Gundam Painting

Hi,

I guess what stands out to me from the video is that the technique shown kind of seems the opposite of the typical "pre-shading" that I have seen before.  In the typical pre-shading videos that I have seen before, the painter usually adds a bit of black or dark gray over the seams and then adds a top coat thin enough for the darker "painted on" background around the seems to show through.  In this video though the painter appears to add  a light base coat everywhere but the seems and then adds a light enough top coat so that the difference in background tone between the areas with the light base coat and the non base coated darker areas around the seems to show.

I guess its mostly the same technique, but I can't recall seeing examples of not base coating the seems but adding a light base coat everywhere else, as opposed to base coating the seems but not the rest of the area.

Either way, the parts shown in the video, and the examples shown by Real G both look really nice.

Pat

It’s called black basing or pre-shading.  It’s not so hard once you get the hang of it.  The current fashion trend is to “marble” the white on, to get even more color variation.  This works especially well over large flat surfaces.

The first time I tried it on a Gundam kit, my shading was too timid and the final color was not thinned enough.  I ended up with this:

The second try got considerably better results:

I have applied pre-shading to other types of models as well:

You just gotta thin the white paint a lot, use low air pressure, and go slow.  I get impatient when doing a model, as it takes more time than the actual color application.

Modulation is painting different areas with slightly different shades of the same color.  Basically the intent is to emulate how natural light falls in uneven intensities over a surface.

Hi,

I can't really answer your questions, but its amazing how his paint job for those parts turn out.  I think that I'd be way too clumsy to try and paint the white without covering the panel edges.  The end results look similar to some stuff that I have seen for planes where a builder has preshaded the panel lines with a dark color prior to adding the white ontop, but I don't know which technique would be better.  I suspect that alot may depend on the skill of the painter and the size of the piece to be painted. 

Thanks for sharing the link

Pat