This kit has been waiting a fair while to be built. But even before I bought it, I’d been waiting a while since I first saw it and knew it had to be part of my collection.

Such an unassuming box for such a classic kit. And just like the PG Zaku, nicely divided into three sections, and the two manuals. It was hard to know where to dive into a kit of this complexity, and as I’d not built much in a while, I went for the core section.  As has become my style, Alclad metallics – polished brass, copper and polished aluminium over Tamiya gunmetal. With some accents in Tamiya smoke, carefully hand-painted, the results are great.  I went with the new Alclad gunmetal for the weapon. This paint is dark purple and when you’ve built up enough density, it’s essentially black and looks fantastic with a really nice finish.  Often I’ll do the frame first, but due to the complexity of this kit, I decided to paint up all the colour armour first. For the red pieces I laid down a good layer of Tamiya gunmetal, a rather unconventional undercoat. However, the Createx red pearl does go nicely over it (as I did on the large Neo Zeong). And as per usual, Tamiya clear red on top. I masked off the foot sections, and added some details in Tamiya smoke.  Now for the coat of Tamiya clear red over everything. 
I took a similar route with the blue pieces – Tamiya gunmetal, Createx pearl blue, and then Tamiya clear blue on top. It makes for a great metallic look that’s not as gaudy as a traditional candy coat.