The Light at the End of the Tunnel......

I've been feeling in a bit of a rut to be honest. Since January 2017 I've completed 3 model kits. Now that's not a bad thing but for me it's highly unusual.  As of late I've been swamped with life getting in the way of my fun. Now that's completely unavoidable, and necessary. I hobby is something you do in your spare time to have a bit of fun away from work. That's the entire point, it's a time to relax and enjoy yourself for a few moments.

However, I usually do smaller projects. Why? Because it keeps my attention to the model. My attention span isn't that long or at least until this past year it wasn't........

I began a Revell 1:144 747-8F the end of January- beginning of February. I've been wanting to build a civilian airliner for about 2 years now and this was the big chance. It's a fairly new tooling form Revell, the kit was originally released in 2012, and is for the most part a great and fun. But the kit keeps hitting snag after snag. Seriously it was supposed to be completed the end of February, and now I'm on the last week of March. And I've only begun the decals (so far I've done 8 out of 100+)

So 2 months nearly and the weird thing is... I'm not worn out yet.....?

I've built a few kits I consider monster project (for me) and awesome Tamiya 1:32 aircraft series. And each of them took me over a month and a half to complete, and by the end I was so frustrated I wanted to never see them again. However this time I'm more calm, and relaxed about it.

Could this be a sign of maturity? Most likely no, but I'll remain optimistic!

Also on a side note I did finally, and I really do mean finally! Complete the new Airfix Martlet. That kit was really getting on my nerves, one mistake after another.... I should have been editing the video for it, but instead I'm writing this. (Cheeky)

But seriously, I'm a bit annoyed in a way. I'm more than thrilled that my attention span has increased a bit more, but I'm devastated that I'm not working on more projects, this 747 has/is taking up a lot of my time.

However now taht the Marltet is completed, I'm free (FREEEEE) to begin a new secondary project, and I'm more excited.

However all of this has taught me a valuable lesson. I need to better prepare for big projects. And that I  kinda don't like them. I much prefer building smaller kits. However, I think now I'll do both. A big long term project, with a few smaller ones in between to break the stress and see something new.

I created this meme (yes I created it, so if you see it on other sites you know it started here. Why do I say this because it's happened before) You thieving.... thieve persons....... yeah.

So, I'm about done here, I'm going to go and work on the 747, or something. Al the very least I'll get things prepped for the new Martlet video. At least I'm still enjoying myself. Thanks for reading.

Tamyia changed their paints!

A few years ago a few governments made it changes to importers. That was the foreign labels needed to be changed for English speakers. To me this makes sense, and I'm a bit surprised this wasn't put into effect much earlier. When the warning labels are there but in Japanese it's not going to do me any good in an emergency.

This did have a side effect however, many Japanese products were dissapearing off the shelves, leading the rumor that Tamiya paints and accessories were banned from North America. This wasn't true at all (and thankfully) Tamiya was simply designing new labels, which caused a delay in shipments and production.

Older label (LEFT) With bigger lettering- New Label (RIGHT) with more details added and smaller lettering.

So the newly packaged paints arrived on the shelves and everything was good in the world again. Right? 

I had first noticed this with their Olive Drab paint. That the newly packaged paint was a lot darker than the previous example. In fact it was nearly a black drab, which does look nice but I wan't planning on using that dark of an Olive Drab.

Recently however I got really upset. I needed a white grey color. I had used a white-grey on the Bandai 1:72 Resistance X-wing. This was XF-83 Medium Sea Grey, and I thought adding a few bottles white XF-2 would help me achieve the desired color. 

Older XF-83 (LEFT) --- New XF-83 (RIGHT)

Now the bottle I used originally was and older label, and it looked great. However when I mix paints I prefer that they all be brand new. So they aren't in any way contaminated. This helps them to mix better. I mixed the Grey, and White paints, and noticed that the new White-Grey I had mixed was darker, than the original XF-83. I looked inside the paint pots and was stunned how much darker the new labeled XF-83 was. In all actuality it's not even the same grey!

I'm still going to use Tamiya acrylics. They are easy for me to get here in Canada, and I like how easy they are to use.  However all this being said, I'd really like an acknowledgement from Tamiya that they changed their paints. And more to it, I'd really like to know why?  Why are so many paints darker?  And many of them are, I've looked at older A6M Zero's I've built compared to more recent ones and seen changes, I never really paid attention to.

Again, I'm still going to buy Tamiya paints, but I'm going to be more careful. As I still see the older labeled paints in stores from time to time. I hope I'm not the only one whose noticed this, or maybe I've moved into..... the Twilight Zone.......