Gundam Astray 1/100 Painting Week 2

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