Tuesday 13 March 2012

Gundam WiP - Mostly Armless

Please forgive me the awful pun.
So most of this evening has been spent building and painting an arm. Just the one. These things take time. the photo above is a shot of the arm skeleton in its near nekkid state. This is quite a few parts in and of itself, with lots of hidden bits to help with articulation, I particularly like the clear plastic green bits, they're a nice visual touch.

The skeleton takes a bit of putting together and, invariably, I make a mistake reading the Japanese instructions. This is largely because I cannot read Japanese at all and mostly just stare at the pictures to get the jist of what I should be doing, then look at the Kanji and wonder what Bandai are trying to tell me with the various accompanying warning symbols.

Red button is no turn delightful?
High voltage death doing?
More pictures after the cut?

With the armour plating on, well you can see the plating is a bit of a mess. The shading is blotchy and not entirely where I want it to be on this side, as the shading is quite intense in places that would catch the light. On the reverse, well the shading is also blotchy and not quite enough. Time to break out the wash and some thinned Ghost White paint.
And after a little bit of fiddling around with the thinned white and the washes.The finnih here isn't quite as I'd want it, but it is tidier than before. Basically I went out the untidied areas with the thinned offwhite until the colour was more consistent, then reapplied a wash to put the shading back. Then alternate between the two until such point as I feel moderately happy. Or at least as happy as I let myself get.

It is quite a time consuming process and I'm going to have to do this for all the limbs and sundry other pieces. But, I tell myself, it will be worth it. Next update will be once both arms are done (and each set of hands, as there are two per arm!) and I've moved onto the legs.

3 comments:

  1. you seem to be cracking along with this! i really like the effect the green plastics bits give as they catch the light, that would be really hard to replicate in paint.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I am so not "cracking along" with this. It is a painfully slow, but I am trying to do it justice and assembly is more time consuming that I thought it would be. There is a an awful lot of taking things apart and putting back together again, because something didn't fit right or was missing.

    ReplyDelete
  3. That one arm looks like more work than most whole kits! The green plastic bits are really nice visuals. The whole kit is fully articulated? Should be spectacular when finished!

    ReplyDelete