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Read more about the article Dom Barrage Progress Update 2

Dom Barrage Progress Update 2

Progress slowed down a bit because I spent a few days making a mold of a crappy Thai made resin recast of Faye Valentine that a friend of mine picked up back in 2003. The resin is so brittle and ceramic like in texture that it is near impossible to work with and sand. I had made some casts of the Dom’s leg thruster parts and had extra silicone to make one of the Faye parts and after that one piece, I just fell down the rabbit hole.

But back to work on the kit and like the last post, I will try to keep things organized towards the sections I got work on since the last update. First up is the work on the head. I started with tamiya epoxy putty quick type but that stuff takes a little too long and is pretty hard to sand, so I switched over to the polyester putty. And here are some comparison pictures to the original head. I also got the LED wired up and tested that look as well.

More head work after the jump.
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Read more about the article Back from Guayaquil = slow progress on Sniper

Back from Guayaquil = slow progress on Sniper

Work has me on travel a bit, and last week, I was in Ecuador, Guayaquil specifically. I did make a quick picture post of the skirts right after getting 90% of it painted up just as a quick teaser and to keep my motivation going. But I didn’t really go into details about the process. So let us backup a little bit to before I even started throwing colors onto the kit and it was still being primed and sanded. The paint scheme I mentally pictured required a little bit of testing before I jumped right into spraying the parts and masking. In the past, not doing the proper color tests and just trying things have bitten me pretty hard on the ass. I mixed up several batches of colors and got to work on spoon testing.

When I was in Hong Kong in March; I picked up some metal templates; a square and a hex. Each template has 4 sizes, the largest on one side, then the other side is split into three sizes. The template is pretty nice for cutting exact size squares or hexs. Tape is just placed on the template, then I used a toothpick to run along the edges to press down the tape, and finally, run a brand new hobby knife blade along the pressed in grooves and I have my cut squares. A test spoon is painted with the first layer of color then the masking and paint scheme tests begin.

Fast forward the different levels of masking and I was satisfied enough with the results that I could proceed. The spoon test also showed me that I needed to change the masking technique slightly. But the important part of color matching worked, so progress continues on the actual kit after the jump.

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Read more about the article MG GM Sniper 2: backpack work and start to chest, shoulders, and waist mods

MG GM Sniper 2: backpack work and start to chest, shoulders, and waist mods

I went almost a week without doing much work other than molding and casting the metal thrusters. They look cool, but are a pain in the ass to paint and they add a bit too much weight in comparison to a resin copy. Plus, they can get expensive if I keep buying and using them. So going back to my Chinese roots as a cheap fuck, I pirate the crap out of them. Then again, I’m not selling them, I’m just making copies to maximize their value. That said, I started working on the backpack sometime last week. I’ve seen some folks create these heatsink/vent things that look pretty damn cool; and some folks on reddit have asked how they’re done. So after a little bit of research, I figured out one way I could do them. For the quick and dirty, here’s a before and after for the backpack:

Full details on what I did after the jump!

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Read more about the article Hyaku Shiki 2.0 quick build and paint

Hyaku Shiki 2.0 quick build and paint

I picked up this kit immediately when it came out last year and started working on it. Back then I was finishing up the waterfront diorama and only soaked the kit’s runners in some purple power to strip it and just built it at one of the monthly build gatherings. To be honest, it looked pretty damn good in all it’s translucent nakedness. It would be really cool to completely do up the internal frame and clear coat the translucent parts and be done with it. Maybe a later project, I really liked the kit. For this one, I really wanted to paint some gold. I have a ton of gold paint. Finisher’s blue gold, finisher’s red gold, alclad pale gold, alclad titanium gold, alclad polished brass (very close to a gold), Mr color super metallic gold, testor’s enamel gold, gaia color bright gold, and an endless combination of chrome/polished aluminum/ + clear yellow or a custom mix of clear yellow/clear red/clear orange. I had some testing to do, and I sprayed a few swaths on a test part to see what looked best.

I decided on Finisher’s red gold since I wanted a warmer gold in comparison to the others but I also did not want a very yellow gold or bright gold for that matter.

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