Okay, maybe that's a little fanciful. I build plastic models of robots, called "gunpla", that are scaled to either a 1/144, 1/100 or 1/64 size. This may sound small-- and some of the simpler kits are indeed hand-size on the bigger end-- but most are appreciably sized, if not actually massive.
While never quite matching the size of their animated or real world counterparts, gunpla nevertheless encapsulates a lot of outstanding mechanical design and detail even at a smaller scale. It's pretty remarkable seeing how components are translated into a scaled-down real world equivalent. The real fun begins on top of this pre-existing detail though: gunpla are designed to be customized with the only limits being creativity. Kitbashing, airbrushing, and 3D printing are only the start of the kinds of things that folks do to make their mobile suits personal. Gunpla combines the satisfaction of handicraft with the magnificance of mechanical designs, and I'm not convinced there's much better than that.
Below, I've organized all the kits I've built by their "grade", which is a general way kit makers describe the complexity of a build. I've taken plenty of pictures of builds, both in-progress and completed, customized and destroyed, and I'm very eager to share them. I hope you enjoy!
