(Wes) Murphy's Laws of GunPla Modelling, The joy and agony of gunpla modelling...

(Mods, if this is more appropriate for the humor threads, please move)

This is partly humor and partly a list of the things that have gone wrong for me ever since I've started Gundam kit modelling. I'm fairly certain other people have been through these as well, but would like to hear any observations or anecdotes you can recall where gunpla simply...don't go as planned.

Like just yesterday I totalled my HGUC Gundam MK-II AND one of those hard-to-find 'just right sized" Tamiya detailing paintbrushes (No. 87072, No.1)...

(Wes) Murphy's Laws of GunPla Modelling:

• There is no such thing as two perfectly fitting parts.
  
• Dropped parts will always land freshly-painted side down.
  
• You only need to sneeze or scratch an itch the very moment you're using tweezers to mount joints on your Master Grade.
  
• Add-on detail parts for your mobile suit will always cost 3-5 times more than the original kit.
  
• You learn that Caffeeine and model kit detailing do not mix. The hard way.
  
• Gunze Sangyo's "Easy to Use" Gundam Markers...aren't.
  
• Gunze Sangyo's "Professional Quality" Gundam Paints...aren't.
  
• White is the hardest color to paint properly on a model kit. And Gundams just happen to come in a thousand subtly different shades of white.
  
• Despite the box labels, GunPla are NEVER to scale.
  
• The only insect in your entire house ALWAYS decides to park right on top of your kit just as the paint dries.
  
• Law of Inverse Multiplicity (circa 1990 and later): The more numerous a mobile suit is in a Gundam series, the fewer models of it will be made.
  
• Corollary #1: And more often than not, kits of mass-production MS are more expensive than those of the Gundams.
  
• Corollary #2: Conversely, the rarer a mobile suit is in a Gundam series, the more models of it are produced. 90% of all Gundam models ever made are of the Gundams themselves.
  
• Corollary #3: And at least half again of those produced are color variations of the same model.
  
• Corollary #4 (AKA The Law of Inverse Demand): The more longtime Gunpla fans want a particular mass-production or special-use mobile suit made into a model, the less chances there are of it ever being produced.
  
• Law of Inverse Craptacularity: The uglier a mobile suit model kit is, the better it will look after kitbashing.
  
• Law of Purchased Product Improvement: Bandai only releases new and improved versions of their GunPla kits right after you've bought the old one.
  
• Law of Eternal Competition: There will ALWAYS be someone out there who will top your modelling work.

This post has been edited by wavehawk on Jun 4 2006, 05:57 AM

Ahem, that white paint part IS true. I was painting my 1/100 Red Frame hands, and whenever I tried cleaning them up the paint left this faint coat on. Now his hands have this faded-out red look to them. I've been afraid to paint with white ever since...

I find myself having to sneeze or scratch an itch whenever anything requires a steady hand (decals, painting, etc.)

I really wish the Law of Inverse Multiplicity never existed.

I love this list; it presents many universal truths in the world of Gunpla. If not one of these apply to you, then you haven't been in the business long enough. That, or you are a Gunpla God, and therefore not human, and the envy of millions.

Wes Murphy was an optimist.

I can whole-heartedly agree with the list overall. There are certain predictable frustrations in Gundam modelling that you just have to overcome in order to succeed.

I would like to add a few more, if I could.

- Weapon "shooting" hands will have trouble fitting around the weapon grips the model is supposed to be "shooting".
- The Gundam color palette has more pastel shades than a drawing room in the Versailles palace. But they don't have flat black....
-According to the Gunze Sangyo palette, "Char red" means "salmon pink" and "Char pink" means "Easter parade purple".
-A MS with a large weapons assortment will never have all its weapons in 1 kit. You will have to buy at least 2 kits to get all of them.
-The wimpy background equipment models like fighters, transport trucks, tanks, and the like cost twice as much as the typical MS kit. They will not be snap-together, either.
-When cutting PVC joints off their rack, at least 3 will launch in a random direction and end up under a table or the nearest other piece of large furniture.
-The incidence for jumping PVC parts increases by 50% if the floor is colored grey or fitted with shag carpet.

Don't I know it--My flat just HAPPENS to have a bluish-purple carpet--which is why I always put down a layer of old newspaper whenever I work on gunpla--partly to absorb the spray painting, and partly to ensure parts dropped will eventually be found.

And BTW: I've found that cutting parts off the PVC tree in a box only increases the possible ricochet.

New List addition:

• You only have to spill a paint bottle ONCE to ruin your week.

@%&$%*#%^!!! Not onyl am I having a B---ch of a time cleaning out the blue out of the carpet (it's still a light blue tinge), I screwed up my repaint of the Hazel with Primrose, broke the Beam Rifle, and spent serious money on a carpet cleaner that only works nominally and a new bottle of paint to replace the FULL bottle of blue paint I smattered all over the floor. DAMMIT!!!

This post has been edited by wavehawk on Dec 23 2006, 08:00 AM

Oh god i forgot about the spilled paint on carpet effect. Now i do my work on the floor on cardboard and news paper.

The annoying thing is, I normally work with newspaper on the floor. It's just that this time I thought: "Well, I'm careful enough and have NEVER spilled a bottle yet, so..."

We should make that into a new law you know...

True, true. And yes, the bluish-purple carpet in my flat is of a completely different shade from the blue paint I spilled. Managed to reduce the shade, but it still turns up during certain lighting conditions--i.e. the second you step in the front door but not when you're actually in the room.

One other thing I'm working on, which I hope does not get added to this list, is trying to make old kits work with new Master Grade frames (am trying to convert an F91 frame into a Gundam F90).

I swear, if every modelmaking member on TTT gets to contribute their own Wes Murphy Laws, this thread would grow to 100 pages before 2007.