MG Barbatos build post-mortem

This kit is pretty freaking amazing. It’s easily one of my top 5 MG kits I’ve ever built. After recently building the MG Gunner Zaku, the difference is night and day and it’s clear where Bandai’s design budget went. I’d even go as far as saying that this was far more interesting and intricate to build than the PG Exia.

While I was building this kit I made quite a few errors at the beginning, such as oversanding some parts and scratching up the katana quite badly trying to cut masking tape over. It was a really tough setback, but that downtime really gave me some time to think about how I could make the build a little bit better. Since this was such a great kit, I wanted to really try to build it as perfect as I could. As a result I ended up buying a 2nd kit for some extra parts (and some replacement parts to further cover those) and as such when this build is finally completed this guy will have two katanas instead of just one.

I got somewhat drunk with power after learning how to reverse wash on my previous Vidar build, and so I decided to go the extra mile and paint almost every single little crevice I could find. I actually really like how it turned out and I might actually keep doing this as an alternative to the good ol panel line wash in the future.

White – Mr Color Grey FS (?) (100%) base coat, followed by Mr Color GX Cool White (100%) for shading

Blue – Mr Color AEUG Blue (95%) + Fluorescent Pink (5%). White added in for shading effect, finally the original colour is used to post-shade.

Red – Mr Color Shine Red (100%). Yellow + White added for shading effect, then the original colour is used to post-shade the edges again.

Yellow – Mr Color Orange (100%) Base coat, starter white technique, followed by light coat of Mr Color Orange Yellow (90%) + Yellow (10%). Some Orange used to post-shade.

Black – Mr Color GX Ueno Black (90%) + Neutral Grey (10%) base coat, followed by Mr Color GX Ueno Black (80%) + Neutral Grey (20%). The original colour is used for post-shade on edges.

For the clear pink parts, I sprayed a coat of SMS Super Silver underneath:

This is pretty much exactly what the parts on the Hi-Resolution Barbatos look like.

The decals are from Delpidecal, replaced some of the more generic looking decals with ones from their Caution Vol.19 (Red) decal sheet.