My girlfriend built and painted Gunpla for the first time

very nice! she has got teh skizzlez to pay the bizzlez! is this her hobby or what?

"Ha ha, I got your face!"

Neato change from before to after. I was going to critique the coloring on the beam cannon thing, but seeing how it was done intentionally, that's an even nicer touch! I kinda like Gundam recolors/finishing, since it makes them look cooler/better than being obviously plastic.

Thanks!

It's actually my hobby. I built and painted her a HGUC Z'Gok (mass production type) and SD Nu-Gundam (this required more sanding than an average 1/100 MG kit )
And she wanted to make one for me in return. I was quite happy with her work and placed it in a well-visible clean spot.


Probably should have thinned the beam cannon thing a bit, but I thought it was reasonable to expect burn damage, and some sort of gunk buildup from repeated use of beam cannons. (Even if they might not look that appealing on the kit.)
Also, since pilots are humans they may have preference of one arm over the other, so the amount of "damage" on each hand is different (although I didn't take a side-by-side photo to make it clear).

Also the steel got mixed in intentionally because I don't think a 2m long claw that's been used to smash and poke other huge metallic objects would keep its shine.

Those two were my ideas but the rest are totally her color scheme. I also advised that the jetpack looks ugly as hell and we should simply take it out.

Crap O_O AWESOME! You're lucky

I love model kits... But I can't find any around here, and buying on teh internetz is too costly

[quote name='deathfisaro' post='1336269' date='Aug 11 2008, 09:43 PM']Thanks!

It's actually my hobby. I built and painted her a HGUC Z'Gok (mass production type) and SD Nu-Gundam (this required more sanding than an average 1/100 MG kit )
And she wanted to make one for me in return. I was quite happy with her work and placed it in a well-visible clean spot.


Probably should have thinned the beam cannon thing a bit, but I thought it was reasonable to expect burn damage, and some sort of gunk buildup from repeated use of beam cannons. (Even if they might not look that appealing on the kit.)
Also, since pilots are humans they may have preference of one arm over the other, so the amount of "damage" on each hand is different (although I didn't take a side-by-side photo to make it clear).

Also the steel got mixed in intentionally because I don't think a 2m long claw that's been used to smash and poke other huge metallic objects would keep its shine.

Those two were my ideas but the rest are totally her color scheme. I also advised that the jetpack looks ugly as hell and we should simply take it out.[/quote]
Oh yeah, no problem. =P

I have a small number of Gundams myself, and they're the action-figure ones, the smaller ones and not the bigger ones or even the ones you build yourself. I'm pretty bad at manual dexterity so I leave them as they are, that and I kinda don't know where they've ended up now...I agree on the jetpack being ugly (from the source picture) and I don't think even leet painting skills could really save it.

I remember being linked to this site on here a few days ago about this guy who built the larger Gundam models and did quite a bit of work to improve the general look of it. Inked the grooves, completely redid the paint, even etched on the decals. While the amount of work is extreme, the results are definitely better than what you'd normally end up with.

Oh wow, i like it.

aweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeesooooooooommmmmmmmeeeeeeeeee

Well, dang, first time? Really?
Turned out really nice for her first time, gosh dang.

Thanks to all comments! I'm relayed them to my girlfriend and she seems happy =)

Yup, her first time airbrushing.

I'm making a MG Strike Rouge right now (snap-fitting atm, gonna follow the original coloring when painting) and looking for a HGUC or easy MG kit she can paint. I'm kinda curious how much better her second kit would be. (Compared to hers, my first kit was like... embarrassing?)

Currently I'm too occupied with Phantasy Star Portable and Rune Factory 2, not making much progress if at all Probably will take a month or so before I upload mine.

And to Doomsday Forte, I don't have FIX or MIA but I have a couple Revoltec Evangelion and Getter robos. They're good for display but kinda costly.

Found a few work-in-progress pictures. 6 to be exact, here they are:
Also note that these are how I do it, different people have different steps.
Quite a lot of words, but if you're curious read ahead; this is a blog article after all.

Parts are dissembled to the smallest block of parts with the same color. For example, lower half of main body is composed of multiple parts but is same color all-around. They are glued together with adhesive for plastic.
These adhesives chemically melt the surface of the plastic, then it grabs onto the other piece and dries up. Quite strong bonding compared to regular glue or bond because technically they're one piece of plastic now.
They are sanded and cleaned with neutral dishwashing liquid diluted in water. This process removes oily chemical thing on the plastic, my finger oil, dirt, whatever else is on the surface of the kit.






She didn't bring her camera the next time, so I don't have pictures so it's gonna be all words.

The next step was painting black. Dark blue part near the target areas were masked, then airbrushed flat black enamel paint. Enamel thinner doesn't disolve lacquer, so it's perfectly safe to spray on top of lacquer. Refer to the "random" picture from my first post and look at the inner head and exhaust next to it.

Then the shoulder armours. The red parts were brush painted, with a 0 size round brush red was applied. After drying, leftover black paint from the previous step was used to fill the center.

The black paint is further thinned, and applied to molds (grooves). Swipe excess paint with cotton swab wet with paint thinner (for this case, enamel thinner). This kit doesn't have many molds, and black on dark blue doesn't show much. Also refer to the random picture and look at the circular mold on its head. Is there a sense of separation and volume?

The last part was the claws. They were painted with black three paragraphs ago, metallic color painted on top of black looks better than on top of lighter colors like grey or white. Because metallic paints have particles that don't fully dissolve, there'll be spaces between particles and base color can change the look of the top color. After they were painted with silver+steel, small burn damage on the palm was painted with enamel paints.

Finally, claws were masked and each part was painted with matt clear coat. Claws were intentionally not coated because if claws get lightly scratched, it'd be more realistic as a weapon. But unless accidents happen, the paint doesn't get damaged for several years.

So that's all, thanks for reading super long post and wait for my next entry which will be my kit with more extensive photo coverage compared to this one =)