August – October Blog updates

Over the last four months I’ve managed to finish four kits, though September and October were pretty challenging months for me. I had to unexpectedly switch jobs so I lost quite a fair bit of Gunpla productivity during that time and as such am slightly behind on some of my commission jobs.

But anyway, here’s a recap of what I’ve been up to.

Megami Device Asra Archer

After my recent run with musume kits, I wanted to try my hand at an MD kit, which is what I’d consider the pinnacle of this kind of genre. This was by far one of the toughest builds I’ve ever worked on, requiring several layers of seamline fixes and masking to achieve a somewhat accurate result. A single leg has four seamlines, and the red parts had to be glued first and masked off, rendering the point of colour seperation kinda moot.

For a lazy modeller for me, these kinds of kits definately represent the worst parts of the modelling experience for me. Once finished though, I can see the appeal of these MD kits, especially if you straight build them.

The red was Mr Color Shine Red, the gold was Mr Color GX Red Gold painted straight on top of the gold plastic. For the skin tones, I used Gaia Surfacer EVO flesh. straight onto the plastic, followed by some combination of Gaia Flesh Pink, Flesh Orange, Flesh White, and Flesh for shading. I should really write it down as soon as I paint it, otherwise I’ll forget as I did 🙁

MG Gundam NT-1 ALEX

I’m a big fan of the oldschool boxy designs of the early UC era, so the ALEX was a natural buy for me.

My only gripes with this particular rendition are, firstly the proportions. The main suit just seems a bit too chunky and I prefer something closer to the original 1.0 design. The second is that the movement of the shoulders are really limited by today’s standards, but this is probably something to accomodate the Chobham Armour. Speaking fof the armour, I’m not too fond of the design so I won’t be putting it on.

While building this I also lost the blue part that goes over the V-Fin, and I thought this would finally be a good time to trial out the Gundam Replacement Parts service, or PlapartsJapan as they have rebranded nowadays. It took about a month from placing the order to receiving the parts, and man am I glad to be able to finally have access to this kind of service.

The blue is Gaianotes Cobalt Blue + Mr Color Fluro pink. Everything else is pretty much standard Saint-ism colours. I believe the blue is Mr Color MS Blue + a bit of fluro pink and a bit of purple.

MG V2 Gundam ver.Ka

Hang on a sec, didn’t I build this kit last year? Well yes I did, but I also lost one of the palms and could never really “finish” it off. Funnily enough, spare parts for the V2 Gundam always seemed out of stock, and I actually had to order this one using the manual for the V2 Assault Buster. Plenty of spare parts stock for that kit! geez I wonder why

The blue is Mr Color A.E.U.G. MS Blue + some Mr Color Fluro pink.

MG Gundam 3.0 commmission

Rarely do I build the same kit twice, but this one was a commission request. I took the chance to fix up some errors from my first attempt, by actually building the arms properly this time as well as being able to actually bend the fingers properly now. By the client’s request I also painted the pilot figures, my first time doing so. Since I’ve already got a full gallery of the RX-78, I took this opportunity to focus more on macro shot. I’ll be posting the gallery in the next week or so.

The darker red was acheived using the starter white technique, the rest of the colours are the same as my previous 3.0 build.

MG Gundam F90

This was a quick build to kinda decompress between comission jobs. The kit is pretty small, so I was able to finish it up within 2 weeks.

I’m very particular about my Gundam blues, so I try to document every time I try a new mix. I consider this mix to be a bit of a botch as a I had to correct it many times with extra paint, but it was something like Gaia Cobalt Blue + Purple + fluro pink. I added some Primary colour cyan by mistake and had to put more Cobalt Blue/Purple/Fluro Pink and Primary color violet to fix it up.

The light blue-purplish grey is a mix of Mr Color Neutral Grey, Intermediate Blue, Cobalt Blue and Purple. The frame is a mix of SMS Stainless Steel (in various degrees) and Gaianotes Gunmetal.

Fin

Anwyay that’s all the updates for now, my next build will be to finish an RG Tallgeese 3, and probably another MD kit / HG Gaplant II. Stay tuned!

YJ