After 3 years, without publicly posting any projects I've worked on, I'm back! I recently picked up a hobby crazy 1:35 scale bust kit of a hi-V (hi new) gundam. I plan to add a custom touch to this kit in the form of light modifications and airbrush painting.
Let's get to it!
This is what the kit should look like upon completion.
My plan is to combine elements from these inspirations.
I forgot to take pictures before I jumped right in but here is what we're looking at. The LED's in my kit weren't as safisticated as these in the picture.. I also received a runner of orange frame to substitute the blue frame with.
Here are the LED's my kit came with
This kit is definitely lower quality abs plastic combated to bandai. However, the detail and overall apeal of a 1/35 scale gundam bust is a good exchange. Some of the moulds weren't the best. Divots appearing, some holes missing where the LED's need to be. Modifications are definitely nessisary for this kit. I will do my best to correct any manufacturing errors.
I began by clipping, sanding, and cleaning up all of the kit, starting with the grey pieces. I then used alligator clips to hold the pieces and airbrush sprayed every piece. After giving the coats of paint time to cure I began to do some detail work using gold metallic paint to accent the detail in this kit.
(in between coats)
I then moved on to airbrushing the white pieces.
After the white, I cleaned my airbrush and painted the blue pieces. For these pieces i really wanted to get a rich shade of cyan blue.
Im really pleased with how they turned out
Time to touch up. Some of the pieces were awkward to hold with the alligator clips, so when I was painting, some of the pieces were missing a full coat of paint because of how the clips had to hold them. So after the paint cured I touched up the pieces by hand brushing.
With the cyan pieces I touched up needing time to dry, I moved on to the LED wiring. I had some LED's and resistors from a previous project that I wanted to use instead of the ones that came with this kit.
I used resistors and heat shrink tubing when soldering the LED's with this build to prevent anything from breaking after I built it.
When I moved on to snap fitting some of the pieces together I noticed some of the pieces weren't moulded correctly. Pieces had divots in them. Some of the frame that I nipped the pieces off of had excess ABS plastic that didn't mould properly. Even some of the pieces where there should be features for detail didn't mould properly.
For example, this piece was supposed to have a hole in it to allow the LED to poke out from inside the assembled piece. When I snap fit the piece however there was no hole. I got out my pin vice and created a hole to hold the LED.
Simliar with this Vulcan Cannon.
Snap fitting like this also exposed some very ugly seem lines that I will have to correct.
Testing the LED's after everything is snap fitted in.
I decided to paint the different light grey runners along with a few select pieces a metallic silver.
Lots of opportunity for detail in these parts.
While these pieces cured I began to work more on the head itself.
I ran in to an issue after I took this next picture. When I flipped the part over to continue snap fitting the yellow LED for the eyes would not light up anymore. I couldn't believe it, Broke a connection, or blew the LED. I had to take apart everything that I had assembled so far. Find out how the LED lost its connection, and repair the connection before I could continue.
With the connection fixed I was able to put everything back together.
I began to add detail to the now filly assembled head (minus the v-fins)
Pannel lined and silver detail.
Here are more parts I touched up with metallic silver detail.
Moving forward I wanted to change the red pieces in the kit to a custom colour. I decided on a forrest green with metallic flake for some shine. So i mixed my green, white, and metallic silver, and thinned the mixed paint appropriately. Then I began to prep the red pieces.
Before: After:
After these pieces cured I continued the trend and added silver detail to them also.
