With the major painting done, assembly went reasonably fast.Here you can see where I’ve decided to do the edges of raised panels with black oil wash, and actual panel lines proper with the white oil wash. I disassembled the frame in preparation for the armour pieces. First up was the chest section.I noticed I’d got the colour differentiation the wrong way around on the piece that sits above the chest gun. Oh well, it looks great so I’m not going to re-do all the masking and repaint the piece! I placed a small piece of silver sticky tape behind the transparent green painted piece on the head. Those arms are wonderfully chunky. I love how the hydraulic pistons remain on show. The rear skirt is very detailed for it’s transformation abilities. And the legs are done. Wow – they’re tricky. There’s lots of parts and I missed some in the foot so had to take apart and re-do. Other parts were tricky to fit, especially the square-ish piece over the foot which has to snap into place. And finally assembled with the backpack in place. I added a couple more pieces of my sticky silver tape to the front leg sections and on the tops of the arms too. I’m very happy with the colour differentiation. I was worried it would come out either too bold or too subtle, but it seems about right to me.I guess now it’s time for water-slide hell….
Blown…… away!
The white panel lining really looks the business, giving the appearance of even more transformation /armour seperation. The reds are sumptuous, and the metals look amazing.
Was hoping to see the shield, but I guess all good things…
Could have maybe gone a little with the weathering. Though the subtlety does work rather well, especially on the thin chest vents.
I did more weathering as I assembled the pieces so the close-up shots don’t reflect how the kit will look. I’ll get the water-slides on and probably add more weathering after that as the Tamiya weathering master does rub off a little.
Question: do you airbrush or hand paint the model??
If airbrush which setup do you use and which brand paint
If hand paint same thing
Gr Johan
It’s all airbrush. I use an Iwata HP-CS. For paint I use a variety: Alclad primers and metallics, Createx for the pearl paints mainly, and Tamiya acrylics for the rest.
When I document a build on the blog, I try to call out the exact paint combinations I use, so if you read up on any of the builds you’re interested in I’ll note the paints used. If I miss one, or it’s not clear what I’m doing, just ask in the comments and I’ll try to remember what I used to help you out.
Thank you very much 😉
do you snap fit the kit first then paint the parts, or just paint them straight off the runners and then assemble the entire kit? if it’s the latter, do you ever run into issues with the paint being too thick for connecting parts etc?
For the most part I paint before assembly. Sometimes I’ll look ahead on the instructions and see that a sub-assembly can be completed before painting. And of course, for some kits like the Patlabor I did recently I had to assemble then paint because I had nasty seam-lines to fill and I had to do some serious masking too.
I’ve found that paint-the-assemble works fine in most cases, especially with the Bandai kits where the quality of the plastic and moulding means you’re practically guaranteed a good fit. Because I airbrush I’ve not found that I’ve ran into thick paint issues on moving parts.
For the frame (where you’re most likely to run into fit and rubbing issues), if you keep it simple and just use one nice coat of Tamiya gunmetal (especially when thinned with Tamiya lacquer thinner) I think you’re going to be fine. The Tamiya gunmetal goes on with good coverage so you’ll just need a single thin layer of paint and when used with the lacquer thinner it’s very tough and quick drying.