Being a Perfect Grade kit, there are many many pieces to paint and finish. But of course, that’s part of the appeal of the Perfect Grade kits. To me, other than the impressive size and scale, it’s the fine degree of engineering detail that makes them impressive. And after building a number of PG kits, what still amazes me is how much of that impressive engineering has been transferred to the 1/144 Real Grade kits. Now with the forthcoming Master Grade RX78-2 v3.0, we’re get to see some really fine engineering in 1/100 too. Now remember the tape that was too sticky to work well for masking? Well it works really well for holding small pieces while they’re being painted. The next batch of larger armour pieces have their lines done with the Rapidograph pen. I’ve been finding the Rapidograph to be very tricky in use, but I’m starting to get the hang of it: keep it upright when not in use, tap the bottom to restart ink flow and tap the side too. I keep a piece of scrap paper to use to help with the ink flow too, to scribble on between pieces and to check restarted flow.

I’m not too sure what to do with the spiky shoulder. Really it should be glued, sanded and filled, and that would have to be done after some internal parts are fitted. I think I’ll wait and see before I decide what route to take. (Update: the internal parts are assembled into it and shell is glued. I’ll sand and then repaint the exterior.) All the small pieces for the power cables are getting their base coat. I’ll have to sand and repaint later, but getting the base coat on will help me get good paint coverage. And now you’re asking yourself why the dark red armour pieces are getting the salmon pink Char colour! Because it’s going to be a base coat that I’m going add the Createx transparent red on top of. The Createx red is a bit “blue”, which will balance the orange of the salmon pink and produce a nice deep rich red when complete. Under the light at my airbrush station, I don’t think you can really see the nice deep red this piece has gone. Now under daylight though, you can really see the nice shade of red! And you can also see all the shading with the Tamiya Weathering Master sets and how nicely the pieces have come out. All the power connectors have been bagged up ready for final painting. Red armour pieces are in their egg trays awaiting their integration into the kit. How can you build model kits without egg trays?I decided to look at some of the inside details on these pieces. I’ve used my thinned Tamiya gloss black, and a few more coats should do it. When thinned and dropped into the recessed areas it almost paints itself, although the curvature of the pieces hinders that with the paint pooling towards the centre. This is a bit of an experiment as I’m not quite sure exactly how I want these pieces to look. These pieces don’t show their internals on the completed model so it’s not disastrous if I muck them up, but I do think it adds to the Perfect Grade kits when you pay great attention to detail.

Update:

Here’s the state of all the main armour pieces. They’re looking great and ready to be built into the model.But I finally decided what to do for the insides of the visible (or maybe visible) armour pieces – Tamiya Gun Metal. It looks a lot more metallic than this picture shows and I think it will complement the colourful exterior quite nicely.