So my son in law has been at me for awhile to do a Gundam. I kept telling him to buy me one and I'd do it. Whelp... I got this from him for Christmas.
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Guess I will stay to my word. I pulled it out of the stash closet today and started looking at it. This is going to be very interesting. The instructions, I'm not so sure on. I think because everything is designed to cut parts off the tree's and glue together, they are nothing like any of the other instructions from other genres or companies. I may even be keen to some older Dragon instructions at this point.
Currently, I've washed the parts in warm water with some dawn soap. Now they're laying out to dry so nothing will really be done for a few days.
I had to Google how to paint a Gundam. Or at least, best practices. Everything I read was kinda like every other kit, cut parts from sprues, prime, paint, assemble. But with this? I think I'm going to leave the parts on the sprues and prime and paint them there. Mainly because I'm not familiar with Gundams and some of these parts look like others.
I did however put the head together, without glue. It feels almost like a snap tight. I ended up taking it apart for the most part, gluing it to toothpicks so it can paint it. The aim is to air brush as much as possible. Hand paint very little with the exception of battle damage, shading and line accents.
I've seen a lot of these at the model con, however, they all seem to the be the same thing. Paint color to match the plastic part color. Only on a few have I seen any actual "work" done. So since this is technically armor, I'm going to approach it like I would a tank.
Once it's been primed, I plan on laying down a layer of AK Interactive Chipping Fluid. Then I will use Createx's basic colors in Opaque. Once the paint is on, then I will begin to chip away some paint for a battle worn look.
I have no idea what I am doing, but this should be interesting to say the least. It has a good selection of weapons to choose from. That said, I think I am going to stick with the shield and the morning star. Simple, effective and it will give me some retail space off the armor to play with.
Maybe, I'll just paint this in an Ardennes Forest, German camo pattern and pretend it was a secret weapon they had. And if you tell me there is a story line like that in the comics or series, I'll slap you! So help the modeling gods.
