New 2015 DC23 Logo

I have been using my old Beargguy logo I designed way back in 2010 as my logo last year. However, my logo design is now being used by an unlicensed ( bootleg ) Gunpla manufacturer. I also designed a simple logo for my Pilot Painting Contest yesterday, so I thought of designing a new DC23 logo to put on all my finished builds this year. 

Goodbye to my old Red Beargguy logo and hello to my new Black logo. :)

Thanks as always for dropping by! Until next post guys! Just enjoy the hobby!

4 out of TOP5 Filipino Gundam Bloggers from MAC!

What a way to start the week! 4 out of the TOP5 Filipino Gundam Bloggers are from MAC Forums! ( 2 ) Dark side of the Sun is by Vanz Hilario, ( 4 ) X marks the Gundam Spot is by Matanglawin X and ( 5 ) The Toy Collector is by Alex Arevalo of Halimaw Sculptures. Safe to say that MAC Forum bloggers rules the Filipino Blogosphere! Woot! In addition, Boltex Machine by Raymond Celeste ( 10 ) and Mecha Workshop by Nath Dalanon ( 8 ) are in the TOP10.



TOPBlogs is the largest tracking site for Filipino blogs and they track the number of unique visitors ( not the views counts or refresh rate ) that every Filipino blog gets. TOPBlogs was basically created to measure the popularity of Filipino blogs.



However, TOPBlogs resets to zero every start of the week, thus I always check the rankings during Saturdays. Last week was a great week for the MAC Forumer Bloggers! And this week looks as promising! I hope you continue to support my fellow Filipino bloggers by checking out the list below... Again here is the list of my friends at TOPBlogs...

• X marks the Gundam Spot by Matanglawin X


• Dark side of the Sun by Vanz Hilario


• The Toy Collector by Alex Arevalo of Halimaw Sculptures


• Mecha Workshop by Nath Dalanon aka Sacrophage


• Boltex Machine by Raymond Celeste aka rzer01

Thanks for dropping by! Hope you enjoy the links above guys! Just enjoy the Hobby! Woot! LOL

New Work in Progress page is up!

The photo shows my 2nd daughter way back August 2009? She was around 2 1/2 years old back then when she was helping me set up my diorama ( The Graveyard ) for BAKUC 2009. Anyways, I just want to tell you that I have set up a new blog page on top.



The new page is my Work in Progress page which contains links to all my WIP posts here in my blog, may it be a finished build or a ongoing build. I have yet to design and assign banners for each link but all of the links are working already.



Hope you like the new page guys! Til' next post! :)

final MAC forums logo and new MAC Forums URL

click image to enlarge

MatX gave me some pointers and suggestions on how to improve the current MAC forums logo and applied them to this one. As with the current logo, we are still going for a simple vector looking logo that would stand out even if it is small. I still used the over-sized A but incorporated the word forums inside the letters of MAC.



The older logo is okay but it looks too conservative and although I like it, I like this new one better as this should look good over a black shirt. The C in this one also looks better as the older version has a very rounded C that does not compliment the other letters. Anyways pretty happy with the new logo and will edit the newly finished banner and MAC wallpaper  soon.



Aside from the new logo, for those who are having a difficult time googling for MAC forums... Kisapmata our site admin has given it an alternate URL address that is easier to memorize and type, here is the link guys...



http://www.macforums.tk/

Reinstalled my CHAT box...

Just killing time in the office and thought of reinstalling my old CHAT box. For lack of a better image for the topic I just used an image of a Gundam being excavated given to me by Kriz. I do find it similar in a way  as I used to have my chat box for a long time here in my blog and reinstalling it is like excavating old messages of some sort.



I had to remove it at one point as it was swarming with spam messages but I think shoutmix my new chat box has a better spam protection feature of some sort, thus my new box should be a little more spam proof . It is not Troll proof though, but I always find those people entertaining anyways. They simply liven up a boring day. lol



Feel free to drop me a line in my old reinstalled CHAT box! Thanks for dropping by! Til' a better post guys! :)

verDC23 kits wallpaper

click image to enlarge

After working with the MAC forums banner and wallpaper, I kinda got curious if my own kits alone could fill up a 1920 x 1200 wallpaper. I did this faster than the MAC wallpaper as I did not have to find photos from other modelers and simply took some photos in my albums.

Halfway into filling all those hexagons I thought I could actually fill up all the hexas with my completed kits. However I came a bit short of filling it up as I had to use alternate photos of the same builds to fill up the edges. I really like how it came out though as it looks like I filled all the hexagons with different builds.

I guess I need to build more as 3 years of kit building is not enough to faithfully fill up all those hexas. So I am off to working with some kits now. Thanks for dropping by! Til' next post! :)

my take on BOOTLEGS / FAKE kits...

I have been blogging for a little over a year now and I have 809 posts as of this writing. I have always shied away from discussing this topic both here and even in our MAC forums though. I feel like posting about it now as it has been one of our active discussion thread in the forums these past few days.



PERSONALLY I do not support the bootlegs stuff from whichever company who produces them. I owe a lot to Bandai competitions thus I would never support these stuffs. I have bought one a couple of years ago and I must say that I was blown away ( sarcastic ) and will never buy another one in this lifetime.



Some people say they are good for battle damaging kits and even kitbashing, but heck I do this and this to original Bandai kits. No need to buy knock offs for your dioramas or even kit bashing. If you can't afford to battle damage or kitbash original kits, then just paint them nice and clean and do not modify them.



We at MAC FORUMS however, would like to maintain the liberal state of the forums and not hamper the free flow of ideas. We would never BAN people for simply discussing bootlegs in the forums. But let me make this clear...



I think I have only allowed ONE bootleg painted kit in the forums as the modeler asked me if he could post it. I told him that he could post it in the forums, just DO NOT BRAG about the kit being a bootleg. I mean, do not go to our forums, post a bootleg kit and say... " Look guys I modified and painted this bootleg kit and it is now looking as good as the original Bandai kits! ".



I would not personally BAN people or scrutinize people coz they can't afford to practice and battle damage original Bandai kits. SO, maintaining bootlegs in the discussions is very much allowed, though we HOPE to never see a bootleg kit in the WIPs or completed section in the future.



Needless to say, MAC forums does NOT allow bootlegs in the Hangar but will continue to tolerate it in the discussion threads.



Good day guys, Just enjoy the " original " hobby! LOL

Encourage NOT Discourage...

This hobby is ART... encourage NOT discourage!

500,000 Vietnam Dong... err HITs! Thank You!

Woot! Half a MILLION hits! I do not really keep track of my stats as much as last year but I can't really let 500,000 hits pass me by. I could retire in Gunpla blogging knowing that my free website has reached 500 K at one point. 

I never imagined that a Pinoy Filipino Gunpla blogger could have as many hits as it never happened before. Heck we do not even have good Filipino Gunpla individual sites before and now we have a lot of very good Filipino Bloggers ( I have them all in my blog roll ).

Half a MILLION Thank Yous goes to all the readers and visitors of my blog, all my fellow modelers that allows me to feature their fantastic builds, my ZeroGunz and GMAC family, all our MAC forums and MAC Facebook family, all my fellow Bloggers, all my fellow Gunplars,  Gundam Guy, Adam Sonar, Ryukaze, Rayloke, Kamm, Matt twins, Vanz, rzero1, Krescenhaze, Oceansean, Amir, David C., Fil, sacrophage, Toymaker, MatX, Kriz and basically all of the guys I get to interact with almost everyday!

Based on TOPBlogs.com, This blog continues to be the No.1 Gundam site in the Philippines today! My blog has changed so much since November 2009, It now features everything from MAC forums and anything Gunpla.  Blogging about yourself and your works all the time gets too narcissistic and tiring, thus the focus is to share the spotlight with my fellow modelers here in the Philippines and abroad. 

Like I always say, Just continue to enjoy the hobby guys! and like in MAC forums, Fun comes first before the friggin rules! lol. Now here are a few screen shots of my stats if your curious how I reached half a million hits in 14 months... pressing F5 does not really work... hahaha

Half a MILLION Thank Yous Everyone!!!

new MAC forums logo and banner

Still not feeling well, so not much Gunpla for me today. I designed a simpler logo for our MAC forums though, I made the three letters - MAC more prominent and loud. The new MAC logo or letters occupies  the black background so much leaving not much space for any other element or letter.



Although I am a certified Gunpla geek, I designed the logo so that it won't look that geeky whenever I wear it at work. NO Gundam heads or robot elements in the logo, this will make the shirt a little more wearable I think. The banner on the other hand, features the works ( from left to right ) of Kisapmata, rzero1, MatX, my Kampfer and Kriz / Rmahza.



Btw, I also added the word forums to the logo so not to get it confused with our MAC Facebook extension. Anyways, hope to see you enjoy the hobby with us in our forums and our unique group builds! Don't get left behind guys!



Thanks for dropping by! Til' next post! :)

random thoughts on blogger, twitter and facebook

Just some random thoughts on blogger, twitter and Facebook guys. I do not claim expertise in these social networking sites and blogging, heck I think I am not even a year old member of both twitter and Facebook and have been blogging since November 2009 only. But I do have some insights that could be helpful to some newer bloggers, twitters, Facebook mainstays out there.

my New avatar and twitter, well I have used quite a lot of avatars since starting my blog. But it is only recently that I have started to actually design my own though. I envy Toymaker's and Bmecha's avatars, it is very unique and they have been using it for a while now. 

The sudden change in avatar is primarily because of twitter yesterday. As I was looking for good twitters to follow, I found some really cool looking avatars that stood out of the bunch. I then designed an avatar that would also look good even when it is very very small already ( important specially in twitter ).

My new avatar is yellow and black and is obviously based on the color scheme of my Kampfer. I added a bushy goatee as I sometimes forget to trim mine in real life. I also designed it to have a frown and a smirk at the same time ( close friends knows why ). I like my new avatar, even though it says nothing about my hobby, it pretty much shows my personality in a glance.

Facebook, I manage a couple of Facebook pages and have my own personal account. As most of you know by now, my wife uses my account for playing some Fb games even though she has her own account ( I wonder why? ). I am a bit active at our Mech Arts Community group page and a few fellow modelers and Gunpla enthusiasts like Gundam Guy is active in our community page as well.

As much as I have fun with interacting at our MAC Fb page, I feel I kinda neglected my own DC23 mech arts artist / fan page. Most modelers have this fan page stuff, just copied mine from Kenny ( Toymaker ). I am now starting to visit my own page more often these days, post a few photos once in a while and answer inquiries if there are some. It is easier to manage yourself than a community after all.

Blogger, Blogger is NOT free! This is important coz as much as I enjoy blogging, I felt it was kinda unfair that I thought it was a free service. However since last month, I could NO longer upload photos in my blogger account. Once you've reached the 1 GB quota for photos, you have to pay a premium for continuing to use it. Good thing I have a Pro Photobucket account, I now upload photos, even banners through this account.

SO, if you blog and upload photos as much as I do, be ready to pay a premium or have a Pro Photobucket or Pro Flicker account at hand. Heck, I have a Pro Photobucket account coz I also have exceeded the FREE quota in Photobucket. hehe, I guess I do blog too much. 

Anyways, thanks for dropping by! Til' next post guys! :)

my BLOG just got bigger!

In the vain attempt to maintain the status of my blog as the runaway no.1 Gundam site in the Philippines, I came up with another page. LOL... Narcissistic mode and kidding aside, I enjoyed my photography session of my Nobell Gundam so much and thought of giving it it's own gallery.



Obviously I snap fit a lot of kits specially in between finished ( painted ) builds. Snap fitting Gunpla remains my favorite part of this hobby and it keeps me from burning out from heavy modifications, painting, commission works and diorama making.



I am also starting to really get comfortable with my mediocre photography skills. I hated photography back in college as I think it is a hobby for rich people. People get better than other people coz they have a gazillion kinds of lenses and have the best SLR camera body amongst his peers.



However, I am starting to enjoy photography with my point and shoot Canon camera these days. My gallery photos are getting better ( I think ) even though I have been using the same camera since I started this blog ( 2009 ). It's not the camera... its just a friggin' tool, though I plan to get a SLR this year. lol



I think setting up my REVIEWs page would make me improve my photography even with unpainted straight builds. I hope to give you better photo reviews in the future. Reviews with less talk as I suck in writing and with tons of nice straight build photos.



Hope you'll liked my new page? It won't be as useful as my Tutorials page, but hope to bring good content in there in the future. Til' next post guys! :)

Just Enjoy the Hobby Guys!