NEW TAU!!!! AWSOME MECH XD

I just came across a sneak peek of the new Tau models to be released soon. I just needed to share this because, It's a big Tau Mech and we all love Mechs.

A Long Long Story

So.............. I am the last to Introduce myself on this wonderful new Blog. So let's start, I was Born in

There are no mistakes, just happy accidents.

  I've always been a competitive person. As a kid I would be furious if I didn't get all 4 railroads in Monopoly, and I wouldn't even think about passing on a double jump in checkers. When I started to play organized sports my Mom says she wouldn't talk to me for the rest of the day after a loss because she knew what a jerk I would be. With this knowledge I'm not surprised at all how I react when I hear there is an online model building contest.

  So far I have entered two and have not placed in either. From what I hear they were both pretty close, but as my coach always told me "second place is the first loser", and I wasn't even second... Plamocon is currently running a contest as a warm up to this years online portion of the GBWC called the "1st Annual Gunpla Grand Prix". There are two divisions, modified and out of box and has had a fairly large turnout when compared to the GBWC entries they received last year.

  Now, in full disclosure I had already decided that I wanted to build my MG Shin Matsunaga with or without the contest. I was wanting to build a white kit that I could weather and make a small diorama base for, but the possibility of avenging my previous losses provided the additional motivation that I needed to not only get started, but to really go all out and push myself on technique and overall design. I wanted to try my hand at some light modifications and also give sponge chipping a try.

  I started by detailing my inner frame and even going as far as to panel wash, add decals and use some top down shading.

Then it was time for base coats and basic shading/highlighting, then decals.

  Egggzellent...everything is going according to plan! Now, time to try this "sponge chipping" . I took time and watched several videos on YouTube, then practiced for a few minutes on a plastic spoon. I used three colors, going from light to dark and some artist grade white spirit in between layers to give a sense of the paint wearing away slowly around the chips and layers and layers of damage. I gotta admit, I was pretty darn happy with where this was going!

  The competitive part of my brain is screaming, "Yes!! Victory! I mean I'm almost done and this is hands down the best work I have done so far. Surely I will at least place!", but then the artistic side of my brain....the side that has been responsible for the majority of the bad decisions I have made so far in my life decided to speak up..

"Ummm Chris?"

"Yes crazy, art guy part of my brain?"

"You know...this kit is REALLY white. I mean, a kit this white would surely show some dust right? I mean,      even if there is no dust then a wash of some sort would make the whole thing more interesting to look at.   Doncha think? Tonal variation and all that?"

 "Well...maybe brain. But I'm almost done and I really don't want to screw up at this point. I mean I could just flat coat it and walk away and I don't think anyone would argue that it was finished."

"Maybe Chris, maybe. I just thought you wanted to win...." 

  My art brain and competitive brain have joined forces.

  I mixed up an acrylic filter of Model Master rust. I initially wanted to do an enamel filter because it's so much easier to correct mistakes with enamel, but I couldn't find that bottle of paint and seriously I've been painting for over 20 years! What could possibly go wrong?!

  That's when disaster struck...I'm guessing I mixed the filter too thin, or it was too cold, or the Earth wasn't spinning fast enough or Karma was getting me back for laughing when that chick at the Oscar's fell, but no matter the reason my beautiful rust filter beaded all over the entire kit. I didn't get any pictures of this part because I was too busy trying to get this vile demon liquid off of my beautiful kit, but time was against me and the damage had already been done. Tiny rust colored dots all over my kit turned my Zaku into an earth tone version of MC Hammer's pants circa 1989.

  My art brain took over and went into panic mode. Immediately I grabbed the rubbing alcohol and some brushes and started VERY gently streaking the rust colored paint downwards and tried not to damage the acrylic top coat underneath. For what seemed like an eternity I slowly worked section after section turning the tiny droplets into hardcore streaking. I rushed back to my paint booth and applied a few thin layers of my base coat on top to blend out the worst parts, but still all of my chipping, my hours and hours of tedious chipping had been washed out to the point of oblivion.

  That's when I made the call. Ring ring "Yo Z whaddap?" I heard Harry's voice and knew it would be all right. I explained to him the situation, he laughed, I cried, but in the end just the simple sentence "Dude, why don't you just add another layer of chipping? It will probably look better than before you screwed it up."

  Now admittedly this is weathered way more than I had originally envisioned it, but it's considerably better than the polka dotted mess that I had less than 24 hours prior.

  Will I win the contest? Probably not, there are some really nice kits lined up and still over a month left, but more important than a free kit I was reminded that 1) it's just paint and 2) it's just a model. Stop taking things so seriously and just have fun. Screw up's suck, but without mistakes you can't learn how to fix or avoid them. Like my daughters dance teacher told her, "I don't want you to make small mistakes, I want you to make BIIIIG mistakes! At least then I know you are trying to improve!"

                                                                        "There are no mistakes, just happy accidents" - Bob Ross

-Big Z

They call me....Z

Hello, my name is Chris and I’m a Scorpio. I enjoy soccer, long walks on the beach, and building plastic model kits.

In all semi seriousness, I’m Chris, a.k.a. Big Z on MechaLounge/Plamocon/G.E. or The_Big_Z on Reddit. I’ve been building model kits off and on since I was a little kid, the old AMT and Revell snap fit cars and planes, a few Tamiya tanks but my interest in modeling never really took off until late 2011 when I was introduced to Gundam model kits through a random Facebook post. I was a big fan of Wing when it was shown in the States but I had no idea they made models of the kits. Now 10+ years later I am trying to get caught up on all the other anime series (Go 8^th MS!) and discovering all the awesome stuff I have been missing!

By trade I am a professional airbrush artist with over 20 years experience (yes, that means I am pretty old), specializing in custom automotive murals. I have been able to apply that knowledge to the paint side of model building, but I feel I have a long way to go on everything else. Luckily I have met some amazing people in the last year that are helping me every day by answering questions and inspiring me with amazing bodies of work. I also feel very honored to be a member of this group, because I know in modeling experience I am dwarfed by the other 3 guys (So I have a lot to prove!).

My style tends to lean more towards the weathered and damaged side of paint finishes. While I know this isn't everyone’s cup of tea, in my mind it would be a more accurate representation of how these metal monsters would look after an actual battle. On top of that, I just have a lot of fun weathering stuff and learning different weathering techniques.

As far as future plans with modeling, my backlog now consists of 100% Gundam related plastic and resin models. I plan on expanding to Maschinen Kreiger, Macross and the Zoids universe, and maybe even try my hand at some of the Games Workshop miniatures and resin kits. I have also started a small commission business with a good friend of mine (Dave a.k.a. Gunplameister) called 2 Monkeys Studios, mainly focused on resin kits and figures. I also have two young protégé’s in my 11 year old daughter and 8 year old son who both enjoy the hobby with me!

Current projects include:

MG MkII 2.0

MG Qubeley

MG Shin Matsunaga Zaku 2.0

MG Nu ver. Ka

Gsystem Kampfer

A few examples of my kits so far:

To see some of my airbrush work please check out ABCGrafiks on Facebook!

[EVENT] Mad Spiderz first ever chellenge!

Is it to early? I don't think so.
Tonight we start our first ever chellenge. A fight, A paint off, battle to the death, with many jars of spilled paint, many brushes broken in half in rage and many ABs thrown through the windows (some with compersors even).

So here we go, we are starting with something not too big but very detailed (and also quite cheap if you go to spikeybits.com or ebay) - Dark Angels Company Master from new WH40K starter set - Dark Vengance.

If you still haven't painted yours OR if you want to grab one and join you are more than welcome to do so.

It is a friendly competition but it would be great to gather more people to work on the same project sharing WIP updates and idea, we will feature all of those that join us.
At this moment in time there is 3 of us doing it;
1.Decay.
2.Harry
3.Mr_Zinc

There aren't any real rules for that one, only thing is the deadline - end of May.

Harry will be mostly ABing this little fella, as for Decay - you can never be sure, he did say something about going with "oficial" colour scheme but you never know with him.... and as for me - I want to keep him similar to Chaplian Seraphicus I did last year.

Leave a comment here if you want to join us!