Here’s a quick update on my progress with my 1/100 Gundam Exia. Work on my on it has been going on at sporadic bursts and this is what I have managed to do so far.
Sanding and priming were done long ago. Most of the white and gray parts have been painted. Have yet to begin detail work such as painting small areas like the head. This weekend was spent working on the legs and GN Blades which were kept separately from the above parts box.
I guess I was spoiled by the 1/100 00 Gundam as it was engineered to be so easy to paint. I could simply paint sub-assemblies and then put everything together without worrying about seam lines or complicated masking work. The reason why I spent such a long time working on the legs and GN Blades was that there were glaring seam lines down the back of the thighs and the GN Blade hilts. Instead of painting the white parts first and the gray ones last like I did with the 00 Gundam, I had to alternate between white and gray parts as I went along.
For the legs, the upper knee assembly holding the knee guard and the lower leg frame were first painted gray. The white round joint and the thigh assemblies were next. The knee joint and upper leg were then assembled, and the seam lines fixed. Lots of masking tape went into covering up the gray areas on the leg and the fixed seam areas were painted over.
The GN Blades were a slightly simpler affair. The parts were painted in their respective colours. The blades were fixed inside the gray hilts which had a seam line down the straight edge (on the upper sides in the photo above). This was fixed, the blades masked and the area painted over.
These are not the only instances of multiple painting rounds. The GN Sword rifle assembly and the upper arms were done in a similar way. I can also foresee the same steps for the blue strip on the GN Sword that holds the large blade, the shoulders and the arms, to name a few.
