• she/her

@imhkr on twitter

late 30s trans girl

Video Games, Retro tech,

anime and tokusatsu nerd

behind the scenes @cathoderaydude

FFXIV Daria Imhkr@Ultros
FFXI Imhkr@bahamut

Art by @dataerase

Abandoned
https://bsky.app/profile/imhkr.bsky.social


I was pretty hardcore into miniature and gunpla modeling from about 2006-2010 (a move to a much smaller apartment made me reconcile with a lot of my hobbies and get rid of a bunch of stuff, most of which I regret at this point). Getting back into the swing of things in 2023 makes me feel like I've jumped ahead 50 years in the future with how things have progressed.

Airbrushes are everywhere and at every price point. When I started I had to email an order to a small website for my compressor and brush, which cost me over $300 for a starter siphon fed dual action Paasche and compressor with no tank (could only really maintain about 10-15 PSI from what I remember). This was of course leagues better than the testors single action and canned air system I had purchased from the local hobby store. (Testor's have left a pretty bad impression on me and it seems they haven't really changed much in the 10+ years I've been out of the hobby).

Airbrushes are now also used for a lot more than applying base coats to scale models. I was overjoyed to learn Badger and others were now selling pre-thinned acrylic based airbrush primers, because that meant I didn't have to hoard Mr. Surfacer and give myself cancer spraying Mr. Lacquer Thinner in attempts to make my own airbrush primer. (There was a time where there was only one importer of Mr Hobby products in the US and they went over a year without a restock on Mr Surfacer).

Paint choice has also exploded. Tamiya was the big name in gunpla and scale modeling, and in miniatures you chose between Citadel or Vallejo. Now there are dozens and dozens of brand and I'm learning about more and more every day. (on a lark I bought a bottle of Turbo Dork color shift that I'm excited to try on something). Miniature paints in particular are in a very interesting place with speed paints, and I have the new Army Painter set on preorder.

3D printers of course have revolutionized garage kit producers, and every day I'm stumbling across patreons/patreon like systems for 3d modelers offering a range of products that would make Games Workshop do a spit take.

Youtube is also huge now in the hobby space, and this is one category where video tutorials surpass text tutorials. Watching paint dry in 1080 has never been more exciting (Hobby youtubers please start doing 4k60 so I can freeze frame better).

I'm still re-acquiring some gear I got rid of and am also in the process of cleaning out the basement and building a cabinet for the 3d printers, so I haven't really sat down and painted anything yet aside from testing primers in the airbrush (and figuring out how I'm going to vent, I think I've stumbled across a solution). I do have a tendency to get lost in the minutia of a hobby rather than the hobby itself, but from what I can tell this is normal in this space.


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