This is going to be a short update on the Launcher and Sword Strike because the next blog post is going to be tutorial on masking techniques using the white armour pieces of the Strike as the working example.I’ve painted half the white runners. Here’s the ones for the deactivated Strike.  And here’s the ones for the other Strike. Not much difference you think? Here’s the same piece from both kids together. Deactivated is on the right? Nope. I can’t see much difference either!Does thus angle help? Not much eh? Well the piece on the left is done with a pearl white and the piece on the right with a plain white. Close up and in real life you can see the difference!

For the white armour pieces I decided to paint the ones for the activated Strike (with the red and blue armour) in a pearl white. For the most part the painting went the same for both sets.

I started with Alclad grey primer because I wanted to be able to mask that for the grey details you see. Then, for a few of the pieces I airbrushed on some Alclad polished aluminium, like in the details on the piece above, and then masked that. Finally I painted the white which is Createx white thinned with Future Finish and a little Tamiya acrylic thinner. The white pieces got a second coat of the same whereas the pearl pieces received a coat of Createx pearl white also thinned with Future Finish and Tamiya acrylic thinner.

For the panel lines on these pieces I decided to use thinned Tamiya smoke. I like the dark grey panel lines, especially between the light grey and white sections on pieces. The thinned acrylic paint is tricky to work with as any mistake must be wiped off immediately or it will adhere itself to the underlying paint. If you’re reasonably quick you can dip a q-tip in Tamiya thinner and carefully remove any mistakes without ruining the paintwork too.

What is going to be interesting is how all the white and grey pieces will look when flat coated. Will the pearl be more visible or will it remain as subtle?