This is now my 3rd Gundam model kit project, after the first China one and the MG Destiny.

Anyways, I’d like to take you through the progress and build process of how I assembled and painted this kit. I got this Zaku from FS Brand Manager Hector Sagrado who’s also a Gundam model kit builder (and toy addict) and displays some of the kits he’s done at his blog

Meanwhile, let’s begin with the in-progress photo essay…

Background, Plan and Color Scheme

I got this kit around the second week of January and started building it (since I was still building the Destiny) around January 28. I wanted to maintain the color scheme of the Zaku while trying to pattern it after the chipped paint of Boba Fett’s armor, see below:

Since one of my friends, Violent Dream, is building the Slave 1 model kit from Fine Molds, it was a good opportunity to do it together and share the paint costs at the same time.

Meanwhile, here are some shots of the box and the sprues.

Assembly

Assembling an MG kit (Master Grade) is a lot more complicated than an HG (High Grade) Gundam kit. It has a lot more parts, of course. Primarily, most of them belong to the endoskeleton where the armor plates snap to fit. However, it’s a lot more easier to paint them since the armor parts are less and the skeleton holds ‘em together.

It took me a week of working 1-2 hours each day to complete it. I work on a major part every night as soon as get home from work. Here’s the torso after completion:

Since this was going to be a “battle-damaged” Zaku, I then applied damage (by cutting out plastic and drilling holes into the kit) on the shield, arms and legs after full assembly.

The damage was done using a cutter and an electric drill. Too bad, we didn’t have a Dremel rotary tool… that would be have been a helluva lot easier. Well… that’s on my shopping list for February.

After cutting, sanding, and cementing, I finally assembled the full kit. See below:

The good thing about an MG Gundam kit is the articulation. There’s virtually a hundred different poses that you can have your gundam do. All the fingers are also double-jointed and it has an opposable thumb.

Check it out below…

The darn thing can even do hand stands! OMGWTF!

Painting time!

Before paiting, it’s good to map out and plan it out thoroughly. I do this with a vector-based illustration and do some “color-tests” using Photoshop. Basically, you jut get the image off the net (or you can also scan your kit’s intruction manual). Convert the image to Photoshop and start applying some color patterns to it. Here’s what I came up with using that system…

Now that I have a color guide, it’s time to mix ‘em paints. For the greens, it was a double shade using Tamiya Deep Green mixed with Neutral Grey and Black. First, I sprayed the darker shade and applied a lighter shade of it (mixed with white) to do highlights and shading. This is called “pre-shading” which I learned after several research sessions using Google. Woot!

Before painting the armor, I painted the endoskeleton a base of Flat Black first and then highlighted it with Titanium Silver. Check out the result below…

While waiting for that to dry, I then started painting the armor and then the weapons. The first step is to apply a coat of Mr. Surfacer 500 to the all the armor parts. This is a flat primer with a little “grit”. Thin this with lacquer thinner and a few drops of Mr. Retarder. This will make the paint stick better to the plastic and the primer will also cover minor seams and sanding scratches and imperfections. Once the primer dried, the 2 coats of green were applied… darker one first and then the lighter second coat.

After the paint dried and cured, I applied a coat of Tamiya Clear Gloss before applying the decals. The decals will stick better if you apply a coat of clear gloss. Don’t worry. If you don’t want your gundam to look all shiny, you can just clear coat with a matte finish later.

For the paint chips, it looks easier that in seems.

Using a sponge, dab bits of liquid masking solution to the parts then spray it over with the color that you want. I kinda got carried away with the paint chips and it didn’t look logical since Gundams are 60 to 90 feet tall and the chips would have been bigger than a human. Oh well… that was geeky.

Meanwhile, here are some shots after all that painting…

Notice the battle damage on the shields and other parts. To highlight this, I applied a light wash of dark green with black. Since acrylics were used, you have to use enamels for the wash. For the wash, just lightly brush it on the parts and then wipe it off with a cotton bud thinly dipped in thinner.

For the weathering, I added additional scrapes to the paint using the design knife and then lightly drybrushed a lighter shade of green to the armor edges.

More photos:

You might have noticed the “flames” coming out from the missile pod. I thought it was a great time to apply that technique using what I found over at Armorama.

It’s made with some cotton balls, glue and an old sprue.

Just glue the cotton ball to the sprue, then color it yellow, apply red to it and then finally some tufts of black for the smoke. Once done, just super glue one of the missles (which I cut out from the pod) onto the end, stick it in the pod and you have a cool effect…

Here are some more photos of the completed Zaku…

That’s it for now… will post some more photos once I get to getting shots in the daytime (which are better, of course).

I just got two more model kits recently. I think I’ll take a break from Gundams first to try out other kits. I got the Fine Molds Star Wars Tie Interceptor 1/72 kit and also an AMT-ERTL 1997 Ford Mustang 1/25 muscle car. Both I got from Ebay. The Tie Interceptor is a steal at P1,500 and the car is around P700 bucks.  I’ll still be making gundams after these two. I just wanted to try and do the techniques I learned from the net.

Stay tuned…

- GM T