Today is New Years Eve as well as my birthday. Because my birthday coincides with New Years the importance of resolutions have become more important as my age is pretty much front and center on the day. This new year especially is one where there I have some pretty big resolutions that have to do with change. The main one being that I am changing professions and will be going back to school. The Path I have decided to go is one of medicine and as an artist the amount of work will probably be somewhat foreign to me.

I will probably have to cut down on the amount of Gunpla I do this year mostly relegating myself to doing OOB’s and slight modified models but I doubt any dioramas will be possible. Luckily competitions don’t look like they will be as nonstop as they were this year. With the mecha lounge doing a group build instead of a contest I don’t have the pressure to compete with what I did this year. Additionally if the HLJ contest that will probably happen next year is anything like the one they held this year I am not sure if I will even take part in it. I like many other modelers I really hated that WIP’s weren’t allowed and the lack of discussion and communication that came from that rule made me come away from that contest with nothing. It was really sad because in most competitions even if you don’t win anything you usually come away learning something but not this one. Other contests like the Summer War are so far away I can’t even imaging what my situation will be by then.

One thing I can say though is no matter how busy I am I will still be doing Gunpla. As a person who has done art his entire life I always have to be doing something artistic.

I love Black Friday, every year It has become my yearly gunpla haul. This year though was a little bit different, unfortunately this year the gunpla sales were pretty weak compared to last year. I usually shop at 4 different places when ordering gunpla Tatsu Hobby, Hobby Wave, Robot4Less, and HLJ. Tatsu didn’t have any black friday event just a few select items on sale, Hobby Wave had the best prices but most of the models I wanted were already sold out, and HLJ’s (who I bought the most from last year) black friday sale had almost no gunpla goods on sale and had no shipping deal. So I chose Robot4Less for my gunpla this year and bought 4 models and supplies. I got a gundam marker, some bottles of Mr surfacer and base white, and some liquid mask. Model wise I got the MG Heavyarms, MG Buster, HG G Bouncer, and the RG Mark 2.

While I managed to get the models I wanted most I really purchased a fraction of what I got last year, mostly I spent money on upgrades to my computer. Bought a SSD, 3TB hard drive, video card, esata enclosure, and a PSU.

Considering I still have back log of models from last year’s Black Friday and have the competition models I will have more than enough for next year.

My HGUC GP03 managed to get 2nd place in the Advanced Modified category and I am really surprised this time around. I was pretty much expecting to not be in the top 3 so this was a bit of a shock.

This year has really been good to me when it comes to competitions, and I am really starting to feel my overall improvement of a modeler. The 2011 summer war was my first real attempt at a competition so it feels really good to place this year.

I want to thank everyone at the Gundam Eclipse forums, hopefully I will post there a bit more and lurk a bit less. http://gundam-eclipse.net/index/