Comfort Zones and Progress

A lot of building revolves around the concept of "progress," whether it's progressing through a backlog or more commonly (in my case) an advancement of skills. Making progress as a builder involves stepping out of the comfort zone and venturing into new terrain.

Learning and practicing the basics is easy enough. With a little bit of effort, anyone can snap together a clean build. The problem starts when you try to step up your game by stepping out of your comfort zone. For me, my first foray into the unknown was painting. All it took was a few hours/days of research on what precautions you should take (seamline removals, washing, priming, spray conditions, clipping parts, clear coats, etc.) and I felt confident that I could do it. "I did all my homework. I studied up. I can ace this test!"

Remember this guy?

Push comes to shove, there was a giant thumb print on the shoulder of my first custom paint job... Masking seemed very daunting, so let's just use the stickers they provided. No harm done, right? Everything's ready to be assembled, with "adequate" time to dry, so let's go ahead and hit this thing with a topcoat. Oh, guess I didn't read the part that says clear parts will fog up if you spray them with a matte top coat (hindsight is 20/20...). So yeah, that first trip out of the comfort zone wasn't so bad, and I felt like I learned so much that I wouldn't repeat those mistakes again.

Sorry for the large picture. Just wanted to show that fingerprint on the shoulder.

I just did some panel lining to bring out the details, and called it a day. The thing I took away from this learning session was that failure was alright so long as you walked away from it learning at least one thing. So I proceeded to go on and start my very first Master Grade: the Astray Blue Frame, 2nd Revise. I will not be posting photos, because I honestly think that was my greatest fail.

Man, this project is actually still unfinished. Building the MG was fine. A lot like a HG, but better engineering and details, but in my case, the 00 Gundam set the bar for articulation way too high. I was still cautious with the Blue Frame, enough to just paint it one limb at a time as to not lose any parts or mix up sides. One thing no one really mentioned was that MGs are a lot more mechanically involved. This meant that pieces often interlocked with very specific clearances, and paint adds thickness... I didn't realize that until I was putting the parts together (without waiting an appropriate amount of time...) and they just weren't fitting. The parts that did fit were terribly tight and I had a piston in the knee break. Can you imagine what happens when you throw something extremely fragile against a steel wall as hard as you can? It shatters. I stopped the entire project. I pretty much ruined a ~$40 model kit, which was a lot at the time, since I was just getting my feet wet. 

Stepping out of the comfort zone is a very risky thing to do exactly because of these reasons. "Maybe I just need more experience. Let's go back to just building them as cleanly as possible. No need for anything fancy here. I'm just starting out, no one would blame me." That was me hiding as deep as I could in my comfort zone, and running as far away as possible from progress. Of course, the great thing about learning is that as long as you're gaining experience, you gain progress. The rate at which you grow will vary depending on your mentality, and mine was just dragging its feet. It actually took me a really long time (about 8 HGs) before I even wanted to look at a MG. It would always be, "Man, this one looks great. I can't wait to start! I have so many ideas for color schemes! ...oh, right. Remember what happened last time? Maybe I'm not ready yet..."

00 Gundam "2.0"

00 Gundam "1.0"

Recently, I bit the bullet and decided to just build a MG because I really wanted one in my collection and not in a box. That's when I realized part of how comfort zones and progress worked. The biggest wall was never inadequate resources or skills, even experience was just a small hurdle, if anything. The biggest wall that we all face was fear. The fear of not being good enough. The fear of failing even though we gave it our best. The fear of picking ourselves back up and trying again. The moment I made up my mind and said, "Fuck it! I'm going to do this. If I mess up, I mess up. I can always save up to get another kit, but if I don't try something new, I'll never get where I want to."

All the bits and pieces of my work before I took that dive back into something that wasn't a HG.

Of course, despite all of this, I'm still here "getting back to the basics" before I embark on some of my more elaborate plans. It's not out of fear that I'm doing this. I'm accepting the fact that I'm lacking in certain areas and that I'm not ready to accomplish what I envision. In my most recent project, which also happens to be a 00 Gundam, I've taken on techniques that I shied away from before: masking small details, getting better at seamline removal, better color separation in custom colors, and one of the most important things: patience. As of right now, the 00 Gundam is 95% finished, more or less, and I've started a new project. This project is more of the same to make sure I can continue to implement what I learned. Patience, clean building, and creativity.

I have honestly never been proud of anything I've "made," school work, or hobby, but when I looked at my (near) finished model, I'm genuinely proud of what I've done. Given that there is definitely room to grow, I'm just glad I got back on the horse and took my starting steps toward what I want to achieve.

Side by side of my first and my most recent.

Notice the color separation on the shoulders and the faceplate.

And as always, Gunpla should be fun, despite all the downs, so keep goufing around!