Here is the 1/100 HG Tallgeese III. Although it's called the Tallgeese III, there are parts to build the Tallgeese I and II. The box is about the size of a standard MG box.
Inside is 5 bags of parts and an instruction manual.
Next are some stickers. Seems to be a lot. Looks like they're only for the Tallgeese III and not the other two versions.
Next are all the parts. Given the age of the kit, the parts look pretty good.
Also comes with a figure of Milliardo Peacecraft.
Here's what the kit looks like out of the box.
I won't be doing this kit. I like the Tallgeese II more, so whenever I get around to working on this, that's what I'll be building.
I used this kit to try out a few things before tackling my Mecha 2012 contest kit. Tried out Tamiya putty, making my own decals,and trying out the colors I want to use.
Thoughts on the kit...
This kit is pretty cool. I like the design. The all white really works. Because it's all white, it's like a blank template which makes custom paint jobs easy. If you want to try out painting, this kit makes the prep work pretty easy. There are a few seam lines to deal with. Nothing out of the norm though. I do have two complaints though. The shoulder pieces did not line up at all. Not sure why, but a minor seam line became a major effort. I also didn't like the clear green piece. The color isn't my real issue, as it can be painted with a clear green to darken it up. The issue I have is with the extra chunk of plastic on the inside of the hook. Doesn't seem to be a safety thing so I'm not sure what it's doing there. It's in a really tough spot to remove. On top of that, it's a lot harder to remove blemishes on clear plastic. I didn't mess with as I didn't care for this kit. In the end I would recommend this kit to someone. Here's hoping this becomes an MG.
Thoughts on my work...
For the most part, I'm not happy with this kit. Shading looks ok. I'm starting to feel more comfortable doing it now. Was a bit disappointed with a few things I thought I had under control. My application of the decals did not go well. Tore a few. Smudged a few. Had issues with the setting solution. Just wasn't working for me this time. My masking didn't go so well either. There wasn't much on this kit, but there are little imperfections all over the place. Not too worked up about this though. I didn't try real hard on it. Like I mentioned earlier, this is really another practice kit. As for what I did focus on...
The Tamiya putty was ok. Seems to work for the most part. Takes a while to dry though. Seems to work best for tiny imperfections, but anything more than that, I didn't have much luck with. You can see that in the shoulders. They were more than a little off and this putty couldn't really get the job done. I guess I could have done multiple layers, but I didn't want to waste the time.
Decals came out pretty well. I just designed them. I did not print them. I had Samuel Decal do that. For some reason the gray parts weren't actually gray. The came out as some black/white pattern. Kind of weird. Wish I would have known about that before hand, but I assume this is why his gray decals are metallic. Also had a bit of an issue with the red logo. When using the setting solution, the decal began to run. For the most part I got rid of the really bad runoff, but you can still see some pink around the edges of the logo. I believe I got carried away with the amount of solution used and that cause the problem. For more info on decals, check out this youtube video.
The colors half worked. Red and white turned out good, but I had already used these so I expected this. The blue and gray not so much. There wasn't enough of a difference between the two shades to give a highlight/shade. As for the gray, the highlight color was too dark and a bit metallic for me.
In all, I think this kit is good, but my work was not. This kit is no where near my best. But in the end, I think I learned a lot and got try out some new things. Looking forward to starting my next practice HG. Still don't have a kit that's showcase worthy yet, but I'm optimistic about my Mecha 2012 kit.
