Neo Zeong progresses slowly….As I was already working on the fuel tanks, I decided to do a few more of their pieces. This is the base, with rockets that I did with Tamiya clear red over Alclad chrome. The outside was painted Tamiya gunmetal. But why the hexagons on the paper you’re asking?  Because they’re for masking patterns on the large pieces! To make the hexagons I’m laying out strips of masking tape onto the paper template and you can see the lines through the tape to carefully cut. The large skirt section is unbelievably plain, with only a single decal (the only water slide in the whole kit) to brighten it up. The hexagon ring is to frame the Neo Zeong logo, and the rest is just to liven the part up a bit. I’m masking on the Alclad grey undercoat because I intend to paint the red pieces as I did the dark red on the Sazabi, which was a base coat of Alclad gloss black, Createx pearl red, and then Tamiya clear red on top. By masking some of the parts when I spray the black gloss, I’ll leave brighter grey areas that will turn a brighter red (of the same hue) when the paint job is complete.

The fuel tanks are getting the hexagon pattern to tie in with the skirt. I set up the pattern spacing so that the pattern would repeat perfectly around the cylinder. Here’s some more parts awaiting masking. Alclad copper for these. I’ll mask and paint the rest Tamiya gunmetal. Here’s some more parts drying…. These pieces join onto the large skirt section, so I’m carrying through the hexagon pattern to tie them in. Here’s the masking tape on the template drawing, just lifting the corner to place them. And here’s the spacing template I made to keep all the spacing consistent. It was set originally for the fuel tanks, but I’m keeping the same spacing for the rest of the pieces. The hexagons are made in trapezium halves, which is a little fiddly, but makes perfect use of the masking tape and allows for a bit more design creativity in places. Here’s one of the thrusters that I painted with Alclad gloss black, then Alclad chrome with Tamiya clear red on top. It’s nice, but the finish is not perfect. So I thought I’d try the Tamiya polishing compound I just picked up. It works well. I used the “course” compound here. I’ll try the “fine” and “finish” later!Here’s a comparison of before and after the “course” polish. Top is polished, bottom as painted. It works well, but I think with some more work I’ll get them looking really shiny!