/animu/ - animu

it_was_always_trash_anyway.png
[Hide] (177.3KB, 708x610)

>>109667 (OP) 
It's letting the market decide, why pay for hundreds of kits to be assembled and painted if there is a likelyhood of not being bought or worse, being put to trash. Non-assembled is the bare minimum.
Some people do sell garage kit fully assembled but with a good markup, usually 2x-3x the price of an unassembled garage kit.
I already pondered of doing some as hobby, but you'll need a bunch of equipment, paint, a corner dedicated to it. And more importantly time that I don't have.

So let your inner autism work with your love of a character and assemble and paint one yourself.

>>109667 (OP) 
Garage kits are basically figurines but 1/4th the price of an assembled and painted version. If you're good you can make a paint job that's better than than a fully assembled fig. The work of painting the kit can be fun as well assuming you like painting these things. Also you can add more details yourself and even modify them if you feel like doing so.

>>109667 (OP) 
what's a garage kit?

>>109669 is correct, and to add more reasons for why they are made:
>many garage kits in the mecha side of things are usually for mechs that get little to no love from their respective IP holder in terms of model kitslooking at you, bamco. solomon's physalis set a benchmark for a 1/100 GP02-A, should bamco ever dare to try engineering a new one
>some groups make garage kit armor replacements that change the aesthetic of an existing off-the-shelf kit
>weapons and accessories in scales not printed by the IP holder (1/100, 1/60, 1/72)
<IP holders and model companies also will steal designs made by independent modelers for garage kits and incorporate it into a future releaseit is a pseudo-symbiotic relationship within the hobby
Garage kits are generally considered to be the highest level of difficulty because of all the tools, time and space required as the previous poster already said. I would steer clear of them until you are comfortable enough with your building, sanding and painting skills to take one on.
If I had to make a heirarchy of model building difficulty, it would probably go like this:
<1(easiest) bamco entry grades and modern high grades
<2(some skill required with cutting parts and sanding): most real grades made after 2018, good smile and master grades from 2010 onwards
<3(attention to detail is needed to achieve best results, and possibly some modifications to joints): Aoshima, Wave, no grade and early high grade gundam kits
<4(painting mandatory, possibly glue as well):Any vehicle kit company like amt, trumpeter, revell, and gw gets tossed in here because they will never prepaint minis
<5(total custom build. you sand, panel line, glue, paint and make all modifications yourself using intuition): garage kit makes

>>109667 (OP) 
>eye decals
How do you make these yourself? I've been thinking of replacing the face of some figure I had with a prettier eye set but I'm afraid of ruining the plastic rubbing the old decal out.

>>111037
either buy generic water transfer decals, which there are plenty, or use a solvent safe for the plastic to remove the old and paint new eyes. i have never customized vinyl stuff, so i have no idea what solvents are safe for vinyl

>>111036
<6: sculpt your own figure out of something soft like clay
<7: sculpt it out of something hard like stone

These and other kinds of modeling kits are for people who want the self affirmation of having built something but are too insecure to rise to the challenge of designing it themselves.

>>111049
or they just don't want to pay hundreds of dollars for a finished kit someone else built for them