abstract
| - Bandai Hobby Division edited several plastic model kits, known in Japan as "plamodels" (プラモデル puramoderu?), dedicated to the famous ships that the Straw Hat crew has ridden during their adventures: the Going Merry and the Thousand Sunny. They were never made part of an identifiable brand line apart from the obvious One Piece advertising. Upon completion, the non-scale model kits measure around 25-28 cm long and come with unpainted figures of the crew and a display stand. As any regular model kits, they need a complete hobby toolset to get assembled and be painted:
* Building tools:
* Nippers, pliers or side cutters to cut parts from plastic runners.
* Utility knives to trim the excess plastic, also called nubs or sprues.
* Sandpaper or files to thin sprues further down in delicate areas.
* Tweezers to help applying stickers and decals on parts.
* Modeling putty (optional) to fill gaps, seams and unwanted crevices. It should be sanded down and painted over later, as it dries to a grey color.
* Scoring tools (optional) to make custom panel lines, mostly useful for robot/sci-fi kits.
* Glue or plastic cement (not required) to hold parts together. As Bandai produces snap-in parts, they are really of no use here.
* Painting tools:
* Mixing containers to mix paint with thinner or mix different paint colors.
* Syringes to suck and drip thinner or paint.
* Painting grips to hold parts during painting and drying processes.
* Brushes or airbrush set following your preferred way of painting.
* Paint and paint thinner.
* Primer (optional), base paint to smooth out scratches or neutralize a dark base color.
* Masking tapes (optional) to guard parts that do not need painting.
* Panel line markers (optional), an alternative to scoring tools, mostly useful for robot/sci-fi kits.
* Topcoat (optional) to apply a protective layer to the model and paint. As it adds thickness to parts, it should be applied carefully on joints. Actually, the model kits are produced in a way that the assembled kits do not really need any painting to be displayed. However, painting still provides a huge visual enhancement compared to the initial bare colors.
|