Starting with the beginning of the week, on Monday, the black parts were sprayed with clear gloss. The shoulder armor should be considerably shiner, see the comparison below. After a full day of curing, decals were applied Tuesday along with the standard decal setting/softening solutions, and again left to dry and cure for a full day. Wednesday, the decaled pieces are sprayed with a couple of clear gloss sessions to completely seal in the decal as well as hide the decal edges as best as possible.
More Midnight Zaku progress below as well as the proposal for Gunpla Private Lessons.
Last year, during a Trip to Hong Kong, we discovered that some gunpla shops offered up workshop space for gunpla modelers. They can paint, build, do decals, etc, and just pay a set cost for the usage based on time. There were other shops that offered up private lessons; a one on one class for learning gunpla building. I chuckled at this concept since most of my teaching has been done for free either from tutorials and videos posted, or large audience panels at anime conventions. R4L had suggested the idea for creating a workshop area for building and also providing classes for students. The discussions never really went anywhere as neither of us ever progressed with the idea. The reality is that I already have a ton of tutorials online and additionally, we’ve been doing the monthly build gatherings for over 3 years now, with a decent amount of communal learning. All of which is free. However, everyone has different learning styles and given the amount of information online and whatnot, people still go to schools and Universities and attend actual classes with teachers. Sure, one can read all about music theory and teach themselves to play the piano for free, but there is a bit of focus when you have an actual instructor guiding the student along.
I got a message from a forum member asking about the possibility of private lessons, hence the re-visitation to this idea. It got me thinking that perhaps focused one on one teaching sessions may work to facilitate and speed up the learning process. It would work out to weekday evening classes that run from Monday through Thursday at 1 hour long session per day. A fixed schedule of a week should be enough to teach a set level of gunpla model building. I would have Basic, Intermediate, and Advanced levels of teaching sessions. The cost would be $25 per hour for any level course. That said, the curriculum would be the following:
- Basic Gunpla Building (4 day course)
- Basic Planning
- Cutting
- Sanding
- Seam line work
- Paints and primers
- Basic Airbrushing
- Waterslide Decals and Dry Transfers
- Panel Lines
- Clear Finishes
- Intermediate Gunpla Building (4 day course)
- Advanced Airbrush – Preshading
- Metallic Paints
- Kandy Paints
- Pigments and Powders
- Weathering Techniques – fades, filters, pastels, pigments, drybrushing, etc
- Battle Damage Techniques
- Aftermarket addons
- Masking Techniques
- Advanced Gunpla BUilding (Single 2-3 hour sessions)
- Resin Conversion Kits
- Silicone Mold Making and Resin Casting
- Scratch Building
- Decal Design and Printing
- LED Modifications
- Special Paint Techniques – Marble, fractal cammo, digital cammo, etc
- Diorama Building
- Advanced Cosmetic Modifications with styrene, putty, paper clay, etc
So for anyone local to Southern California, and are interested in private gunpla lessons, contact me and we can see about scheduling a class session. Who knows, what works in Hong Kong and possibly other places may work out here.
Now back to the Zeek progression, I added a nudie nose art decal to the shield, and the same sandwiching gloss sessions were applied; the parts are now ultra shiny.
The last bits of last night’s work focused on the backpack internals and thrusters; these were painted using alclad metallic paints. The main backpack body was sprayed with alclad magnesium, the thruster internals with alclad burnt metal, the thruster externals with alclad stainless steel, and the tubing with alclad polished brass. I didn’t do any masking, and just free handed all the painting. Since most of it is covered up and keeping in the goal of a speed build, I didn’t feel like spending the time to mask and paint for this particular piece. Some pieces of the gun and other small internal areas were also painted.
The speed build is still on track as daily progress continues.
Its an interesting idea for private lessons. When it coems to gunpla im more a fan of DIY but tutorials on how to do them have always been helpful i woudlnt be where i am in gunpla without it, especially yours, i hope thease lessons dont keep you from more online video tutorials.
Hi, been visiting your blog for awhile and saw this info on facebook. I am in Socal and would like to know more about the class. Can you please email me thanks
Mark: No, it will not affect the online video tutorials. There are 2 other video podcasts already filmed that just need editing. We will continue to do those podcasts. The thing with private lessons is that it will be more focused and hopefully fast track a modeler, bypassing a great deal of trial and error. I see the value in live demos and in person teaching sessions. I’ve been able to resolve several issues with fellow modelers that just can’t be explained in words, videos, or pictures. And this adds to my gunpla resume I guess :D
Thomas: I’ve sent out an email to you. Hope to hear back from ya.
I owe most of my basic GunPla skills to Clem, so hopefully this can attest to how great of a teacher he is… just looking at his tutorials you’ll see what I mean, however, I wouldn’t have minded a couple of personal airbrushing sessions with him back in the day. That might have saved me a few headaches ;)