Broke

Priming the Zaku II’s internal frame and weapons took two days. There are tons of tiny parts and a lot of Mr. Surfacer was wasted spraying onto nothing. It’s a strain on my thin wallet.

I went on to mix the first colour on Saturday. Used up quite a bit of Neutral Gray and Black to achieve the 85% Neutral Gray + 15% Black colour. I filled up a glass bottle almost to its brim and was a little worried that the paint wasn’t sufficiently thinned. It turned out okay, but disaster struck. I didn’t screw on the bottle properly and paint started dripping all over the place without me noticing. I found out when I saw splatters of gray paint on my window ledge, then noticed that my table, cutting mat, floor and floor mat were all stained.

The stains on the window ledge were taken care of with lots of thinner, but it still isn’t completely clean because the ledge isn’t covered in gloss top coat heh. It was impossible to remove the stain from my floor mat. I guess it will stay there its entire lifetime. I’m wearing a shirt that was splattered in clear blue paint from many years ago and the spots are still there. The markings on my cutting mat were faded after I wiped it with thinner. Of course, my gray hands were even dirtier after the ordeal.

On the bright side I managed to get the parts painted in one session. Phew! I think I spent 6 hours doing it.

This is a pic I took when I finished painting the first colour. Pieces were sorted out into paper trays.

This was taken yesterday when I was in the midst of painting some of the pieces and ran out of gloss so I had to halt my progress until I bought supplies.

Today I spent the equivalent of almost two Nendoroids on the following stuff:

1. Tamiya Fine Surface Primer (instead of Mr. Surfacer, I got this because the shop owner advised that it was safer to use this on metal pieces)
2. Mr. Color Clear in a bottle (cheaper than buying cans of Mr. Super Clear gloss)
3. Pin vise and set of 14 drill bits (to replace my only pair of 2mm and 3mm Daiso tools)
4. Brass micro rivets (pack of 50) (decided to buy these and paint them silver since none of the shops have silver ones)
5. Aftermarket thrusters (pack of 4)
6. Tamiya Weathering Master Set A
7. Mr. Super Clear UV Cut x 2

then realised several minutes ago that instead of 2 cans of flat, one of them was gloss. Sigh…The reason why I compared this purchase to Nendoroids was because I saw Nendoroid Akiyama Mio on sale and held back.

Zaku II: Internal Frame Assembled

Another Progress Post

Since the last update, the sniper rifle of the Cherudim has been painted. I finished painting the white bits and am currently left with the red, purple and clear green pieces as well. Unfortunately, I damaged one of the clear parts on the kit.

Mobile Blogger

Right now I’m writing this blog post on my Nokia E71 using a freeware app called Wordmobi . Looks like this works and I can make some of my posts without having to be on my computer.

I’ve just snapped a photo of my current progress with my Cherudim using the pretty crappy onboard camera. I have a feeling the picture won’t show up because the editor linked to the file stored on my phone instead of uploading it.

Anyway, I got tricked by what could possibly be a typo error in the manual’s colour guide. The labels for the joint and weapon colours seem to be mixed up and I now have a miscoloured Cherudim. I’ll just have to make do with how it is.

Because of the construction of the sniper rifle I have to paint the joint, clear part and handles beforehand. After filling the seams on the front half, I masked the joint, painted it and am currently working on the seams for the back half.

Looks like I can’t finish this before school starts. :/

Posted by Wordmobi

Edit: everything works! But the picture is oversized.

Surfacered Cherudim

Cherudim Gundam Mutilation

I hope I don’t lose karma for mutilating a gift from my friends.

Next Project: 1/100 Cherudim Gundam

Inching My Way Towards Completion

My progress with my 1/100 Exia is becoming increasingly steady and here are more in-progress pictures.

A shot of my messy parts storage box. Compared with the previous round, pretty much all the parts have been painted.

Quick Update

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.

1/100 Exia: Minor Details

I have been slacking around lately playing Super Robot Wars W (I’m slow but I already have SRW K) instead of reading my thick library book or working on the Exia, and every time when I do work on it, I take random photos and now I have to try to write a coherent post using the photos I have taken.