SD Gundam Finished

 So this little fellah is finished. Complete he stands about 4.5inches high, so slightly taller than a Space Marine dreadnought but, with decidedly more articulation.

Once I'd painted all the bits, he was easy enough to snap together. Almost all the pieces came off the sprues very cleanly and very little tidying up was required. Games Workshop could learn a thing or two from Bandai here about how to provide a quality model kit on sprues. Given these kits retail for about £5 online and not exactly shy on detail, I am feeling a little aggreived about the cost of GW's plastic dreadnoughts. They are fantastic kits, but I'm not entirely sure why they should cost £15 more than this comparable amount of high quality plastic.

Although I tried to keep things simple, I did do a bit of shading, but steered clear of doing line highlights. The gold was a bit of a problem and I had to repaint the airbrushed stuff because it had come out looking slightly different. Even then, after a few repaints, the gold still looks a little grubby in places and I might revisit it again if I find it bugs me.

Most of the black areas are actually Reaper Master series Dark Elf Skin Shadow, with Chaos Black painted into the edges for a little bit of depth. Just painting it black would've looked really flat and odd.

The red bits were a base of Mechrite Red, washed with Devlan Mud to pick out the detail in the recesses and then painted with the lovely Reaper Master Series Ruby Red, which is metallic. It gives the red bits the sparkle they need without recourse to detailed line highlights and whatnot.

The green detailing was done with Reaper Master Series Emerald Green, another metallic paint, with a wash of Thrakka Green and then repaint with the metallic green.

All in all, this has been a fun kit to build and paint. Assembling without glue is a little weird and not all the pieces snap together as cleanly as I would like. I'm not sure why that is and it may be that some trimming of pieces is required to get a cleaner fit. Certainly something I'll keep in mind for the future.

And the future actually has me nervous. See, I've got myself another kit for Christmas as I was inspired by playing Dynasty Warriors: Gundam 3. For whatever reason, I found myself drawn to the styling of the main mecha from the series Gundam 00, the titular Gundam 00 Raiser.

So on a whim, I bought myself the Master Grade kit.

I have this ominous feeling I may have bitten off more than I can chew.....