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Bleh. Long weeks of exams means I couldn’t do anything. I’ve started painting the internal frame. It’s going to be a couple of shades, namely a “Metallic Red”, “Copper Metallic Red” and “Copper”. “Metallic Red” is a mix of chrome silver and clear red, with a bit of copper, and “copper metallic red” is the same but with different ratios.
Paint layers are prime->sand imperfections->gloss black->[insert colour here]->FFA->enamel silver detailing (for molded in pipes) (not shown) ->and maybe more FFA later.
A couple of pics to show the different colours. I think it looks more yellow in pictures than it should. Shitty basement lighting + cell phone. YEP.
I decided that “clear pink beams” didn’t cut it anymore. They were just…so boring compared to the rest of the model. So after god knows how much of looking (more like, I finally strolled upon it), I finally found fluorescent pink.
It’s Mr Hobby’s Lacquer based Fluorescent pink. I have the thinner already for my primer, so it’s alright. Before pics of the upgrade beam sabers, just a quick comparison I have observed so far between Tamiya and Mr Hobby paints. I recently started getting Mr Hobby stuff, starting with the primer and now the pink. Tamiya I have used before I started airbrushing, so I have a huge stash of it.
Tamiya Pros:
- Easy to work with
- Thins with isopropanol–cheap
- Easy to clean in airbrush
- This one applies to me more specifically, but I already have many colours
- More available to buy more
Tamiya Cons:
- ****SCRATCHES STUPID EASILY****
- Lacks a variety of purples/pinks/other less military colours, but I can mix my own…sorta
Mr. Hobby Pros:
- It’s new to me
- Lacquer should scratch less easily
- Lots of colours
Mr Hobby cons:
- Really hard to clean
- Not all stores carry it
- Lacquer thinner may melt plastic, so I use Mr Hobby thinner, which is pretty expensive
That’s it for now. But here are the pics of the beam sabers I painted. I don’t think the pink was completely opaque, but that’s okay. I put a bit of Tamiya flat white on top of it to make it look a little more interesting.
Unicorn's new beam sabers
Zeta's upgrade
He's too tall now...
Ah. Finally started blogging. Not sure how long I can keep this up, with school and all. These first couple of posts should be pretty lame, as I get used to this thing. It’ll probably be about Gunpla/random ramblings about stuff. I don’t really expect this to get very busy, nor do I expect very many people to read this (until I advertise for it), but here goes anyways.
To start off, here is my most recent build, a MG Zeta Gundam Ver 2.0, built for 2Old4Toys’ Gundam competition:
This build was the first using an airbrush–an Iwata Eclipse HP-CS. I use an ordinary hardware compressor, but it’s sufficient for my needs. The airbrush is amazing. Two of the biggest benefits so far is that 1/ it allows for far greater control of the spray, and 2/ I can mix my own custom colours. I previously use Tamiya Lacquer spray cans, which were good, but had very limited precision, and I could not always find an exact shade I wanted. The main disadvantage is having to clean in between colours, but after a while I should be able to get it done relatively quickly.
But this also allows me to play around with hydrophobic/hydrophilic interactions (basically the fact that oil and water do not mix). Using Tamiya Acrylics (water based) as my primary paints and Future Floor Acrylic (which is also water based), I develop a bunch of layers that are all water based. This way I can do washes with enamels (since they do not harm the acrylic layers) and other possibly more advanced techniques in the future which involves using oils over water based paints.
I also worked with pla-plates for the first time. I can’t really cut it straight it, but I recently bought a Tamiya scriber, which should help me. I used .3mm pla-plates for the armour detailing, but I want to get some 1mm thick pla-plates. I have this diorama in my mind that I want to do 
. It takes a stupid amount of time, but it really adds to the amount of detail present in the kit.
tl;dr. Here are a bunch of pictures of the completed kit. WIP pics in the video.
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