A long time out and a long time since my last post the farm’s been in the full swing of the early summer routine. We’ve worked cows, started cutting hay, and somehow along the way wound up cutting down a 50 year old Oak tree that toppled over in a storm. To say the least, not much time for Gundams.
In between things, I managed to preorder and secure the 1/100 scale “00 Raiser Designer Colors” edition from HLJ. Since its arrival a couple of weeks ago I have slowly begun the building process. However there is much paint work to be done for this model’s preperations, such as the undersides of exposed sections and some interior pieces for the model’s main gimmick. This fuction is powered by three LED light modules that are built into the 00’s backpack mounted (which hang over the shoulders) twin GN Drives and the head. To make this gimmick work the way I want requires paint to help black out the sections of plastic that light will normally bleed through.
The paint work has been the real time consuming, on the runner portion of the work so far. Not every part has been cut free yet, because I’ve found painting is easier without having to juggle small pieces between fingers and paint brushes. This process also includes my filling in the panel lines as well. The advantage of this with panel lining is that the ‘stain’ effect of the GM-01 Gundammarker (fine tipped black) does not bleed over into any unwanted regions that are typically cut-off points from the runners. Once a part has been finished, I’ve cut it away and cleaned the excess paint from its edges using paint cleaner.
Speaking of the paints, I’m using my traditional Testors Model Master Acryls. For this kit I used the following out of the bottle:
Clear Green
Clear Blue
Clear Red
Flat Black
Due to the extreme color shift in this kit compared to its original version I had to compensate with the gray paint to match its plastic, therefore I created a mix of Gunship Gray and Flat Gull Gray. The mix is somewhere close to 50/50 that started when I added Gull pigment to Gunship and then remixing it. The final mix is smooth, and often works with one brush stroke on a small area. For larger areas I’ve taken the extra precaution of using thinner and a wide head brush in a two coat formula.
More on this will come when I do the final review. Until then I’ve included a sample picture of the work in progress.