pretty packed with sprue's, 6 in total including one with what seems to be Bandai's trademark with these SW kits, multi-colour moulding The main cockpit is a nice one-piece slide moulding And there's some very fine detail for the interior walls and control panel The seats are moulded integrally with the cockpit floor and have a location block for the drivers which will need removing if you don't use the figures Back wall of the main 'head' Waist pivot section The base is a little basic but with some texture added should look OK The transparent red 'laser blasts' for the main guns You get three figures in the box, two identical pilots and this rather nice Chewie Though I've no idea what happened with the two pilots! The weird thing is, the moulding on them is actually very good, particularly the undercut on the helmet, so why they shaped them in such a bizarre way, only Bandai know. Maybe I'm just reading things into it that aren't there but it almost looks as if they were going for some kind of anime look to the figures. In any case I don't think I'll be using them. The decal sheets, waterslide and stickers And the instruction book which, in keeping with the fine traditions of Finemolds, is all in Japanese So, there you have it. I'll try to get some work started on it in the next day or two and I'll get some shots up when work commences Andy

A few weeks ago I posted a Star destroyer from Bandai. So much fun I thought I'd give another a go and try a slightly different approach to the paint finish. Below is the result. A final pic with her sister ship. Thanks for looking Ian

Well it's been a while, (had a bit of modelling mojo loss), but finally i've finished my Sandtrooper, the construction of this build couldn't have been simpler, And has been covered by other folk on here , for example Andy Moore, whose work has been an inspiration whilst working on the various Bandai stuff i've got stashed. The whole figure was assembled in sub sections where it was possible and then sprayed with a couple of coats of Vallejo SATIN varnish, weathering was mainly MiG engine oil for the darker coloured sand and smudges, and MiG Gulf war Sand weathering powders for the lighter tones, The supplied Decals were used for the various helmet markings, and the pauldron was painted with Vallejo Model Air 'aged white'. Base was covered in Tamiya surface texture 'paint' to which fine sand was added with copious amounts of watered down PVA glue, then painted in various sand/desert colours, and a few Model Builder grass tufts added for a bit of variety. He was finished in a style to replicate the Sandtrooper named as Davin Felth...'Look Sir !..Droids'. anyhoo, onto the pics. Comments appreciated..

So this littel 85mm Mobile Suit Gundam is Char's Zaku II, this kit is a line of sweets and model kits by Bandai and there are quite a few based on the mobile suits from the Gundam series and lots of other Japanese shows. Each box contains an 85 mm kit that works out to be about 1/250 scale and one piece of soda flavored gum ( i haven tested the gun yet). The kit come partly built but there are a few other parts on small coloured runners just like a proper kit. The body part that was pre built will come apart, very handy if you want to paint it like i will be. The over all detail and fit is very good on the particular kit. Box Art Runners and part built body. Built kit. ( apart from power cables on legs) And next to a 1/144 GM for size. "Mine is still way bigger than yours" Thanks to Shane at Japan Cool for sorting me out with this, i didn't know about these kits until i rang him. Kits found her. http://japan-cool.co.uk/epages/950003803.mobile/en_GB/?ObjectPath=/Shops/950003803/Categories/Gashapon

Scale: 1/72Manufacturer: BandaiPaint: Tamiya and Vallejo metalExtras: none Weathering: Dark dirt washDecals: OOB As its Star Wars day i thought i should share my latest build. I decided not to go with the standard box scheme and go for the colours of blue squadron. Let me know what you think. Up next will be my full resin 1/48th version....

Part 1 So, a new WIP for me to start and then leave partially completed because I've still not got around to buying the materials I need for the display and for my R2 kit. Anyway I was eager to start this one because I've finally got my hands on a compressor and airbrush so I can paint the parts I want to a little easier, I guessed this would be a good kit to start with. I should add at this point that I have been chronicling this one for a while now, waiting until I actually had some real progress to how before posting, but as with all my projects I have precious little spare time so diving out to my 'Nest' in the garage does not happen as much as I would like. First things first let's flip over the build mat - can't build a Storm Trooper on the 'metric' side can we! Here are the obligatory spruce shots. And this is just the water slide transfer sheet, but the plan is to use as few of these as possible I decided to prime and top coat the black parts whilst they are still on the spruces. For this I'm using Vallejo Black Primer. I snipped off the obvious white parts and gave everything a coating of primer. Then I panicked as I realised I had just painted the translucent eye shields So I snipped these off the spire and quickly rubbed a cotton bud soaked in airbrush cleaner over it to remove the paint. Phew! Now there is lesson number 1 for me: Double check the sprue! I was struggling with a bit of paint spatter and clogging at first whilst I worked out the best air pressure. I can spray with a full size gun so I rather arrogantly decided I would be able to airbrush with no problems. So the spattering was lesson number 2: Learn some humility you big head! Got a better layer of primer down in the end that I was happy with.

Hello All, First time in this section of the forum. Saw one of these a couple of weeks ago on another forum. Was impressed enough to try to track a couple down on online for a quick fun build. So I present Bandai's diminutive non scale Star destroyer. It's about as big as your palm. Superb snap fit engineering although I did use tamiya ultra thin cement to ensure a good fit. - a smidgen of filler was needed to fill a couple of smallish gaps but overall good fun to do. Paint is tamiya primer then gunze acrylic light aircraft gray H332 and some gunze very pale gray H331 and off white H2. Finish this off with some USN white H316 highlights on raised panels and some dappling. a pin wash of varying shades of artists acrylic eye mixed grey and MiG filters and oils from their winter camo set. Apologies for the iphone pics - doesn't really show up the tones very well. Happy Modelling All Ian

i've recently completed Bandai's R2-D2 as R2-KT, The only real change from the Vanilla R2 was the pink colour, for that i used Tamiya X-17, the weathering was a few washes of Mig Abteilung engine grease, and Mig Gulf War Sand,

Hi folks, Finished off this quickie project this week - the elapsed time is quite long but the time I actually worked on it is pretty short as it was waiting for the Cosmo Zero. Another enjoyable little kit from Bandai with crisp details which belie the tiny size. (click for more/bigger) The base is another rubberwood coaster with a sheet of clear plastic on top. I painted the bottom with ocean colours in reverse, and then applied tinted gel on the top to get waves. The two layers give a nice impression of depth, albeit one that might be a bit unrealistic for the scale. The gel texture is a bit lumpy and messy in detail but if you look from normal viewing distance I think it does the job. The wave crests are just a bit of white paint, variously sponged, drybrushed and painted on and then wiped with a finger along the wave to break up the shape. I forgot to take a scale cue picture, but the model is just under 100mm long. No problems with cracking plastic on this one - I did give it a good coat of Klear before doing any weathering, maybe that did the trick? Thanks for looking! Will