Hey! This is my latest Gundam build and paint job. Check it out.

This is my 4th Gundam model kit for this year, and my second “China” model. Since these kits cost below $6, they’re good for practice and experimenting with the different techniques I either learned throughout the months I’ve been back in modeling or those gleaned from research over the web.

Check out the work-in-progress (WIP) photos after the break.

For this build, I wanted to do entirely brand new Gundam, without the weathering and scratches. Since the Blitz is a “ninja-type” Gundam, it will logically be without dents or bruises.

This model is the GAT-X207 Blitz, and is one of five initial designs that the Alliance secretly builds with Orb. The Blitz Gundam’s design is geared towards melee combat and stealth missions. Like the other prototype Gundams, the Blitz Gundam is equipped with the new Phase Shift (PS) armor technology. When in Phase Shift mode, the Blitz Gundam is nearly impervious to attacks from shell-firing artillery or melee weapons.

The Build – Construction

Construction, mods and painting took me almost two weeks of working around 2-4 days in a week. Bulk of the work would come in on weekends, of course.

The China kit is horribly designed. It has a LOT of flash and seams and I spent more hours repairing them and sanding than the actual build and paint. You get what you pay for. Sigh.

Let’s check out the photo of the box first

After a lot of sanding and putty work, I finally had the thing ready for assembly after around 4 days. Dang! My arms hurt!

While planning for the project, one of my goals was how to replace the ugly plastic thrusters. When a friend suggested that ballpen caps can be used, I actually tried to see if it’ll work.

Here are several ballpens that you can get for less than P20 each.

Just take away the faux metal casings and you have this. Compare it to the horrendous thruster included in the kit. Much better, eh?

Here’s test-fitting the new thruster! Coolnezz!

Meanwhile, I modded part of the legs to make it “sharper”. It’s actually SIM-card plastic (Gamer Sim), cemented together then I used Water Stop sealant as putty. This was dried and cured for 48 hours before filing, sanding and finishing.

Below: Fully assembled Blitz now ready for painting

Painting

For the paint scheme, I retained the black, red and purple look. Although I used a darker shade of purple compared to the light violet as suggested in the instructions. It kinda looked better.

Before painting, all the parts were washed in a basin with Joy dishwashing cleaner. Time to take a bath!

Washing takes away all the dust and dirt from the sanding as well as oils left in the plastic injection molds.

All the parts were then strained and left to dry

Prepping up for the actual painting, all parts of the same color got separated into individual containers…

Here’s the cast of colors: Flat black for the body, Red for the highlights, Purple for the other armor parts, Yellow for the claws and horns, Neutral Gray for the gun and Titanium Silver for the other metallic parts such as the insides of the legs. All paints were Tamiya except for the purple one, Gunze Sangyo.

After a primer of Tamiya Surface Primer (thinned with lacquer thinner), parts were placed in skewers and airbrushed. This was left to dry and cure for around 48 hours.

Once cured, I assembled the torso, legs and arms separately and gave them all a coat of Tamiya Flat Clear (gloss) in preparation for adding the decals.

Since the kit didn’t come with any decals, I scrounged around my spare-part-bin and used the leftovers from the Zaku. Here are the results

The metal part on the arm is an earing “pakaw” drilled and glued.

Here’s the thruster now…

The shield-gun was masked and painted red and neutral gray. I then masked the divider and painted in white for a cool effect.

Claws were puttied and painted yellow. You can see the other thrusters on the claw assembly

And now for the photos of the finished Gundam Blitz…

For added detail in the shield assembly, I glued an RF Online symbol. I got this from the keychain that we had made as give-aways during LIVE 2008. Hehe.

There you have it! The finished Bltiz. This is currently my favorite Gundam at the moment and I can honestly say that I learned a lot through experience and had fun during the entire process.

Next stop in my modeling project is a 1/35 M1A1 Abrams Tank (the main battle tank of the US Army used in Operation Iraqi Freedom 2003). I’ll be doing that over the Holy Week and hopefully I’ll be posting in-progress updates every now and then.

You’ll have to drop by regularly here to see it.

Peace!

I just finished re-painting my old RGM 79c today. This was my very first MG kit that my wife bought me as a gift, I’ve had this kit for about 3 years now (wow, I’ve been building kits for 3 years and I still haven’t bought an air brush).

The reason I decided to repaint my old kit was because I botched up the white parts when I first did it. That was my first lesson on building gunplay kits. Never spray at night with poor lighting. My wife didn’t want me to re-paint this because she liked it just the way it is. BAH! Women, what do they know? (I am so not getting laid tonight).

Here’s how the kit originally looked. Notice the dust and the dead insect?

I started the project at around 12nn the previous day. I sanded the old paint off and realized i didn’t bother painting the blue parts and the gun. I also noticed that I sucked at removing nip marks, probably because I used nail nippers to get parts off the gate.

Here’s the kit all ready for painting:

After Spraying the parts using Bosny car paints (yeah, left overs from an experiment on a bootleg kit) i hanpainted the red parts using Tamiya Enamel color. Here’s the thruster i painted some details on.

kickass! (blurry pics are blurry..sorry)

Here are some before and after pics:

Back:

Front:

Side:

All in all, I’m happy the way this kit turned out.

For those interested, here’s the paint I used:

Base Color – Bosny White Automotive Acrylic Color Spray Can

Secondary Color – Tamiya Blue Violet Spray Can

Inner Frame – Bosny Silver Automotive Acrylic Color Spray Can

Red Details – Tamiya Enamel

Head Antenna – Tamiya Chrome

Decals – Bandai decals (Gundam 00 edition)

Here are more pics of the finished kit:

Fear the Bear!

Hanging with da dawg:

Heroic Shot:

Thanks for viewing! feel free to leave comments!

Another weekend… another Gundam! Woot!

 This is now my 3rd Gundam model kit project, after the first China one and the MG Destiny.

Anyways, I’d like to take you through the progress and build process of how I assembled and painted this kit. I got this Zaku from good friend Hector Sagrado who’s also a Gundam model kit builder (and toy addict) and displays some of the kits he’s done at his blog

Meanwhile, let’s begin with the in-progress photo essay…

Background, Plan and Color Scheme

I got this kit around the second week of January and started building it (since I was still building the Destiny) around January 28. I wanted to maintain the color scheme of the Zaku while trying to pattern it after the chipped paint of Boba Fett’s armor, see below:

Since one of my friends, Violent Dream, is building the Slave 1 model kit from Fine Molds, it was a good opportunity to do it together and share the paint costs at the same time.

Meanwhile, here are some shots of the box and the sprues.

Assembly

Assembling an MG kit (Master Grade) is a lot more complicated than an HG (High Grade) Gundam kit. It has a lot more parts, of course. Primarily, most of them belong to the endoskeleton where the armor plates snap to fit. However, it’s a lot more easier to paint them since the armor parts are less and the skeleton holds ‘em together.

It took me a week of working 1-2 hours each day to complete it. I work on a major part every night as soon as get home from work. Here’s the torso after completion:

Since this was going to be a “battle-damaged” Zaku, I then applied damage (by cutting out plastic and drilling holes into the kit) on the shield, arms and legs after full assembly.

The damage was done using a cutter and an electric drill. Too bad, we didn’t have a Dremel rotary tool… that would be have been a helluva lot easier. Well… that’s on my shopping list for February.

After cutting, sanding, and cementing, I finally assembled the full kit. See below:

The good thing about an MG Gundam kit is the articulation. There’s virtually a hundred different poses that you can have your gundam do. All the fingers are also double-jointed and it has an opposable thumb.

Check it out below…

The darn thing can even do hand stands! OMGWTF!

Painting time!

Before paiting, it’s good to map out and plan it out thoroughly. I do this with a vector-based illustration and do some “color-tests” using Photoshop. Basically, you jut get the image off the net (or you can also scan your kit’s intruction manual). Convert the image to Photoshop and start applying some color patterns to it. Here’s what I came up with using that system…

Now that I have a color guide, it’s time to mix ‘em paints. For the greens, it was a double shade using Tamiya Deep Green mixed with Neutral Grey and Black. First, I sprayed the darker shade and applied a lighter shade of it (mixed with white) to do highlights and shading. This is called “pre-shading” which I learned after several research sessions using Google. Woot!

Before painting the armor, I painted the endoskeleton a base of Flat Black first and then highlighted it with Titanium Silver. Check out the result below…

While waiting for that to dry, I then started painting the armor and then the weapons. The first step is to apply a coat of Mr. Surfacer 500 to the all the armor parts. This is a flat primer with a little “grit”. Thin this with lacquer thinner and a few drops of Mr. Retarder. This will make the paint stick better to the plastic and the primer will also cover minor seams and sanding scratches and imperfections. Once the primer dried, the 2 coats of green were applied… darker one first and then the lighter second coat.

After the paint dried and cured, I applied a coat of Tamiya Clear Gloss before applying the decals. The decals will stick better if you apply a coat of clear gloss. Don’t worry. If you don’t want your gundam to look all shiny, you can just clear coat with a matte finish later.

For the paint chips, it looks easier that in seems.

Using a sponge, dab bits of liquid masking solution to the parts then spray it over with the color that you want. I kinda got carried away with the paint chips and it didn’t look logical since Gundams are 60 to 90 feet tall and the chips would have been bigger than a human. Oh well… that was geeky.

Meanwhile, here are some shots after all that painting…

Notice the battle damage on the shields and other parts. To highlight this, I applied a light wash of dark green with black. Since acrylics were used, you have to use enamels for the wash. For the wash, just lightly brush it on the parts and then wipe it off with a cotton bud thinly dipped in thinner.

For the weathering, I added additional scrapes to the paint using the design knife and then lightly drybrushed a lighter shade of green to the armor edges.

More photos:

You might have noticed the “flames” coming out from the missile pod. I thought it was a great time to apply that technique using what I found over at Armorama.

It’s made with some cotton balls, glue and an old sprue.

Just glue the cotton ball to the sprue, then color it yellow, apply red to it and then finally some tufts of black for the smoke. Once done, just super glue one of the missles (which I cut out from the pod) onto the end, stick it in the pod and you have a cool effect…

Here are some more photos of the completed Zaku…

That’s it for now… will post some more photos once I get to getting shots in the daytime (which are better, of course).

I just got two more model kits recently. I think I’ll take a break from Gundams first to try out other kits. I got the Fine Molds Star Wars Tie Interceptor 1/72 kit and also an AMT-ERTL 1997 Ford Mustang 1/25 muscle car. Both I got from Ebay. The Tie Interceptor is a steal at P1,500 and the car is around P700 bucks. I’ll still be making gundams after these two. I just wanted to try and do the techniques I learned from the net.

Stay tuned…

Check out the progress photos and step-by-step of our new Gundam project – the 1/100 MG Gundam Destiny!

A couple of weeks ago, I just completed the “China-version” of my Gundam Astray 1/100. And yes, that was good practice. It was all painted with Tamiya aerosol cans. Once I got to compute the cost of these, it was more prudent to invest in an airbrush set. The good airbrushes like Iwata or Badger start out at $100 or so and that’s without the compressor. Not considering ourselves pros at the moment, I invested in a basic Tamiya Sprayworks set (see photo later). It comes with a standard, top-fed can and it has its own compressor. Right now, me and my pals used it on a couple of projects and we’re satisfied.

Now, on to the Destiny MG 1/100 project.

This is my first Master Grade REAL Gundam and of course, I don’t have a very high expectation for it (but I don’t want to screw it up either). The goal is to practice all those that I read and researched over the net and they say that “practice makes perfect”. In time, I want to improve painting, detailing and weathering techniques so that I apply something new when I buy the next kit.

So far, shopping for the tools, items and accessories for modeling has been so much fun. I really enjoyed gathering all the stuff and neatly packing them into my plastic bins and containers.

Jan 21, 2009

I got the kit last week and I start the first couple of nights assembling, cutting and sanding the pieces. Every night I try to finish a part like the torso, both arms, legs, wing and weapons. It took me the entire week to assemble the kit since I only work on it a couple of hours a day. Gotta be fast next time.

Meanwhile, here’s the box of the Destiny and what’s inside.

MG kits are a bit harder to assemble since they have a gazillion parts. What’s good about MG kits are that a) they are fully poseable, much like Revoltech toys and b) they have an endoskeleton where you just put the armor plating on top. It seems daunting at first.

Here’s the pre-assembled model. I will have to take this apart for painting. The good thing about pre-assembling is that you PLAN for the colors, the weathering and sometimes you’ll see the need where to mask off items for painting. You also get to “QA” your kit to see if there are nip/nib marks visible and other stuff that you need to adjust like seams, etc.

Here’s the Destiny after the snap-build. As you can see, I make the head for last. I call it my “crowning glory” and is sort of a reward for all my efforts.

The wings and the weapons are also pre-assembled and ready for priming.

Jan 23, 2009 (Friday)

After the pre-assembling, I dissamble them all again and arrange the parts correspondingly for painting. Just get a similar container and label them with tape and marker. All this organization will save you a lot of time going through the manual and figuring out which part goes where.

First I spray-painted the endoskeleton using Tamiya gunmetal (can). After it dried, I applied a drybrush of Chrome Silver to the details.

Does the paint harden the joints in your kits? Here’s a tip – put BluTak putty on ‘em. It’s easy to remove once the paint dries and the joints will slide on better.

Now, I skewer all the parts with sticks, arrange them according to color and put them on styro foam. My plan is to go from light to dark, painting the armor first (light grey), then the wings red and then the black parts. For this project, there wasn’t much color modification. I just changed all the blue to black for a tri-color effect.

Using double sided tape for the flat parts makes painting them easier. See below.

And now for the actual painting. Here’s the new Tamiya Spray Work set that I bought for around $120. Time to make the investment pay off, bitches.

The first layer would be the primer. I used a Mr. Surfacer 500 (from Gunze) thined with lacquer thinner. Mr. Surfacer would hide and conceal all the sanding marks and the little seams and cracks of the kit.

Here’s the wing all coated up with Mr. Surfacer.

After drying and curing for 3 hours (I worked on the weapons while waiting). It was time to actually paint the parts. The nozzle was set to ‘medium’ and sprayed at around 5 to 7 inches away from the parts. Drying time was supposed to be around 1 to 3 days (I found that out after I was done with the project). The colors were Tamiya enamels mixed with Tamiya enamel thinner. Base colors of Red, White + black + blue (for armor), Black, GunMetal and Yellow were used.

Here’s the wing after drying and final assembly.

I then re-assembled the Destiny and there were still some spots that I plan to hand-paint in the following day. Of course, I still haven’t applied the decals and the panel lines yet. Here’s a photo;

Here’s the Destiny almost 90% done. All that’s left are more details, panel lining, some weathering and touching up by hand.

Lessons Learned

Every kit is a learning experience. I’m no pro but my goal is to learn something new for every modeling project and I’d like to share it with you. Here are some of the things I learned from this one.

• Assemble everything – don’t leave small parts in the sprues. I found this the hard way and had to mix paint (costs money) just for the little stuff.
• Enamel dries and cures – “Drying” means that the actual enamel paint is dry. That takes around a couple of hours to a day depending on how thick your coat it. But “curing” is actually a different thing. Enamel paint cures from 2 to 5 days. How do you know it’s cured? Simple – when the paint doesn’t feel goey or tacky. That’s the time to apply detail and decals.
• Too much top coat – I got excited with spraying again. The amount of top coat left the gundam with a dusty like surface. I’ll just tell my friends it’s my “dust weathering” technique. Yah right!
• Patience - modeling requires patience. You can’t have it overnight. Good model kits take time. If you don’t have patience, this hobby might not be for you. I’m trying to really control the urge to finish. Sloppy and rushed work, however small, shows… and shows bad.

Hope you guys enjoyed and learned something. More photos to follow upon update.

A more better Gundam in the weeks to come.

Here’s week 2 of the my Gundam Astay 1/100 paint job project. Whew!

Last week, I posted about doing this Gundam project. I already assembled the kit and now it’s time for painting.

It was Saturday and I go to Deamonfrost’s house for some good ol’fashioned Gundam session. I arrive there early in the morning and picked up another friend on the way. We passed by the hobby store for some paint and supplies before heading off to Daemonfrost’s place.

After setting up the workstation, it’s time to dissemble the gunpla and separate them into their different colors. As I told you last week, I opted for a new color scheme – matte black for the frame, pale ghost gray for the armor and a hint of red for highlights.

I prepared some of the arm sections and decided to “prime” them with an “el cheapo” version airspray! And that, my friends, is stupid mistake of the day part 1… it was a windy day and I had to spray too close to the parts. Bubbles formed and ruined some of the parts (the sword blades were among them… damn!).

Although we got some original Tamiya paints from the hobby store, priming them with acrylic paint was a BAD IDEA. Charged to experience, dudes. Well, good thing this Astray is a “China version”… at least I get to practice

Photos of the weekend session:

Above: We assembled a quick, cheap spray area with some cardboard just to keep the wind away

Here’s Deamonfrost (in black) and Jeff building their own gunpla kits

Using Blutak and some sticks, I dry ou the pieces in the sun after spraying. For this project, we used a combination of Tamiya paints and regular spray paint (BOSNY and Pylox brands) which can be found at your favorite hardware store.

For the small parts, use masking tape to hold the pieces together before spraying. This is to avoid having small pieces blown off and scattered all across the place.

Once dried out (around a couple of hours for best results), it’s time to assemble them once again.

Ahhh… the mess of the workstation and tools. But that’s the fun part!

Putting the pieces back together.

Viola! The finished product. Like I said, I wasn’t really happy with the project. But it was fun and much needed practice for future gunpla projects.

Meanwhile, here are more photos of the new paint scheme for my Astray

It’s a far cry for the cheap plastic that it once was…

Other Lessons Learned

1. Don’t prime with another type of paint
2. DO NOT spray on a windy day
3. Don’t get carried away with the paint, a few sprays are enough
4. Don’t spray TOO CLOSE to the model
5. Paint is expensive! I gotta get myself one of those airbrushes with a compressor. That’s cheaper in the long run.

Now that I’ve gotten over with this Astray, here’s a REAL GUNDAM PROJECT for next weekend:

This thing’s the genuine article from Bandai, baby! This one is a MASTER GRADE 1/100 Destiny Gundam. I’m so excited about this and looks like we’re going to invest in an airbrush and compressor to do justice to the kit.

Let me open the box for you…

Awesome!

I guess that’s it for this post (and this project).

Thanks for joining me. Visit again sometime next week for the Destiny paint job.

Until then,

Fuhrer

So, after a lot of years since my last Gundam, it’s time to build and do the paint job for my first Gundam project – the Gundam Astray 1/100 model kit.

This is the first of a couple of parts for this Gundam project. I haven’t built a Gundam kit in years and finally, Daemonfrost has convinced me to try it again. So I’m off with with a new Gundam paint job project for the next couple of weekends.

Relaeased in 2005, the Astary Blue frame is a great kit. However, the current kit that I have is a “China” model, of course, a lot cheaper than the original Bandai kit. Though not promoting pirated junk, I wanted to “test the waters” first and then practice basic and advanced modeling and painting techniques with it. Me and the Geekzkrieg guys will then get the original HG and MG kits soon.

Meanwhile, here’s what the original Blue frame looks like assembled (not my kit, just got it off the web):

Step 1: Assembling

The first thing to do is assemble the Gundam. After carefully taking off the nicks and sanding them, I now have the rough kit ready for the next phase – primer and then painting. Some people already do the painting with the parts in the spruce. I prefer to first assemble them and then disassemble them again for painting.

Here are some photos of the this phase at the work area;

The model all assembled in the work area. I finally did the rough sanding and will do the fine sanding before the actual painting

The BIG-ASS SWORD – that’s the primary reason I chose this model. It’s awesome… check out below, the sword is really a…

… a big-a$$ Gatling Gun too! OMG! Geek orgasm!

The thing can also be assembled as the Gundam’s rear “Wing”. Cool, huh?

Again, here’s the unpainted model all ready for the next phase.

I don’t really like the white and blue frame so I’m kinda contemplating on using gunmetal black as the frame’s base color and a very pale shade of grey in lieu of the white. I’ll show ya what it all looks like when done.

Part 2 of this project next week when we actually get to paint it. Hopefully, me and the geekz can upload a tutorial video as well.

Seeya!

- Fuhrer

LEGAL SHIAT

• Fully assembled model photo above (c) Rob Braun and was posted at collectiondx
• My own photos shot with the Casio Exilim EX-Z80