This project was a series of first for me. My first time building a 1/144 Low Grade kit, my first experience with spray paints, my first time entering a competition, and my first ever custom paint job on a kit! I had a blast with it and I think that is what a competition should be about. Having fun!
On with the model!
I chose an old 1/144 Gelgoog kit from Mobile Suit Gundam. Yes, the old kits that require cement and putty and sanding and painting and the WORKS to look even remotely good! The proportions are awful, the parts fit is BAD, but it came together pretty well and with little problems.
So what did I do with this kit? The terms were the model has to be around 700 yen or less (Cut off at 800 yen and higher), no physical modifications, and the paint scheme had to represent a country. A lot of the entries so far... in fact all of the entries as of this post are all colored based on flags of nations. Awesome! That makes the kits very colorful. However, I don't recall any Gundams in G Gundam save the Maxter (that's the boxing Gundam right?) that was painted in strictly their respective nation's flag's colors.
I decided to go with a theme rather than the nation's colors. When I was looking at the Gelgoog's shield I got a great idea! The Gelgoog's shield, as most of us all no, is a Zulu Shield! The Zulu, currently, predominantly reside in South Africa. Their flag looks like this:
Good color combination! I could probably do quite a bit with this grouping of colors, but I wanted My Zulugoog to scream, "I'm from Africa!"
I wanted the paint scheme to be animalistic, tribal, and native all at once.
So here it is without further a due: The Zulugoog!
The white on the Shoulders, legs and skirt armor were all sprayed on with Krylon, ALL of the rest was painted by hand.
No decals were used, as I don't have a way to print them. The tribal markings on the shield and body are intentionally not straight and imperfect. I wanted them to look like they were painted on like a Zulu warrior put on war paint before going into battle.
The eye was painted with silver with a clear yellow over it.
The Leopard Print was painted with a base coat of white, then a mix of white and yellow laid over the top and dry brushed to sort of blend in at the base and fade into white like the fur of the big cat. Then the yellow mix had a bit of red added to it to make it a little bit orange. That was painted on in spots of various shapes and later I added the black spots around each of the orange spots.
My roommate commented that the skirt armor makes him look like he's got on a leopard print bikini! Admittedly, it does kind of look like he's got a leopard print bikini, but at least it's not... erm... riding up ~_^...
Tribal markings on the hands as well, with gold accents.
Zebra print on the legs and the diamond shapes on the knees. the stripes are hand painted with gloss black to make them pop from the white base coat.
The leopard print wraps around the whole "belt" area of the Zulugoog.
The tribal markings on the shield are based off of MANY pictures I found on Google image search when typing in "Zulu Shield".
I painted the rings on the inner elbow gold, along with the wrists and the upper arms as accents or bands a tribal leader might wear.
Top shot of the leopard print
This was a very fun project to work on!
Best of luck to all of the contestants, and I'll see you all on the Earth Battlefield! May the best Gundam Fighter win!
Until next time: Happy Building!
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