Painting an MG gundam Zaku II (black trinity)

Wow! Im back on the boards after the Nats! I picked up the Zaku V2 Chars colors and all I can say is WoW! Im thoroughly impressed with this new slide mold technology, very impressive!

 Ok, now onto markers.

Junk.  Get rid of them and any other paint markers and stick to real paints, you will be SO much happier!! What claims to be an easier way to do things usually is not. Gundam Panel Marker pen. I have one, and dont use it. I use Micron or Zig pens from the office store, size 005 for all my panel lines. Otherwise you can do a kids artists water color paint wash over a gloss clear coat, add a tiny drop of dishwashing soap to the mix, and take off the excess with a damp Qtip. easy and cheap, but takes a bit of practice not to drag all the paint out. Final option is standard Preshade and oil wash like the tankers do, it always works for really dirty machines and I did it before I found the pens.

David

You did a great job, Noob. 

JB
 

Hmm, yeah, I suspect I'd be in the same situation with drawing lines... :)

You know, I'm still not sold on painting the parts unassembled. I mean then you have to repair/join finish and repaint over join lines. I'd have thought partial assembly would have been better.

I ordered some gundam markers from gundamstoreandmore.com along with my gundam and my impression is that they are junk.  Maybe I just dont have a steady enough hand, but I think it would be VERY difficult to make decent looking panel lines.  The ones I ordered were almost impossible to remove after you marked them and so im lucky I only tried on a junk piece.

The only panel line that is actually marked is on the "shield" I made.  That was done with a gundam marker but I had to paint overtop to cover up how horrible it was and somehow it came out looking decent after that. 

I would suggest looking up information on some of the other wash methods. 

Well I finally finished it, atleast for the time being. I tried to do a wash with watercolors, but I wasn't able to get good results.  I think it may have been the paint I was using though because I used kid's "washable watercolors".  I ended up just washing it all off.  I also made a base for my model out of legos and various other junk.  I wish I would have made it slightly larger, but it looks ok.  It is supposed to be a lunar surface, I dont know if you can see it or not :) The photos of it have washed out some of the highlighting I did on it and make it look glossier than it really is.

Base

front

front again without the base

profile view

side shot

another side shot

Ill try to get some more photos in sunlight later. 

Without doing some mods to the hips and legs it is very hard to get any decent poses.

I'd like to see those pics too.

nice!

yeah the older MGs were a pain to pose, they had limited positionability and you could not really DO much with them other than put them in a limited fighting/ shooting stance. I tried to get my GM down on one knee but it justwould not do it, so I try to evoke different poses than those I typically see on ohters when I dsiplay them in public. Even my Patlabor is hard to pose due to the vinyl skirts and inserts which really limits mobility.  The newer generation kits have more flex engineered in.

I was surprised by myKempfer, it is almost NOT posable especiallyfor what I wanted it to do, so I relied on a solid base and strong magnets in the foot to support it and hold its pose with the opposite foot coming off the ground at the toe.

Ill shoot you some photos later on

David

Nah, Im definately still a noob.  I take great care to cover my noob mistakes in my pictures, lol.

As far as my next gundam goes Ive decided im sticking with MG.  I just dont want to have different scales or quality levels being displayed next to each other.  I think it would make all of them look worse.  I was looking on dalong.net, the guy who does the buildups of every gundam,  and Im leaning toward the MG zaku II ver2.0.  That thing looks like it is superbly engineered, especially compared to the kit I just built, which is a pain to get a decent looking pose out of.

Id love to see some photos of your finished gundams/mechs.

I also thought id post some new pics of my build.

I threw that shield/gun thing together from the GI Joe gun barrel and a piece from the kit.  I didn't like that big ugly thing on his arm so I changed it up.  Im not done tweaking it yet that is why the barrel is a little crooked and I may change up the decals.

I think this build should look decent once I get that matte finish on there.  Oh, and you can see how this waist filled out a little.

Gnoob (better change that soon to not so noob) stay away from the nonMG Goug. The NonMG
Zaku is OK but you will like the MG item better, and I would love to have a MkII RX-78 in MG.

The GM powered suit (green version, I think that is the RGM-78C) is called a MG kit, but it does not really build up quite like one. Defeinitely better than a regular HG and with the weapon options of a MG kit and MG kit boxing, but the way it is engineered is not up to MG standards, so you use a bit more putty. I had a blast with mine and it is mounted "in flight" over a big red fishtank rock.  The typical ground unit GM was a great kit, went together just fine and I had some fun with that one with battle damage and custom colors. I used some light weathering on it, as well as a lot of dry transfers and spare decals ( I have a LOT of all kinds of decals just for this purpose). It does not have a base so it is a stand alone.

Send me a PM and I can shoot you some photos I have of the buildups.

David

Are you guys only talking about krylon primer or all of their spray paints in general?  I did have a problem with the primer, but that was only on a few pieces.  And I think it was my fault, either spraying to heavily or at first when I was spraying onto a piece laying on newspaper.  Here is something you guys might think is funny...  I used almost 2 normal sized spray cans of primer on this model, lol.  I primed a lot of air.

 I was going to buy paint for the jeep soon.   I found a hobby shop that is about a 40 minute drive away.  I may just breakdown sometime and make a trip to get some tamiya paint and hopefully they will have some pigments.

I used Krylon for awhile when I started model building but then it started creating the orange peel effect on my kits.  I was not too pleased seeing how I lost a few kits to it.  So then I tried a few different ones, such as Testors white primer and Mr Surfacer, and had good success with those.  A good buddy of mine, and fellow modeler, put me on the right path by turning me on to Duplicolor.  I've been using that since and I have never looked back.  My buddy gets it shipped to his house by the case.  He has quite a number of commission pieces though so he needs the stock.

For clear coat I use Dullcoat and Figure Flat.  I haven't tried airbrushing Future or any other clear coat, but I will be trying Future on my Zugock once I am done.

Back on topic though... I am glad you got the waist fixed.  I have always been partial to the Gouf Custom.  Is that the Gouf kit you are thinking of doing next?

Krylon..........UGHHHHH!! I avoid it at all costs. I have never had a single good reaction with Krylon in the last twenty two years other than when it hits the can.

 I use Duplicolor light grey sandable primer. Its getting harder to find it but its what I prefer.  Any hobby enamel should work, too.

David 

I made another noob discovery after looking at fichtenfoo's a1 zeta plus. Those pieces of the abdomen actually move/snap down and out and then that whole shoulder area comes down with the cockpit going partially inbetween.  It helped out the skinny waist problem a lot.

I washed the entire kit on the sprues and primed with a basic white krylon primer.  Then I painted with krylon interior/exterior paint, which I believe is an enamel.  That comment earlier was more of a joke.  The only paint that really had problems rubbing off was the black paint.  I figure that is because I got the Ultra Flat Black paint and it dries with a relatively rough surface and the particles are probably relatively large.  Overall, I think Krylon is a pretty good paint, but then again Ive never really used anything else.

Glad to help.

One of my freinds will ONLY use Mr. Color lacquer for painting his mecha due to its strength, it wont rub off. I only use Tamiya acrylic, I have used MM enamel since it was introduced and I can NOT get a good coat of paint on with it, but the Tamacrylic seems fine! Wierd.

What kind of paint are you using. Also, if you did not wash all your parts with soap and water prior to painting, and you are not using a solvent based paint, then the paint is flaking off from the mold release agents/skin oils on the kit, since they are literally dried on top of it (acrylics have little "bite" on thier own and work best if attached to a quailty primer).

I agree with the waist. My Patlabor Unit 2 is the same, almost the same waist.  When I really took a logn look at my GP01 and GP02 kits, those anemic legs really put me off.......

David

Well I figured out what was wrong with the hips. I didn't have them snapped against the frame.  Now that they are it looks a little better.

I think im going to try a 1/35 willys jeep and im looking at either a Gouf, a Zaku, or maybe the Mk II 2.0 as my next gundam. 

The pics look great!  You're right about the waist though.  Doesn't seem like there's enough meat on those bones.  Plus the hips look kinda wide too.  That's okay though, cause once you get the hang of things you will want to start modding everything so the proportions look right.

So once this kit is under your belt what's next?

Yeah painting on the skewers definately gives a better finish than laying them on newspaper or something and getting splattering all over.  Im glad you gave me that tip!

I did find a couple leftover parts that, to the best of my knowledge, were never even mentioned in the instructions... hmm..  And there was a ton of leftover polycaps, but thats probably normal. 

I rushed my build together today and despite not giving the paint a couple days to cure I only managed to rub half the paint off, lol.  I snapped a couple pics.  I haven't finished painting the wings, added any decals, a matte finish or any weathering yet, but I thought no one would mind an update.

One thing I dont like about this kit now that I built it is how skinny the waist area is.  It makes the mech look almost delicate or fragile

front shot

back (this area is not finished at all! still needs wings and a couple pieces)

my awesome photography skillz...

Sorry for the picture quality Ive been trying to keep the file size down so dial-uppers can still view them.

Isnt painting on the skewers easier?
Scour your leftover sprues, I always find one or two option parts left behind on them.

I use the MG box inserts as wall decoration on my building bench, you could even three hole punch them for a binder, like you have with Ma.K. kits.

David

Well I got some new batterys for the camera today so I decided to take some random pictures of my build.

The majority of the remaining parts in the priming stage.

The box.

Here is a glossy picture of the completed kit that came in the box. 

This is a GI Joe gun I borrowed from my GI JOE (he didn't seem to mind).  Its The perfect scale. I wish I would taken a picture of it beside the gun that I assembled from the kit.

And here are the remains. 

Enjoy

Thanks for the comments guys.  Its definately been a learning process and I think im finally starting to get the basics down.   I think my next one will look a lot better.

 I might build a 1/144 next and practice all the stuff that I didn't do on this MG.  I already got a 1/35 tamiya willys jeep, but after I looked through it I think I prefer gundams... we'll see.

 Back to my current build, If the weather permits ill probably have most of it painted and assembled by the end of the week!  All the wings are going to need masking and stuff (I actually used cement on the seams, lol) so they will probably take awhile to get painted.

You could always get a couple of 1/144 kits just to practice on or you can just use this kit as your practice.  I wouldn't put off learning the weathering though.  Consider it as part of the whole learning process.

 I thinking you are making good progress and I can't wait to see more pics!

i do all of my weathering after I seal it with a coat of flat so the weathering powder has something to stick to otherwise it can come off of gloss paint.

im playing with MiG weathering powders now as well as Tamiya weathering kits. Othwerise, my weathering has always been a good old umber oil paint wash and pastels. 

On the leg that has the seam, on your next kit, try using a liquid glue and forcing the halves together and creating a weld seam of plastic being forced out. Let that totally dry and sand, it will help a LOT in filling. Otherwise, get some Tamiya putty or bondo spot glazing putty in the tube.

Nice to see the work posted!

David

 Thanks Malich.  This kit went together well and Ive had no problems with it, but I wish I would have started out with one that had less pieces!

 Well what you see in the pics is me trying to use dirt + water (mud) and apply it with an old toothbrush.  Well I figured out why everyone doesn't just do that... It looks like crap, lol.

Im starting to consider just skipping the weathering.  I plan on applying a matte finish so if I want to come back later with pigments (whenever I can justify spending more money!) I believe I can do that right on top of the finish. 

Great progress so far!  What are you using for the weathering?  Can't wait to see more done. 

I have thought about picking this kit up before but I have a few too many as it is.

Lol I just noticed from the my picture post that one of the polycaps on one of the legs is facing the wrong direction..  Might need to fix that..