Sinanju WIP *warning very pic heavy*

MSN-06S Sinanju Project: Day 2

As usual, image heavy, though I fiddled with the compressions and it should load a lot faster now.

And I'll form the head!

Head goes together today, and also I give the mono-eye my usual treatment. pieces were very well cast, the only mold lines were on the antenna, and were easy to remove. Sprue marks were well placed and easy to remove or hidden. There's a nice gear assembly inside the head, that lets you pivot the mono-eye by twisting the head off-center with the neck. A nice touch, though really, the visor lies so close you can barely see the darned thing when it's assembled.



I paint the color of the mono-eye on the inside, and silver over that to improve brightness.



Then I paint black over that for the outer casing.





The technique really makes for a nice looking mono-eye, given it gets enough light.

Because some folks asked, here's some size comparison. Sort of.



On to the body. The Linear Cockpit. oh boy. Guess I've gotta paint up the pilot and everyone's favorite Char clone, Full Frontal (Yes that's really his name, or codename, or something) so I clamped him into my locking tweezers and got to work.



Sonovabitch that was hard.



Are all men from the future so.. small?

Just me, baby. Just me.




I painted the linear seat in muddy olive, which fits with other late-anaheim designed mobile suits.

Blank screen, or BSOD?



Insert hamster joke here, alternatively, joke about balls. Also any joke regarding my doing all this work for a piece that I will 1: paint entirely in grey and 2: be hidden within the body of the model. At least that should be it for the paints today.

Of course I need something to attach the head to, so, on to the body.     
Went together pretty basic, with decent shoulder articulation. Nice that the main pieces are ABS, which lets them be assembled and taken apart a bunch without damage.

First bare,



And now with all the armor.



It wouldn't be a Zeon suit without armored external cables! These are a female dog to do as each individual armor ring

needs to be cleaned up.



Tomorrow: Finish the cable armor, get that painted up. Paint the cockpit ball while I'm there. Then get started on the legs.

Well first, welcome to the forums, always good to have another gundam builder here, im quite the Zeke myself.

Second, I hate you, so much, for having this kit already, its a gorgeous monster isnt it?

How do you plan on masking and painting all that gold trim?  Thats the only reason I have yet to purchase it, that trim is intimidating

As far as things like the waist hose, have you ever tried after market parts for that?  They sell metal parts that replace those gold rings, as well as tubes and hoses at the right size to replace that look.

Thanks for the reply and the welcome!

 I had to order this from Hong Kong, availability is still a little tight! Was sort of a birthday gift to myself. How did you get an Acguy plush? Awesome icon.

 As for the trim, the decals are no good (too yellow), the stickers are, well, stickers, and it would be an Epic Project to try and use gold BMF. So I'm going to paint all of the trim by hand.

 I don't mind the cable armor rings so much really. It's just like doing the road wheels and track links on a panzer. You kind of get a zen thing going with such a repetetive act. I rarely consider aftermarket parts, simply because they're often so expensive for what you get, and so far the engineering on the Sinanju kit is top notch. (though I've heard a few issues about mounting the shield, we'll see!)

 

First, I'd like to say awesome job on the figure.  I have the MG Strike Freedom and it comes with three figures that size and I want to do them but I'm at a loss on how.  Any tips?  The cockpit seat looks cool too, who cares if it's tucked away inside, at least you will know its there and awesome looking.  Also, per STV's question, I looked on one of the store sites (can't remember which) and saw the parts.  The gold trim is all a sticker, which I know you probably wont use on a model you just spent tons of time painting.  But can you use the paper the stickers came on as a ready made stencil?  cut out the wax paper backing and tape the paper with the sticker sized openings to the model, then either hand paint, or mask the hell out of everything else and spray it.  Would that work?

SkullGundam wrote:

First, I'd like to say awesome job on the figure.  I have the MG Strike Freedom and it comes with three figures that size and I want to do them but I'm at a loss on how.  Any tips?

This is one of thoses where I wish I had that lighted magnifier. Which is to say it took a lot of squinting and a steady hand. My head still hurts. I used my 5/0 detail brush for the whole thing and even that felt like trying to paint with a hammer.

SkullGundam wrote:

The cockpit seat looks cool too, who cares if it's tucked away inside, at least you will know its there and awesome looking.  Also, per STV's question, I looked on one of the store sites (can't remember which) and saw the parts.  The gold trim is all a sticker, which I know you probably wont use on a model you just spent tons of time painting.  But can you use the paper the stickers came on as a ready made stencil?  cut out the wax paper backing and tape the paper with the sticker sized openings to the model, then either hand paint, or mask the hell out of everything else and spray it.  Would that work?

 I hadn't thought of using them that way, looking at the sticker sheet, that certainly seems possible. I may have to try that on a few test parts when I start painting the trim. Thanks!

You could always just try masking off the areas, would take time, but be worth it.

nicely done! love how you painted "char"~

I also picked this kit up in the last week or 2. your build saves me the trouble of having to buy two, thank you! it all looks like it will be a fun build and paint, but I need to finish all of the other Gundam kits, like my Gelgoog and Acguy.........

 

keep up the good work! also, what space marine chapter is that?

Puma_Adder wrote:

I also picked this kit up in the last week or 2. your build saves me the trouble of having to buy two, thank you! it all looks like it will be a fun build and paint, but I need to finish all of the other Gundam kits, like my Gelgoog and Acguy.........   keep up the good work! also, what space marine chapter is that?

 

I was wondering if you'd end up on this thread. ^.^ 

My problem with Gundam kits is I end up building them, and then just not getting around to finishing them. I plan to do it right this time!

 Space marine chapter is one of my own, an Iron Hands offshoot called The Unyielding. I've only got the one squad and a character done so far, but I'll be working on those more this year too!

Nice. I am  working on the Ultramarines 3rd Company myself. I am about as far as you are.......

as for finishing gundam kits......... well lets just say I have about ten or so that aren't done yet.......

 

Oh, I will get to them....... eventually..............

Day 3



After a long rest I went back, finished the cable armor for the waist and went on to the legs. the 'N' trees were all leg parts, so I simply disassembled those into a pile. It's okay, because with the sinanju left and right limbs are identical internally. Must simplify maintenance. ^.^ I'll clean mold lines and sprue marks as I assemble them.



step 6.1, make sure to take note of the assembly order! oops.




then I went and misplaced N-9, the piston that goes inside the heel assembly. I probably won't cut all the parts out at once next time.

Found it! Was on the sprue the whole time.



Feet are done!




This has one of the most complex armor for legs that I have seen on a mobile suit. 23 individual armor pieces, per leg. Yikes.



The leg mechanism is quite nice, lots of sliding and gliding and such.

Hip has some neat stuff, like how the sockets for the legs can be forward or back independantly. Anyway, it's 2AM and I'm done for the day, after putting together one of those new action bases. The Sinanju comes with a special mounting plate for one of these. Tomorrow, more armor cables! \o/
    

AARRRGGGHHHH!!!!!! I want to build mine now!!!!! this kit is looking to be one of the best Ver. Ka kits to date and I cant wait to see the finished project!

sinanju project day 4

16 armor rings. yay!


I discovered they fit snugly on the handle of one of my needle files. This is helpful!


The forearms have binders that hold large armor plates, as well as the backup beam sabers. They needed some cleanup of ejector pin marks. Sure, they'll be covered, but you understand.



Arms go together. Pretty typical of the newer MG inner frame stuff, with some nice sliding bits just for show. Hands are the typical sliding thumb, articulated forefinger, half-articulated remaining fingers. Little sad that not all the fingers are individually articulated.




In the assembly home-stretch now, with the backpack!

I butchered the fuel tanks a little getting them off the sprue, so I cemented the two halves together, hoping the melting action of the cement would help fill a few of the gouges. I'll probably have to use some filler here to even things out before painting. With well-fitted (and not butchered) parts, often cement and light sanding are all that it takes to get a smooth, seamess join.

Primary build done!


I'll take a few days and get everything situated for painting. need:
lots of little stickysticks for individual parts painting, and something to stick them onto.
wash and prep parts for painting.
acquire proper paints, decide whether to go metallic or not

Now the big question:

Do I go with metallic or non-metallic red?

I painted a Sazabi in Tamiya TS18 red over TS30 silver leaf, and the results were pretty spectacular, if a bit lacking in shading and scale effects. For the Sinanju, I plan on using a black-white preshading regardless of what goes on over the top, so that should look good.

Depends, do you want the pure anime look, or the realistic look?

former, metalic.

latter, flat. 

also, damn, thats one sexy machine... 

I like this thread. FSM should do an article on this build.

looking really good so far. I like how you painted the "eye". I'm slowly building an MG Kampfer, I'll take your advice and paint mine the same way.

For painting the shield, I'm gonna go w/ SkullGundam. I think masking it and carefully airbrushing it will give you the best results.

Either way, please keep us up to date.

Thanks for the compliments, I could only hope to get a FSM writeup on this!

This is my new standard way to do mono-eyes and I have to say I can't be more pleased with the result. it originally started with putting color on the clear bit and silver on the backing, then mashing them together while still wet, and sort of got refined from there.

 The Kampfer is a great looking kit and has a lot of room for custom paintjobs and modifications, though assembles just a little wobbly.

 I'm down to either masking and airbrushing or simply carefully hand-painting the gold trim. I've been doing Space Marines the last year, and compared to that, the detail painting here is downright chunky. Since there's no harm in it I will start with a test mask-and spray on a smaller part and see how it turns out.

 Right now I'm waiting on some supplies I need before starting my painting, but expect the log to resume within a week, and thanks for watching!

Leme give you a good monoeye tip.

Get the monoeye socket.  Paint the outside and rim black, the inside a chrome or VERY lusterious silver, then get the clear part and paint it with a CLEAR paint.  I have a few diffrent ones, I used it with my Zaku II PG

So now I'm prepping for painting. I've got my:

floral foam

coffee stirrers

loctite blue fun-tak

Hopefully polly-s airbrush thinner will work fine with tamiya and model master acrylics. ^.^ Anyone have experience with this?

Additionally, I'm exploring what metallic paints will work best for the trim here. Obviously, Tamiya silver and gold are out of the question, as they're far too grainy. My Reaper master series gold is quite nice, but there's no way it's going through the airbrush. If I were to hand-brush the gold, I'd have a winner. I've got a model master acrylic gold that's okay, but it's fairly brown. What have folks around here used to get a good gold finish? Should I go all out and pick up some SNJ or AlcladII?

 These are the only parts that needed filler work, and the fuel tanks only because I butchered them. I have to hand it to bandai's engineering on this thing. I MAY still need to use putty on the back of the head and the wrist armor plates, but I can't till till after I've painted and assembled. =(

Everything is washed, soon as they're dry I'll re-bag, and butcher a cardboard box to use as a makeshift spray-booth. Stay tuned!

 

Day6

no pics today, cause really it was rather boring.

I airbrushed the frame with MM Acryl Gunship Grey. It had been a while since I broke the airbrush out, so that was interesting. I first attempted to thin the paint with Polly-S airbrush thinner, but the two obviously didn't get along, generating nasty clumps that clogged my airbrush up completely. (I was spraying at 20-25 psi). I switched to 70% isopropyl alcohol, and that worked much much better. I still had some tip-drying issues, but nothing serious. I aughta get some acrylic retarder. The main thrusters were too heavy to stay on the sticks with how I mounted them. that was annoying, but the damage was minimal.

 without tamiya thinner available, what will work best with the black and white tamiya paints I'm gonna need to use next? I'll try the polly-s thinner, it might work fine...

There will be a few complications when painting, but quite few compared to many other kits: The back of the head needs to be painted assembled, as the seam there needs to be smooth.

 I want opinions on the shoulders. Now there's three main pieces, front, back, and outer. Some depictions show these as one piece, some do not.

 In the CG on the cover of Hobby Japan, the actual MG photo model, and most of the resin and scratchbuilds, the shoulder is one piece.

 the CG for the MG box lid, art within the MG instructions (including beauty shots)have a seam.

Should I fill or not fill?

 One more thing, I'm debating just how much of the armor should be glossy: all of it, none of it, just the red, or just the black. I had been leaning towards a satin red and gloss black/gold, but I've seen some very nice, glossy sinanju art lately...

well, it depends on if you want syle or realism.  Realism would leave it flat, for, especially in space, you dont want anything shiny to reflect and give away the position.  Or you could go gloss like it were a ceremonial mech like they used often in seed.

 

as for the seam, fix it

smeagol the vile wrote:

well, it depends on if you want syle or realism.  Realism would leave it flat, for, especially in space, you dont want anything shiny to reflect and give away the position.  Or you could go gloss like it were a ceremonial mech like they used often in seed.

 This is a char-style bright red 'look at me!' MS. visibility doesn't seem to be an issue, and it's not unreasonable to think it could be kitted out like a sports car. Still, it's something I need to think about, but I don't have to decide until after I've got the decals on.

 I'm leaning towards filling the seam, even though it'll be a pain and a half, having to paint it in place.

actuially, his mech was a dark red, and was not glossy.  And if you dont think visibility counted, go watch the first episode of Zeta gundam, look at the diff between the red and black rick dias flying in space

I've decided to finish the inner frame first before moving on to other parts. So far I've picked out bits and pistons and cables here and there in silver, and undercoated silver for some of the brighter colors like yellow. didn't get much done today since I got to a rather late start. I'm gonna get a bit complicated with the inner frame, with some bits in darker gray, gunmetal, etc, just to make it look like it's a lot more pieces than it really is! Yes I know it will all be hidden by armor. *sigh*

I did some detailing, I found a good mix of green grays and blue grays work wonderfully when working with metal on the interior.  (you will see later in a wip, but I used a greenish dull gray base with blue gray for metal and dark gray for detailing, then the wires I did red, worked Great!)

agentg wrote:

I missed this due to pressing matters at the house for the last two weeks. As you found out Polly Scale thinner doesn't work with MM Paints. I found that out too (don't ask). It will not work with Tamiya either. Same results (don't ask).............. I'd use Tamiya's acrylic thinner, Tamiya's laquer thinner, isoprophyl alcohol, or plain old distilled water with Tamiya acrylic paint. Just my and painful experience.

 yeah. :D You saved me trying PollyS with Tamiya paint, so thanks. guess I'll stick to Isopro+water and maybe a little windex. I think I'll be fine. ^.^

No painting done today, the woman had a doctors appt. Detailing the inner frame is gonna take some time.

Day 8

More painting! I fired up the airbrush to put down the base color on the thrusters, MM Jet Exhaust. Still deciding whether to paint the inside of the bells yellow or gold or what.

 Detail added to the frame and other bits, I used German uniform gray, gunmetal, silver, and insignia yellow.

 I'm disapponted with the close-up photos of the leg verniers, I may need to clean them up and redo them.

 

Still need to do some black details, some cleanup, and the armored cables. Then, I can finally start on the armor! Yay!

Love that green amn, im using one quite close to it for a wip of mine for detaliing

Day 9

Here we go.So today I started with the known issue of the shoulders, got out the Squadron Green and went at it.

Gold marker shows that there's still a problem here.

So I went and filled some more. In retrospect, I should have used cement to start with. The pieces just keep moving tiny amounts, causing the gap to re-appear.

Went and started masking the shoulders for painting. Pretty annoying! Trying out liquid mask on the tricky bits near the end, we'll see how well that works.

Now, I discovered I can assemble the head armor while removing the internals like the mono-eye. This means I can paint the head semi-assembled, and take care of the seam in the back and the front.

Need to mask the circled areas in the head internal structure though, because they're exposed from the armor.

Plastic cement and some pressure take care of the seams. A light touch with the sanding stick and they'll be gone!

Now to start painting! I'm hitting everything with black. It doesn't have to be particularly pretty or nice, it's just a color coat that's going to have white and then red over it, so I'm allowed to be a little sloppy. If I'd normally spray 3 times, here I'm spraying twice. Some red can show through and I'm not worrying about a little orangepeel. Yet.

several hours later...

So how'd the shoulder come out? well...

 I'm rather amazed at how much my sanding marks are showing up. I thought my extra fine salon board would leave the marks invisible, but I guess not! Also, the lines are still there! >_<  I really should have glued cause I don't know how I'll keep the little line from showing up now. What do you folks think? A little Mr.Surfacer or automotive primer, maybe?

The head came out much better, and I'm quite happy with it.

 Next comes the white, and preshading!