Building Brilliance: How One Hobbyist Became a World-Class Winner

We are super thrilled to announce that this year’s 2023 GWBC winner is none other than our good friend Simon Lam and we were super honored that he has chosen Panda Hobby to have a part of Bandai’s interview/film happen last Saturday February 3. So let me tell you all about him and his awesome journey to become a World Class Winner! We’re super proud of him and happy he won, it’s very well deserved.

<Simon discussing his builds>

Alright to catch you guys up if you don’t know what any of that meant above and why this is super important to us at Panda Hobby and very close to me. As we know Bandai is the one and only manufacturer of Gundam products, so any Gundam products from model kits to figures is produced by Bandai all the way from Japan. Bandai sells all over the world from the obvious USA to Korea, Philippines, Vietnam, Hong Kong, China, you name it Bandai’s product is probably sold there and so what do you do when you have so many countries? You host a worldwide contest to compete!!! And that contest is called the GBWC – Gunpla Builders World Cup.

GWBC 2023 is their 11^th tournament and you can see it’s relatively new and Canada was only added in as a separate Country I think when Panda Hobby started 6/7 years ago? I remember because we closed shop and went to Otakuthon for the first GBWC ever in Canada. Now let me explain to you how this works. Before you get to compete on the ‘world’ platform, you must first become your country’s winner. So each country will host their own GBWC to crown the winner and representative. As for Canada, we had online entry and in 2017 in person held at Otakuhon in Montreal (yes, we closed shop and went to the convention to film live for everyone that couldn’t go) Winner from each contest region will then be judged to become the country’s 1^st, 2^nd, 3^rd place where the Winner will sent to JAPAN to display their masterpiece along with other country representatives.

You might be thinking, so what? Sounds like any other type of world wide contest why so special about this? Well, this is Bandai’s own official contest #1, and #2 Canada was never a separate Country based on their eyes and we were always grouped into USA so when they finally allowed Canada to join as our own that means WE HAVE MORE BUILDERS TO REPRESENT!!!

So with the first ever GBWC 2017 in Canada, everyone was super excited, attending the events, sharing the info and just plain fun getting everyone into the hobby. Here the story switches back to focus on Simon Lam. At first glance you would have never guessed this guy was into Gundam. But then again if you’re from an Asian country from in that age range, chances are you’re into Gundam as my generations into Pokemon. But you will never expect someone that is not routinely building Gundam kits as their current hobby to produce a model of THIS caliber. When I first meet Simon, we were talking and we were encouraging him to join and build, we do this to everyone to share the passion and give every builder the encouragement to break out of their comfort zone but we never expected Simon to be as skilled as he was. All we knew from him was he said he used to build when he was a kid and now he has his own family he hasn’t touched the hobby for many years. He restarted this hobby the same year and started building and at the end produced a very skilled crafted called ‘The Crimson Orge’ and the same year, he took Canada’s 1^st place and joined the world platform to compete. Remember this is the first time Canada joins in the GBWC and is allowed to represent in Japan so what happens next? Simon gets a ticket to fly to Japan to compete against the rest of the world and with him he packed his ‘Crimson Orge’ to show off. But with all first attempts, there were lessons to be learned, and oh Simon took careful notes. He quickly learned how much ‘bigger’ the competitions were in Japan across the world and how you needed to change his strategy to go in again next year. The main take away why his model, even though it was skillfully done, just did not win against everyone else was the extras. At the end of the day, his model was still true to its form, a model that was crafted with skills and precision but on the world stage, your model need to exceed the realm of model building and stretch into the vision of an artist’s canvas expressed in colors and shapes. Simon knew he had to go bigger and crazier to compete.

 <The Crimson Orge by Simon Lam - 2017 GBWC Canada Winner>

<Enemy Spotted by Mark Mediavillo (Philippines) - 2017 GBWC World Champion>

So in 2018, he went BIG. He custom created his Psycho Gundam “The Titan Encounter” and with that, he went into 2018 competition but what caught him by surprise is 2017 has inspired a lot of builders to come out and join in the contest! This was also the year west coast got their own GWBC region and with that emerged Canada’s Winner Ryan Lau from the westside!

 <The Titan Encournter by Simon Lam - 2018 GBWC Canada Entry>

<Kshatriya Besserung 2.0 "Preemptive Strike" by Ryan Lau - 2018 GBWC Canada Winner>

<GUNDAM EXIA RⅡ-fetal movement by Yusuke Sato (Japan) - 2018 GBWC World Champion>

2019 we see another winner for Canada being Nicolas Tejada but Simon decided he was skipping this year to rethink his strategy. How will he be able to achieve what no one has done before? Win the GBWC World Cup?

<Ready For One Final Mission by Nicolas Tejada - 2019 GBWC Canada Winner>

<Dream by Zhao Zhujun (China) - 2019 GBWC World Champion>

2020 we see covid and GBWC is cancelled all up to 2021 as well. This gives Simon his much needed time to work on his project as he found out other GBWC participants take 2+ years to make each model while he was only using 1 year time for his.

2022 as we see covid quarantine relaxing GBWC is relaunched and with this year Simon’s entry called “Infiltration” where he added a handpainted style diorama/backdrop to make it look more like something out of a painting but it still wasn’t enough to win over the judges from Japan. That was it, Simon knew what he had to do. He will build an entire model kit that never existed before! 2023 beware…

<Infiltration by Simon Lam - 2022 GBWC Canada Winner>

<Fragments of a Star by Manson Ng (Hong Kong) - 2022 GBWC World Champion>

And we’re here, 2023 at Gunpla Builder World Cup. Simon brought in his best work yet, a model truly showing how dedicated he is as a builder and a true artist. He build a kit that wasn’t made by any company. There is no base for Simon refer to but the anime scenes in Unicorn and let me assure you it wasn’t that long of a scene. He took that slim amount of reference material and built this kit from parts you find any dozen of other kits. “Bond From Above”

“Bond From Above” by Simon Lam - 2023 GBWC World Champion

Please read below for Simon’s comments:

The build started off with a Christmas tree ornament ball, cut in half to create the dome and the body of Tolro-800, plastic model kit of T-800 does not exist so this build was completely scratch built and kit bashed from an extensively long list of Gunpla parts. In scale of 1:20 as Banagher and Audrey were re-sculpt from 1:20 Bandai Gundam character model kit and pilot figures included from old MG model kits.

Colony City was created by multiple sets of Bandai's city landscape base kits combined in an angle that mimic the curved internal landscape of Industrial 7 space colony. The supporting column is made out of wood and boxed in with styrene plate, to create the artificial Sun that goes across the sky of Industrial 7.

This build is 100% hand painted with water base acrylic paint and a paint brush including all of the build title logo, warning signages and details.

(Google Gundam Unicorn Torohachi Scene to know what this kit was based on)

And with this 2023 announce SIMON LAM as GBWC WORLD CUP 2023 CHAMPION!!! This is the first time CANADA wins the World Trophy. This is the first time North America wins the World Trophy. And to be honest, if it weren’t for Simon’s dedication to the hobby and his craft, constantly refining and pushing his limit Canada probably won’t win anytime soon. Don’t get me wrong we have some strong builders in Canada but the other countries have many more years on us in terms of contest experience and for Canada to get up to their level, we’ll need more experience before we get there.

Now with the great news of our Simon being crowned the winner, Bandai wanted to send a crew to film Simon in his country to do some interview and B-rolls to make a video post contest about Simon and when we found out he choose Panda Hobby as part of one of the stops, we were thrilled and super honored. Which brings us back to why we closed on Saturday to host Simon’s celebration party/filming day from Bandai.

We could not be happier and feel this win was well deserved. I’m personally super happy it was Simon that brought home the Canada win from the world as I saw how much dedication and time he put into this work and now it’s all paid off. With all that, it doesn’t get into his head as he’s still humble and eager to share his tips to other builders. Often I find him the first one to submit page long explanations to other builders asking questions in any group and you’ll always find him willing to help anyone out. I truly believe that’s what a Canadian Champion should look like.

Congrats Simon to the win, from all of us at Panda Hobby we wish you your continue success!

If you want a live video interview, comment below about what we should ask him. 

Links:

Youtube Video of the GBWC Award Ceremony: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6gfQ6rZPtQ

Timestamp: 1:23:53 (Announcing the World Champion)

https://bandai-hobby.net/GBWC/

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