We learned a few new lessons this weekend!
First and foremost, when you’re shading parts: do both sides at the same time. The shading on the left arm and waist came out significantly darker than the shading on the right arm, chest and head and there’s not much I’m going to do about it.
I’m hoping that after gloss coating the part and doing the panel line wash, some of the layers on the shading will come off and it’ll soften everything up. If it doesn’t I won’t be too bothered with it though; one of the goals for the revival of the blog and future builds is to accept and learn from mistakes and finish the kit anyway.
Next steps for these parts are to gloss coat, panel line wash and semi-matte topcoat to finish them up. I’m loving the kit so far in spite of it’s flaws! Even the FM kit itself is pretty pleasing to work on but that’s likely because the kit previous to this was the HiRM Wing Zero. I’m still going to take pictures of it, but still need to get the bootleg version to take some replacement parts from. No idea when I’ll get to that, maybe April/May? I want to improve my entire photography setup before taking pictures of it and the PG Perfefctibility.
Anyway, the leg+feet frame parts are already cutout and sanded with the armor parts also cut out. Once I’m done with the upper body parts it shouldn’t take long to move on to these parts and have the kit standing on it’s own soon!
The tail blade, oh BOY the tail blade turned out good. It’s solidified how I’m going to approach doing the ultra-large mace as well!
Unlike the other chrome parts, my lazy self did not sand this part with 2000-grit sandpaper first to make the surface nice and even and smooth. First I took my new file and gave the tail blade more of a blade, then went over the new edge with 180 grit sandpaper to mar it up. The though process here being that Miria would use the weapon more like a proper blade but the weapon maintains it’s crushing aspect as well.
After giving it the edge I primed the part with Mr. Finishing Surfacer 1500 and hit it with a GaiaNotes Ultimate Black. I applied the Mr. Color Super Metallic 2 Super Chrome (talk about a mouthful), didn’t like how the whole thing looked because as previously stated, I was a slacker and didn’t sand the whole part with sandpaper before painted.
A day or two later I took the painted part and ripped two strips of tail blade length masking tape off, covering the blade and hit the main body of the part with a thin layer of ultimate black. It already looked better after this and after hitting it with Mr. Metal Iron and taking the masking tape off the edge the look was complete! I can’t wait to do the rest of the backpack and housing for the tail blade now. The ultra-large mace will likely have a similar iron/chrome paintscheme with stings of candy blue and some silver drybrushing to add to the depth of the weapon.
Til next time! Hoping to maintain the ‘no zero days’ policy for gunpla that’s been keeping things chugging along so well around here.
Luper-pla!! 