***August***

GaoGaiGar, SD Aircraft & Voltron - August 12, 2004
- Some very good stuff this time round. You remember that GaoGaiGar Perfect Fusion mech I had a crack at scratch building? Well there are two other GaoGaiGar mechs on the Pepakura gallery to download. There is a pic of them below... They are not bad... made the same why I made mine [3D mesh model]. You can find them in my Anime Mecha section.

- While browsing the Pepakura gallery I notice the SD aircraft. I haven't really mentioned them here before, and concidering there is a new aircraft to download I thought I'd chuck them all in at the same time :) You can find them in my Other Real section.

- There is another Pokemon model out in that japanese Gamecube magazine. This time its that grass type Gecko one. Can't remember his name... but yeah. You can see it in my Wanted All Other section.

- While browsing some more, on another site this time... the Madman anime site to be exact, I was looking down the release list of anime DVDs. Apart from the usual mecha series and other multiple anime series 1 caught my eye. It was VOLTRON! Yep finally I can watch the original mecha lion series from the 80s and become jealous of a primary school friend who had the complete Voltron toy [the uber transformable one where you connect all the lions together]... DAMN HIM! I don't know if its released in Australia yet... but this will defiantely find itself in my collection.

- Also just a small note, my website has been up and running for 1 and a half years now, so that means my Message Archives will need another page to carry the next 6 months of messages. So what? You ask? Well, that means I also have to edit the image of my snazzy cutting board sidebar and add Archive 4: Jul-Dec 2004. I haven't done this yet, but I will get around to it. In the meantime this link or the link at the bottom of the page will take you to the latest message archives.

***July***

FLCL Soundtrack - July 28, 2004
- The FLCL (Fooly Cooly, Furi Kuri or whatever it is meant to be) soundtrack is pretty damn fine 21 track piece of work. I meantioned this last post, but after listening to it all week I thought I'd mention it again... But thats not all I will mention... The complete name of the cd is "FLCL - Original Soundtrack 1 - Addict". Now when I saw that it was labelled "1" I got curious and went looking around. And sure enough I found what I was hoping for! "Original Soundtrack 2 - King of Pirates" This second edition with Mamimi on the cover, is due for release in America in september this year... which I hope I can find it in October or late September here in Australia :) A browse of the anime music website told me the 17 track names and it had about 4-5 to preview via stream!

- Another addition to my Other Toys section... this time Tachi/Fuchikoma mecha from Ghost in the Shell made out of LEGO!!!

- A little note about my next papercraft project. It will hopefully be the whole 4 members of the Foo Fighters! Yep they will be boxhead models like the They Might Be Giants ones I've made. For more info, check my paper projects page.

- I came across this the other day and its pretty damn cool... Its a robot of the new Mini Cooper. Unfortunately it doesn't move or transforms for you, but you can customise its colour/trim etc and apparently download your customisation as a desktop wallpaper... It says it was downloading, but I couldn't seem to find it on my computer anywhere?! Oh well its a piece of 5 minute fun.

One Piece & Gundam Catalogue - July 28, 2004
- Another trip to the city for me again :) This is because I got a phone call from the Cartoon Gallery saying that the FLCL soundtrack I ordered has come in! YAY! So I went a bit crazy & bought myself a whole lotta stuff. For starters, I found this dvd/cd/video/trinket shop near Central Station on George St. It has a stack of imported/bootleg? dvd's & cds from China/Japan... So I took a stroll through & I found a stack of anime that I never knew existed. One of which is the One Piece tv series! I got 4 boxsets. Each contain 4 discs with 5 episodes on each. Now I was crossing my fingers big time with this, as I was a bit worried about the region type & whether it is dubbed/subtitles in english.. The girl at the counter read the back of the box & said it has english subtitles, & after watching the first 3 episodes this afternoon [the region type wasn't a problem... it was NTSC all region], I come to find that the translated subtitles is a bit of minglish [meaning munbled up english]. Well its not that bad, but there are some typos and translation problems. For instance the main character Monkey D. Luffy is known as "Monch D. Roof". This is a bit annoying when one of the characters says "Hey Roof" lmao. I'm kind of getting used to it, but its not top notch quality. The image quality is good though... what you would expect from a 90's cartoon series. Box 1 contains ep 1-30, Box 2 ep 31-60, Box 3 ep 61-90, Box 4 ep 91-120, with Chinese/Japanese languages & Chinese/English subtitles. I found images of the first 3 box sets for you to look at.

- Still on the topic of One Piece, the 4th volume in the One Piece manga! So I'm going to be all One Pieced out over the next month or so! Also, when I bought the One Piece boxset, I was given the pick of one item out of this box of jumbled stuff [a thanks for spending lots of money there I suppose :)] Anyway, there was a lot of crap, & I didn't feel like sifting through all of it looking for some decent trinket, so I just checked out the only DVD that was in the box [that I knew of]. I had no idea if it was in english/worked on my DVD player or was any good at all. But the cover looked interesting & looked as if it was completely 3D animated [final fantasy movie style]. I watched it and surprisingly it was really good. Its a 88min movie about some prophet & a few races of people/aliens & some axis thing... its hard to explain but yeah, its called "Kaena: La Prophetie". Yes the default language is french, so I'm guessing it was made by a French animator. It did however contain an english dubbing which was very good news. Apparently there is supposed to be a making of Kaena & a few other bonus things on the disc aswell, but I can't seem to find them. Not bad for a 'free' gift.

- FOOLY COOLY!!!! I loved this really weird and confusing anime/manga series so I purchased the soundtrack to it, titled "FOOLY COOLY - Addict". It contains 16 tracks by the kickass jap punkish band The Pillows, plus a few others making in total 21 tracks. Some tracks aren't really songs, just short jingles that were heard in the anime. The booklet inside contains not only the Japanese lyrics, but the translated English ones aswell! The booklet is very well made, with artwork on every second page and the whole package is the same high quality as the dvd series. If you liked the music in FLCL then I recommend you get this soundtrack... even if its just for the theme/title song 'Ride on Shooting Star' :)

- I mentioned this a couple posts ago... It is the "Gundam Plastic Model Catalogue 2004" [GPMC04]. I got my hands on it & I don't think I can put it down. Sure you may think, whats this guy going on about its just a catalogue? Well I can say to you, your wrong! Its so much more. Not only does it have detailed massive coloured pictures of all the Gundam Model Kits for 2004, but it has heaps of other usefull bits of info aswell. It has pictures of what the model looks like unpainted & painted, different poses, transformations & well 194 pages of robot goodness! The catalogue is A4 sized, with matte blue coloured semi-card cover with a shiney glossy slip cover. It is however almost all in japanese though. The context & index are pretty useless to me & so are the little footnotes surrounding most of the images, but the names of the gundams & the type of model [perfect/master/high grade etc] are all in big bold english. For me this is like an encyclopaedia of Gundam robots. Yes I know there are books out there that give you more information, but try find one that costs $50AUS & is in complete english. Its a cheaper alternative which doesn't lack quality. Its also good reference material for icon making :) Its kind of like an Ikea catalogue. Just having one on the coffee table makes your room feel like you own a lot of Ikea furniture :)
I went looking for an image of it for you to look at, but I found another catalogue called 'Gun-Pla'. It has a chronological list of Gundam plastic model kits from 1980 to 2003/4. The GPMC04 I got did have about 17 pages of previous model kits from 1980 - 2000. Here is some images from the "Gun-Pla".

MEGAMAN, To-Fu & LINK!!! - July 18, 2004
- A big post this week! For starters I've finally gotten off my arse and managed to scan that Link model (from the nintendo game Zelda, out of the japanese gamecube magazine and as seen on the chokipeta website). I hope my scans were not only good in quality, but the size of the files equal. There are two pages and I've overlaped them in photoshop to see if things are the same size and stuff so it should be good... hopefully. If not just email me or post a message on my group. So yeah, you can find the link to it in my Other Video Game section.

- I stumbled across another good papercraft site, which has a heap of these 'snake-eye' mecha. I call them snake-eye because I know thats the name of one of them. But as you can see from the image below there is more than 1 type of this type of mechanical machine. Anyway, this site didn't have any downloads that I could find, just links to plastic model snake-eye mecha. I did however find a fan made 'snowman' version... it looks rather riduculous, but it looks like there is some kind of trend behind this type of mecha so maybe things like that might be okay?... I dunno. You can find the 'snowman' version in my Mecha Other section and the link for the pics of the ones you see below in my Wanted Mecha section.

- On the same site in which I found the 'snowman' model were a couple other decent models. One being a boxhead style model of the To-Fu Kubrick minifigs. Very cool... The other being this weird black & red robot thing. It reminds me of some vinyl figure that I saw once... Dunno... You can find the To-Fu guy in my Other Boxhead section & the Black & Red robot thing in my Mecha Other section.

- Back to the Chokipeta website... There is a new model that has been posted there! Its a torso up statue of Megaman (or Rockman) from the Mega(Rock)man Battle Network GBA series! This is going to be in the latest japanese gamecube mag and I will have my eye out for it, as this model is a must have. IN the meantime you can see pictures of it in my Wanted Other section.

- On the topic of games, there is a couple new ones out. Astro Boy - Omega Factor, CT Special Forces 2 - Back in the Trenches, Kirby & The Amazing Mirror, Mario Golf Advance Tour, Megaman Battle Network 4 - Red Sun, Spiderman 2 & Yu-Gi-Oh - Reshef of Destruction. I will do a review of these games, but all in due time :)

More Stikfas & my CD player... - July 5, 2004
- Not real big in the news of papercraft this time... except for this: A couple weeks ago, a member on my group mentioned that the first file of the Sonic model [which happens to be the instructions] was 'corrupted' and half of the image was missing... Well thats half true as when I was downloading it I had some problems and only recieved 80% of the image... ANYWAY... the guy that I got it off [Thanks Badbob], must have saw this and he sent me another copy of the model, this time all zipped up and uncorrupted :) So in the next week or so, when I remember I'll replace my stuffed up files with these new ones :)

- Whats this about more Stikfas? Well I had another trip into town last weekend and I was on a mission to purchase 3 desired things. The first was the 4th episode to the One Piece Manga. Unfortunately after spending 10min searching the shelf & then finally asking the guy at the desk... it has not come in yet :( Dissapointment #2 (also being desired object #2) was the FLCL [Fooly Cooly] Soundtrack... I saw this in town about 2 months ago, & at the time I didn't know the coolness of the music that resided on that circle bit of plastic. You see about the same 2 months ago, I purchased the first FLCL DVD... After about 5min into watching the disc, I found a video clip of the japanese punk band, The Pillows - 'Ride on Shooting Star' [the closing credits theme]. The Pillows did all the music for this 6 episode series, & I must say its pretty damn good. So i'm kicking myself for not picking it up 2 months ago... Anyway, I asked the guy if he can order it and well he said it should take about 3 weeks! YAY... While on the topic of FLCL, my 3rd and only desired object that I managed to find was the 3rd FLCL DVD, which came in a box with space to store 1 & 2 in. I don't know why they didn't just sell all 3 in one boxset... Anyway It also came with a postcard, a coaster & a STICKER SHEET!... why the necessary excitement about a sticker sheet? Well 1 of the stickers is the 'P!' [this really only makes sense to people who have seen it, but yeah the 'P!' is cool]. Anyway this is where the Stikfas come in. I strolled into Hobbyco & I saw on the end of the shelf all hanging up was a whole heap of STIKFAS! New ones too... This included the Super Hero/Super Villain ones, plus the Chinese Monk and Phantom ones which I bought :) You can find my whole review of them in my Toy Minifigs section. After having 2 Stikfas in my hands I could only look at the wall of Gundam model kits & a Bandai Gundam Catalogue! Which is a book [thick large mag sized, with a harder card cover] with big glossy pictures of all the Gundam model kits. Now I don't know about you, but this book seems a better buy than all of the gundam model kits... Its priced at $40-50AUS which is the equivalent of about one 1/144 scale gundam kit. Its not as good as having all the gundam models, but its easyier on my wallet ;) I didn't buy it then, but will in about 3-4 weeks when I go back in for the FLCL soundtrack.

FLCL Soundtrack by The Pillows

- Now to wrap this long post up, is something new. Its 'Whats in my CD player?!'. Its basically a small pictorial list with a small description, of a couple CD's that I've either recently bought or am revisting & would recommend to yall. You can find it underneath the contents bar on the left. Enjoy!