Heads Up!

So much detail in a Tiny Piece...

So, all of the head parts are present and accounted for. Plus the Beam Saber hilt I forgot to move out of view of the camera! BONUS! Lots of things that need to be painted on this part of the model. Luckily the chin is a separate piece and does not need to be painted.


The face plate needs the border of the eyes painted black, the eyes themselves are to be yellow and the decoration under the eye (vents?) are red.


I use a very fine tipped brush for the majority of my painting on 1/144 scale Gunplas ^_^. And Testor's enamel paints as they are widely available where I live. The paint is thinned with Testor's thinner (not shown) down to about a 50/50 or a 40/60 (paint/thinner) ratio.


I used flat black for the border and I did get a little on the eye, but none on the rest of the face plate. I used a hobby blade to scratch off the excess paint.


Again, the same tiny brush, I lightly painted the eyes with gloss yellow.

The face plate is completed with a touch of flat red for the under eye vents.

I did get a bit of over flow on a small portion of the face with the red, again the hobby knife took care of that.

A very small bit of yellow for the vulcan barrels and red for the main camera.

Another shot of the vulcans
And I finished off with the rear camera. I'll have pictures of the final finish of the head at the end of the in-progress.

Cheers!

Whew, BABY!

Alright, the sanding took a little longer than I hoped. Been really busy, working retail around the holidays and all. So, I only had a chance to do the sanding a few nights over the past week and only for a little while. The sanding is complete, though.



So, here we have the lower leg rough sanded where the cement had made a seem. I only sanded down the seem where it would be noticed after the build. I didn't bother to sand where the knee portion would cover it up.




I used a 400 grit sanding stick. I found these in a pack with three grits (150, 300, and 400) of sanding sticks at Hobby Lobby. I sanded the entire surface but as you can see there are small details on the panels toward the ankle on the back of the leg and there are some on the front as well. I don't want to sand these off.


I used my nippers to cut down one end of the sanding stick to fit between the details ^.^




Here we have a comparison of the sanded part vs the unsanded part. The shine of the plastic is gone and the plastic has a bit of texture to it now, so no longer looks like bare plastic.

Up next, I'm going to paint the head and torso. I'll post that more regularly, I hope.

Have a Merry Christmas, everyone!

Updating this week: EDITED Dec. 07th

I'll be starting the next stage of my modeling progress tomorrow: the sanding! I'll be sanding in my down time pretty much all week...

For my most recent 1/144 scale models I've been using a sanding technique that was featured in a hobby magazine about two years ago that involves sanding all surfaces of a model in progressively higher grits up to 600 or so, but that's it. Aside from details like eyes or plastic molded in the wrong color, no other painting is done.

This process leaves the plastic with a much less out of box look than just snapping the model together. I like the look of sanded plastic, it gives a bit of texture that you can't get from painting. The thing of it is, though, is that it takes a really long time to do. You can't just run the sand paper over the parts a few times, it takes hours. Air brushing, once you get the hang of it, is very quick work for basic jobs, even shading can be done in a few seconds on a part after the airbrush is set up. The hardest part about painting to me is the waiting between coats to allow proper drying.

After the G 30th HG Gundam, I'll be building a 1/144 Wing Gundam... again... This will be my 3rd or 4th build of it.

Also, on the 21st, I'll be finishing up my Hyaku Shiki with decals and details. Next year's first model will be the Special Edition Musha Gundam, the fancy one with the stand. I'm going to attempt to paint the weapons and the gun to look like real wood, much the same way gamerabaenre did with his custom paint job on his Musha Gundam. Thanks for the vids on that by the way!

See you all tomorrow.

Gundam parts

So, I finally got around to taking pictures of my progress so far. I got my work station in decent order. It's pretty small for a proper work station, seeing as I live in an apartment building in a college town, you know. So it's just an old school style desk that I found on a curb when students were moving out a couple years ago. Gotta love free junk ^_^.

So here's a shot of my work station:

Tool caddy, paper towels, clamp base with magnifying glass, the two models I'm working on, and the actual work area with parts and my cutting tool box.

I took a queue from Ngee Khiong and decided to use paper boxes to organize the parts as I go with this model. This is a great idea! Don't know why I never thought of it.

I'm working on this model and finishing up the HD version of the MG Hyaku Shiki. All that's left on that is the final details of panel lining, decals, stickers, and dry transfers.


All of the parts are placed into boxes labeled for different parts of the Gundam's body: head, torso, backpack, left and right arms, left and right legs, and weapons.


I took care to separate all of the parts from the sprues with the clippers and trimmed the excess plastic with an Exact-o knife. The only parts that I have actually assembled thus far were the forearms, the lower legs, and the upper torso, because they needed cementing to hide seam lines.


I had to check and re-check the finished model on the box to see which parts of the leg and arm were seamless and which parts still had the lines intact because they were part of the design. I have to say Bandai did a wonderful job of hiding the majority of seams on the Gundam itself.


After cementing only the segments that needed to by seamless (top of the torso only, most of the forearm and the front portion of the lower leg and a small section at the bottom of the calve and base of the leg on the back), I gave the areas a rough sand with a sanding stick.

Next up, sanding and sanding and sanding some more.

Start uploading soon

I've been working on the 30th anniversary HG Gundam. I should have started taking pictures when I started but my work station was a mess and I was a little embarrassed by it to be honest. I have gotten the parts separated from the gates, trimmed, and sorted out by there respective parts of the Gundam; left and right leg, left and right arm, torso, hips, head, back pack, and weapons.

The parts that needed to be cemented in order to hide seem lines were cemented and have already had a rough sand. I'm going to upload pictures soon and I hope to keep up with this blog as I go along.

Introduction

My name is Joe and I love the Gundam franchise! I've been building Gundam models for about 10 years now and it may be the only thing that has helped me hang on to any sanity.

I plan on posting my progress through my modeling experience here on Joe's Gunpla. I look forward to hearing everyone's tips, comments, praises, and constructive critisisms.