The  Neo Zeong is quite daunting. Just unpacking the box and sifting through the pieces means you have to start thinking “what do I do first?” Well, first thing first, obviously! And that means tidying up and cleaning the airbrush station. My youngest of little helpers had managed to knock the airbrush stand off the table, smashing the jar, so I’ve crafted up a new jar to hold the stand section. One of the vent hoses had come a little unattached, so I took them both off to facilitate cleaning and put them back good and tight. I also noticed a small draft from the front corner of the box and patched that with some duck tape. A fresh piece of filter paper in the box, and we’re ready to go! First up, I already knew I wanted to detail up the painting on these chest sections. The pieces are ridiculously large, and it’s a shame they’re not full of holes where the details are so you could poke through a panel from behind to make painting easier. But they’re big enough that masking should not be an issue. Here’s the rest of the pieces I cleaned up. They’re all getting a good coat of black Alclad gloss in anticipation of various Alclad metallics being used on them. I’m wary of using too much brass, but it looked so good with the aluminum on Sazabi, and it will go with the red and gunmetal that I think it’ll work fine for adding detail. The majority of these pieces will be getting aluminium, but some sections will get brass as a detail element. Looking through all the pieces, I was surprised by the brown and purple runners. Brown? Purple? Actually the purple looks ok, but the brown is a bit icky.  I’ll already be doing the majority of the red armour with the same reds that I used on Sazabi, but I didn’t have a super-dark red on the Sazabi so I’ll need to experiment there on what is going to look good. Also, I need to experiment with using flat and gloss varnishes for effect on the same piece, as I’m intending to use such a technique, should it work, to add details to the larger sections of armour, especially the very large tail piece which is surprisingly plain!