Managed to put some time aside today to finish this guy off.
Took just under two months to finish this kit, due to heaps of real life issues popping up.
Finally being able to see this kit completed, it actually looks much better than I originally thought it would in terms of the proportions.
In terms of the blue, I think I prefer the shade I did on the WZC, since you can see the shading better on it.
My major issues dealing with this kit were:
- Painting the black strips on the ankle guard / shoulders / skirts. I was originally going to airbrush them on with acrylics, but chickened out and decided to do an enamel wash instead…didn’t turn out too well as you can see.
- Painting the yellow parts. I used straight yellow mixed with some orange yellow, and the final result was waaay too bright in contrast with the other colours. I had to redo the yellow parts and add a little black this time, something which I think I’ll do on all my kits from now on.
- Rampant dust getting on white parts when painting. This usually doesn’t happen to me, but I suspect it had something to do with my crappy priming when first doing these parts.
- Really tight joints made posing tough, and ended up getting alot of chips and scratches on the parts as a result.
Gallery after the jump.
Hey man, amazing gunpla. I love the shading and the subtle detail, on the head especially. Your models have once again proven to me that I need to buy an airbrush haha. What would you say is the learning curve on using an AB?
Hey there, thanks for your comment.
The learning curve for using AB is moderate, but don’t be discouraged. AB is a good investment if you are into your models. The hardest part is learning how much to thin your paint and how much pressure you should set your air to. For example if you want to paint large surfaces you would probably not thin your paint as much, but use a higher pressure. For fine shading, you would need to lower the pressure, hence need to thin your paint more. Trust me it all makes sense after a while 🙂 For me it took about 2 kits before I was able to produce great results. There’s heaps of AB tutorials out there that will help.
Just wondering what you did to avoid the chip problems around the joints and other places where pieces rub together. This looks really ugly on my PG gunpla where most of my model is black painted over white. The undercoat is almost always showing up when the piece is rubbed the wrong way. Will top coat fix this? I’m using Tamiya paints and a regular department store primer before airbrushing with the color I want.
Thanks in advance!
@khash
I’m guessing you’re using Tamiya Acrylic paints? Top coat will help a bit, but sadly scratches / chips are a fact of life.
There are a few things that can help though:
Top coat as you said helps, but will not stop scratches and chips from heavy handling/posing. If you see in the pics above, the Gundam is quite scratched around the waist area as well as where the shoulder armour meets the chest a bit. Just try not to over pose the model too much.
Letting the paint cure for a few extra days before handling ‘may’ help a bit. Unfortunately I’m always too impatient 🙁
Change paint type to enamel or laquer…but these are more toxic, and enamel is really messy to work with (but strong as hell when its cured).
what colors do you use for the shading on the white parts? it looks kinda like a bluish grey.
White + a tiny bit of navy blue. It looks grey because I started on a black base and I didn’t put enough coats of white.
ahhhh ok so prolly like 10% blue? ill play around with it a bit but i strickly use tamiya paints so id prolly use royal blue right?
Much less than 10%…we’re talking about just 1 tiny drop or less here.
oh i see ok! ill give it a try and ill see what happens
Love this one, the shading really makes it look different 😀
any problems with the joints?
Well they made the joints on these ‘fighting frame’ G Gundam suits really tight, I assume to help them hold the crazy poses that they touted on the box. Wouldn’t say there a real ‘problem’, just that it makes posing troublesome at times.