I get the occasional odd question about preshading on my Gundam kits/gunpla, so I guess I’ll put up a short guide with some references for you to look at.
First is this tutorial from Hobby Japan that someone translated ages ago. It’s about the “Max Technique” shading technique that modeller Max Watanabe popularised in Gunpla (though it’s something aircraft modellers have been doing for some time already).
This teaches you the basics of shading, but I find there are a few problems I find with this Max technique. For one it’s extremely time consuming, since you have to do several coats, add white, do several more coats etc, to get the full colour to come out. For example, to paint the white parts on my Strike Freedom/God Gundam, it took about 2 hours for me to paint the 2nd coat (white + navy blue), and then another 2-3 hours to paint the final white highlight layer. The reason why it takes so long is because without enough coats, the white looks gray instead.
I only use black undercoat for painting white as well. Other colors such as blue/red/yellow etc, don’t paint well over black and the colour is quite affected. For these colours, first I decide on the final colour I want. Add some black to this and call it your base layer. Then use your original colour minus the black and paint away from the edges. Finally add a bit of white and paint away from the edges again. This will give it a nice colour rise shading effect.
Also watch this video on YouTube of a JP guy painting a RX-78 KA. He does a nice job of shading (he just adds white for highlights). This also shows that you don’t have to start with a black coat for the best results.
20/9/09 Update: I added some posed photos, namely the Full Burst and shooting at multiple targets. While this kit may have awesome articulation, I find it hard to find a good pose that isn’t dorky.
About 30 hours later…
Quite happy with the final result, which is much cleaner than my previous God Gundam build. My worst experience with this kit was definately dealing with the wings, from sanding, masking, and then un-masking. By the time the paint had finished drying, the blu-tack had dried up a bit, and as a result was a real nightmare to get off. There’s still a bit of green crap stuck to the occasional place in the wing joints.
Other dramas included breaking one of the ball joints off the fingers, but luckily I was able to glue it back into place and it seems like its holding out well enough. I also lost one of the red verniers for the wings, and one of the rear leg covers. I also think I have over top coated some areas such as the chest, and under coated such as the backpack.
Overall, this kit requires a ton of patience to build, and tested my limits as a lazy modeller. Even with the 30 or so hours I spent on this already there’s still so much more that I could’ve done.
No posed shots yet, but the gallery after the jump.
Recently JB began clearing out some of their older and shit games with a 50% off sale. With titles like Blue Dragon for $12, and plenty of other $20 titles on the side, this was a perfect opportunity to make a little credit on the side.
I pulled out $173 of my JB credit and headed down. After checking the exclusion list, this is what I picked up:
I was about to head down to another JB store when I looked at the exclusion list again…all of the sale titles had been added to the exclusion list!
Had I been a day faster my plan could’ve worked. JB’s getting smart now, at least not selling trade bait which will most definately come back to them.
Anyway, luckily I was able to run around and managed to return them all.
12/09/09 : Finally completed today. Here’s some shots with my iPhone until I have time to take some hi-res shots and posing.
Preview of the pretty much completed Strike Freedom. The only things left are the railgun internals and the gold highlights on the wings, which can be finished in like 10 minutes. Sadly I lost one of the red verniers on the wings, and it’s a real eyesore without it.
I freakin finally beat the flash tower defense game that Blizzard have put out. This game has probably wasted a good 5 hours of my life.
The winning strategy? Missile and laser spam.
Edit: Strangely enough, I haven’t been able to replicate my previous win. I can’t remember what I did that particular time, but most of the time I get to round 38 and get totally screwed over when the blue marine wave comes, followed by the flying ships. Most of my towers end up attacking the marines and completely ignore the ships. I think the trick is positioning most of your missile turrets at the second bend area above.
