There’s never a better time to slack than just before my mid-term exams.
Today while trying to concentrate and study I decided to expose the mono-eye of my MG Sinanju instead and this time I did it successfully. I then tried to replace the stock clear mono-eye with some better replacements. I’ve used this method on my previous kits which I briefly mentioned when I worked on my MG Z plus C1.
Continue reading Sinanju Mono-eye Mod
Just in time before school resumes next week! I must say I’m quite glad how it’s turned out. It’s not perfect though, clear colors require a lot more skill to paint, and I didn’t have access to waterslide decals, so I had to paint in some of the white lines where I couldn’t apply the dry transfers successfully.
Continue reading MG 1/100 Sinanju Ver.ka
A lot of people are still expecting me to build a black Sinanju but I’m sorry to let you all down, I wanted it to be a simple build so there isn’t any special color scheme involved.
I’ve already done quite a bit of the dry transfers.
Just gonna annoy you all by not showing my last few pictures in color…
I wanted to take pictures of him coming together but I forgot once I unleashed Axel Form/Clock Up/TRIAL!…
Fast forward to the legs. As a sad goner who could never get his hands on the waterslide decals, I had to make do with the dry transfers. Since it was nearly impossible to apply them over the crazy curved surfaces, it was no surprise that I ruined a few of them. And since I was pretty displeased with that fact, I decided to paint the rest of the lines.
Yes, I’m masking the white lines.
Can’t wait to get it finished! I was expecting to finish today but the white lines caused the delay.
UPDATE @ 8/1/2011!
I’ve finally finished it! Just gonna add some more pictures of me defeating the monster that is the dry transfer sheet!
The lump of tape leftover. Hehe
Pictures coming soon! Once it’s daylight. I tried taking photos with just my lamp and it doesn’t seem to bring out the color well.
Here’s my first post of 2011 and it’s a bang. I haven’t been doing my updates properly so today I’ll do a catch up.
First it’s about my previous misleading post. The reason why I had to paint the Sinanju black was because of this:
The black layer was meant to be covered with silver. But don’t jump to conclusions yet – more paint needed!
Next I’ll talk about the infamous gold trim all over the Sinanju. Some people paint it by hand, others undertake the daunting task of masking every part. I read from somewhere that it is possible to do a ‘reverse wash’ which saves a lot of effort and I’ll be trying it out.
How the reverse wash works is similar to the normal wash where you run thinned paint into crevices of parts, then wipe the excess off. The difference is instead of running thinned paint, I spray the entire part with black, then wipe away the paint on all the raised edges. This reveals the gold underneath and leaves the black painted areas untouched. I’m not sure what’s so ‘reverse’ about it; don’t ask me. 🙂
However, this method won’t work on the shield as the trim isn’t raised. So for this one part it’s masking time except for the crest which I’ll do the reverse wash. Took quite a while just to mask the shield; imagine the time it would take to mask everything.
These are all the parts with the gold trim painted black as the base color. I mistakenly had the black lower torso join the ride as it had some of the trim-like molding but it’s supposed to be all black.
Slap on the gold. I’m using Gaia Color Star Bright Gold which uses a lacquer based solvent just like most of my paints. As with all washes it’s very important to use different types of paint or your wash would fail and take away the underlying paint along with it.
At this point I ripped the masking tape off the shield and wasn’t satisfied with the result at all. The edges weren’t sharp because I didn’t cut the tape properly. I was also hasty in trying to fix the imperfections and went to hand paint the gold. Big disaster – it looks like a huge black and gold turd so I decided to redo it. No pictures – it’s too embarrassing.
I also forgot about the red portion of the shield also having a gold line over it, so I left the shield for a while and went on to paint the rest of the kit.
And I painted clear red over the silver parts. See? It’s a simple build – no special color scheme involved. Oh and 2 bottles of clear red weren’t enough so I had to make yet another resupply trip just for some clear red paint. Here I redid the masking for the shield, ready for a second attempt.
Now the gold trim on the shield doesn’t look like crap anymore! Here are the parts ready for the next stage.
I’ll be using Tamiya’s enamel paint to paint the gold parts. And then I tripped over my airbrush hose and spilt black paint across my room and carpet. I told my mum about the nightmare that used to be the carpet but she didn’t seem fazed by it. Maybe she’s plotting to murder me.
Here we have all the parts painted over with black enamel paint. And the fun begins here. Got myself a ton of cotton buds for this purpose.
Using cotton buds and enamel thinner, I went on to erase the black enamel layer to expose the gold trim. If I mistakenly removed black where I shouldn’t simply paint on another layer and repeat. With some patience I got all the gold trim done nicely. Here you can see half the trim showing on the chest crest, as well as a mistake near the curl on the collar.
Now I can’t finish painting all the red parts because I needed another resupply trip. And I saw something which caught my eye.
OH AM GEE it’s Wave’s 1/24 scale Tachikoma! Possibly the only iteration of the Tachikoma I can afford. Not sure if I’ll build it soon though; school’s looming around the corner.
And with that I’ll be back to painting more clear red.
Edit @ 1/1/2011: Sorry for the misleading title! It was meant to be a joke – I’m painting the Sinanju black because of the next few layers of paint. I mentioned that I would be keeping the build simple and it will stay that way. Nothing special – just a red Sinanju. 😛
Didn’t expect the Sinanju so have so much surface area. It’s guzzling truckloads of paint I have to keep getting more. I think the money spent on paint matches the price tier of the model. Probably wouldn’t have noticed this if the shop owner I was buying paint from didn’t remind me that Gundam models have a lot of surface area.
After taking just over 3 cans of primer, all the parts were finally primed.
Here’s a look at the supplies I got during one of my resupplying trips. I actually scratched my figma Luka after taking photos of it last week. I learnt a lesson never to play with toys after painting. Primer dust was floating everywhere in my room and you could probably see it on the dark clothing of figma Luka in the photos. At the end I used my shirt to rub the dust off, but for some reason my shirt suddenly left scratches on her skirt. Needless to say I was freaked out. The next day I went on a resupply trip and got myself some Tamiya sandpaper and coarse polishing compound. I never took photos of the fix because I didn’t have confidence in what I was doing; I was desperate.
Be warned that this procedure is potentially disastrous as there is a risk of sanding too much paint and revealing raw plastic. The affected area was wet sanded using 1000 grit paper, then 1200, 1500 and 2000 from the newly bought pack until the scratches could not be distinguished from the other sanding scratches left behind. After the 2000 paper the area was mostly free of obvious scratches and had a matte texture compared to the surrounding gloss. Tamiya Polishing Compound Coarse was then used with a soft cloth to restore the gloss. It’s like freaking magic.
Thank goodness it worked well so I have no pictures to show.
On to the subject proper, here are some of the Sinanju’s armor pieces being painted black. I’m trying out Gaia Notes’ Gaia Color series for this kit and for black, I still prefer using Mr. Color. For some reason I can get a better gloss surface using Mr. Color compared to Gaia Color.
The inner frame is painted with Gaia Color Gun Metal. Not too bad-looking, but I would have preferred a color without the brown tinge.
It’s all black. I can’t see a thing. 2 bottles of black wasn’t enough to cover everything and I had to make yet another resupply trip. There’s still much more painting to be done.
Since 2011 is in a few hours’ time, Happy New Year!
With all the parts cut from their runners, I’ve pieced them together and here is the Sinanju in all its raw plastic glory.
Keen-eyed viewers may notice I didn’t attach the thrusters and most of the small yellow pieces; I was too lazy to do it. You can probably see some of the surfaces having patches of a slightly different color from the sanding.
After ogling at it for a few moments I proceeded to tear and sort it into its individual parts.
Time for another round of sanding. I probably won’t be posting more sanding updates until I start painting. I’m sure everyone is sick of hearing stories of sanding already. What I’ll be doing after this is to try one more round of sanding with the finest sandpaper I have (1000), and then prime the parts. Hopefully the primer can smooth the surface, then I can start painting.
Like the previous update on my Sinanju, there isn’t much progress besides sanding and more sanding. While I don’t have any pictures to show, I’m done with the legs and I’m working on the backpack and weapons now.
Some of the parts on the backpack are molded in one piece, but that leaves them with unsightly parting lines. It took a long time getting rid of them. Left: after sanding, right: before sanding.
Same goes for the wing-like pieces. I’ve circled the parting line on the right. It’s really annoying to see a straight line cut across all the flowing curves.
The handheld weapons also have parting lines. Here I’ve sanded one of the beam axes. I’ll have to do the same for the beam sabers.
I’ll upload a picture of the completed kit before tearing it apart and giving the parts another round of sanding in the next update.
After roughly a week of working on this guy, I’ve managed to get a bit done.
The greatest roadblock so far – the sanding nightmare that is a total of 32 individual tube pieces. Unlike the MG Zaku II Ver.2.0 family of kits, there is not sliding assembly method for the power conduits. It will take some nimble fingers to sand the parting lines on all these bits.
To make things slightly easier, I simply used a piece of runner to hold them and sand them down.
But I think much more sanding is needed to get all the curved surfaces nice, smooth and flawless. I’ll be tearing everything apart to give the sanded bits another round of sanding before priming. I noticed my sanding method is pretty horrible, leaving scratches behind.
The title of this post covers more than one subject.
First would be that I haven’t been doing anything on this blog for the past month as I had to deal with the trainwreck that was my exams. They ended last Friday, so I have a little vacation time now.
The second would be that I had been having an itch to build something since quite long ago but haven’t had the time to. Now that everyone’s building their own Sinanju’s, I figured why not join the bandwagon and got myself one too.
It might have been a bite bigger than I could chew. He costs a bomb too.
Having not touched my cutter and knife for quite some time I was quite overwhelmed by the complexity of this guy. So far after around four days I’ve only managed to complete the head and torso.
Since I don’t have much modding skill, I’ll just have this guy done up nice and simple. Problem would be finding the nonexistent waterslide decals for him. I may have to resort to using the dry transfers. I’ve heard it’s a pain applying them onto the curved surfaces. I have to find some shop which still has the decals in stock. The usual online outlets are all sold out long ago.
play evolution 