MG 1/100 Astray Red Frame Kai

After procrastinating for over 2 months, I’ve finally finished building my Astray! Due to a lack of motivation I spent a long time getting this done even though I didn’t do anything other than paint it. Despite my horrible airbrushing skill I’m still happy with how the red parts turned out.

I can’t get my camera to pick up the shading on the white parts though.

This time the eyes turned out much better than I expected. I initially tried to cut the eyes out of the provided sticker but failed horribly. I thought of just keeping to the clear eyes and painting around them, but as always they weren’t visible in the end. So I went back to using silver tape and after multiple failed attempts I managed to get a pair of half-decent polygons which could pass off as eyes. I then hand painted clear green on them and the head sensors. Due to some mistakes in cutting the shapes they weren’t completely smooth and resulted in the glimmery look above.

The clear parts were molded in a light green but it wasn’t saturated enough. With the part beneath painted silver, the clear part looked colourless so I painted a layer of clear green. The two red bits on the sides of the chest were masked and painted separately. When I applied the final flat coat I masked them again.

The waterslide decals I used had silver replacing all gray markings but looked close enough to the original. Some of the small text have grammatical errors (grammer Nazi) and the font used for the kanji is also slightly different.

This picture doesn’t do complete justice to how it looks in real life.

You can tell which markings are dry transfers as they have a higher resolution than the waterslides.

I have no idea how to apply dry transfers on a stepped surface like the back of the waist here. I’m glad to have used waterslides.

Same goes for applying dry transfers on curved surfaces and across different parts. With waterslides all I had to do was move them into place and cut them at the seams between parts when they dried.

It was more difficult to apply the large waterslide markings as you had to keep them in the correct position while trying to remove the wrinkles and bubbles. I used lousy cotton buds that weren’t completely wrapped in cotton and it damaged some areas of the large markings. Also on the non-flat areas I just cut off bits that I felt would not fit well. People who use the included stickers will be suffering at the poor fit on all the bumps and depressions.

Armed with 2 swords. I used the joint part I made to mount both swords on the same side of the waist.

Armed to the teeth. I’m not a fan of the form change gimmick on the Tactical Arms so I won’t be showing it in all its possible forms. The shifted centre of gravity makes it impossible to stand properly without support.

I thought of trying to replicate the hamon pattern on the blades but due to a lack of motivation and dragging for too long I shelved the plan.

This guy has a wide range of articulation but I had to suffer some paint chipping.

I like the shifting leg armour pieces as it reminds me of the incredible legs of the Gundam Mk.II Ver.2.0 back then. I think it’s still incredible now.

You can get really nice poses out of this guy. Normally despite the multiple joints the ankles on these things are still quite limited, but this time the ankle pieces are designed to move out of the way. It works really well except you get a lot of chipping.

I mentioned before that I wanted to try out fully articulated hands but they turned out to be too big for this guy.

Hahaha bow form.

One of the many possible ridiculous forms on a ridiculous piece of equipment.

I still think it looks best in sword form despite being a pain to get the Astray to hold it. The multiple holes around the hilt don’t really work as you can’t really get both hands to align properly for the hand pegs to plug in.

Sword form also functions as a secondary surfboard form.

Flight form is awkwardly positioned.

Since this is just a build-and-paint job I’ll omit the steps. Here’s the colour scheme instead.

• Primers: Mr Surfacer 1200, Mr Base White 1000
• White: Black pre-shade -> Mr Base White 1000
• Dark Gray: Midnight Blue + White -> post-shaded with Black
• Light Gray: Neutral Gray + White
• Silver: Black base coat -> (G) Star Bright Silver
• Red: Black base coat -> (G) Star Bright Silver -> Clear Red
• Gold: Black base coat -> (G) Star Bright Gold
• Panel line wash: (T) Neutral Gray, (T) Flat Black

All colours used are Mr. Color unless specified: G = Gaia Color, T = Tamiya Enamel X- series

Markings were a mix of the included dry transfers and waterslides by Samuel Decal.

That’s it! I’m 5 weeks into my final semester, and I already have queued a particular model from a certain line which some observant readers may know from my previous posts, as well as the HGUC Sazabi. Nowadays my toy-buying has slowed down and instead replaced by lots and lots of PVCs, some of them I might not be able to show here. So rather than seeing toy reviews you might see some posts on other stuff, and maybe some pictures of my PVC acquisitions once I can think of a way to post them without getting banned from WordPress.