Shin Musha Gundam ProgressJanuary 7, 2009: This is going to be a quick OOB build of the Shin Musha Gundam. I am currently waiting for the casting process of the IJ commission to run it's course. I also need a bit of a sanity check; I've been building commissions non stop for the past few months, so I want to at least finish one personal mecha kit. I'm building this as fast as possible, so progress pictures will be limited. I didn't even bother doing a test snap, just sanded the parts and put them into a box to be skewered and painted.
There are only a few pieces that needed seam work, the shoulders, gun, and sword sheath. Not too bad for this kit.
A gloss black was sprayed over all the armor parts including the gold pieces.
The gold pieces were then painted with alclad stainless steel. For the piping, the ends and details there were painted in alclad burnt metal for a bit of tonal difference.
The internals were painted using Alclad steal. I did swap out the backpack thrusters for ako hobby metal thrusters. The inside of the thruster bells were painted with alclad jet exhaust.
January 11, 2009: I want to make the weapons of the Musha look similar to wood, so I used the following technique to create a wood grain effect. The first step is to paint the parts with a neutral wood like color. I used Mr Color Tan.
The next step uses the dry brushing technique. I used vallejo acrylic paints for this step as the acrylics will not react or mix with the base Mr Color lacquer paint already on the surface of the parts. I mixed burnt sienna and light brown, and applied the paint using a very stiff brush.
Below is a video of this step:
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Below is a a picture after dry brushing the acrylics.
The acrylics are allowed to dry, which happens fairly quickly as a very light layer of paint is applied. Once dry, a lacquer based clear gloss is sprayed onto the parts to protect the acrylic layer of paint in preparation of the next step.
For this step, a soft flat brush is used for the dry brushing technique. I used burnt umber alone, and dry brushed the clear coated parts. This applies very thin lines to the surface and has a different effect from the coarsly applied lighter color. Here is a video of this step:
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Below is a picture of the parts after this technique.
The final step is to apply a clear brown spraying to the surface to darken the tone of the parts. A mixture of clear red, clear yellow and clear green is lightly sprayed to darken the tone of the wood.
January 11, 2009: The marble technic I've been using on the Infinite Justice commission project was applied to the main armor pieces of the Musha. Finisher's Cobalt Blue is sponged onto the parts.
There is a open gap in some of the weapon pieces that I just wanted to fill, so I glued styrene into the slots and then just sanded the excess down before painting the part.
A lighter blue was also sponged onto the armor parts. The white areas were base coated in intermediate blue and then painted with white. Over the white is a misting of pearl white to add a pearl finish to the white which should match up with the finish of the kit. I still have detail painting such as the wash and the decals to apply before officially finishing the kit. The weapons also need additional work.
Feburary 5, 2009: Masked and painted the detail gold parts of the gun and assembled it.
January 7, 2009: Work has been progressing as I wait for the parts casting to complete on the IJ commission. This is also a sanity build so that I get some personal model building time in as well.
January 11, 2009: Wood grain effect with videos!
January 11, 2009: Everything but detail work done...