PG Astray Group Build Project part 1

Last month, on the forums, we discussed the possibility of working on a group project at the build gathering. We’ve been holding the build gatherings for a little over a year now and each month we’ve been working on projects of our own. Last year we kinda did a group thing and worked on the 1/144 Gundam Bar. The bar itself was a group effort but the individual kits were still projects contributed by each builder. This idea behind this was to get a fairly complicated kit, that was fairly expensive, split the costs of purchasing the kit, and having each person that donated to the cause work on the project. So at the end of the polling, we decided on the PG Astray that had just come out in March.

Funaka divided up the parts into section for each person. Some of the folks with less time or are slower can work on a smaller section while faster builders can work on a more complex and bigger part. Hopefully the group build will be successful and we can look for future projects and possibly get interest from other folks that attend the build gatherings. Currently the break down of parts and team members are as follows:

The Team:
• GameraBaenre – Torso
• Gtetra – Backpack
• Dhcloud – R. Arm
• Lycantivis – R. Foot
• Angel – Leg
• Faust257 – L. Arm
• Kingvoe – L. Foot
• Funaka – Leg
• Grand Admiral Sean – Head
• BabyChu – Waist
• Pascalior – Shield/Weapons

The Goal: Finish the project by AX which is the beginning of July. As we want to have the project completed by July so that we can show off the piece at Anime Expo. I will be sure to document the progress of this project to incorporate it into my Gunpla Building panel materials.

During the build gathering this past weekend, three of the 11 were not able to make the gathering; but the rest of us picked out our parts and started to get down to test fitting and sanding. For me and a few others, we just worked on sanding and only assembled the most atomic of parts.

The rough plan following the work done at the gathering is to have the parts primed and ready for paint. For those with paints, the internals will be done in Alclad Steel using a gloss black base, so priming isn’t necessary needed. I plan on detailing the internals as much as possible using various metallic shades such as alclad burnt metal, alclad stainless steel, finisher’s titanium, etc. These will be done on the dark red parts of the PG kit. Since each of us is working on just a section of the kit, it should be very easy for each of use to go into hyper detail mode and give the parts as much attention to detail as possible. Again, I will start to document each step as closely as possible.

The lighter red pieces will be base coated with a black gloss, followed by alclad aluminum. A kandy coat of tamiya acrylic red will then go over the parts to create the kandy effect. The white parts will be painted using Mr Color Gray 337: Grayish Blue FS35237 pre shaded over a black base coat.

Here are pictures of the box as it progressed through the night.

After a day of sanding, the torso pieces are ready for some paint.

This should be a very interesting project; I look forward to the next meeting to work on the kit.