I pulled a kit out of my backlog because i made a new gunpla friend and felt inspired to produce a thing.. Unfortunately, the kit i pulled out of my backlog was the Frame Arms Berkflinger Bergflinker, which, as is customary for Frame Arms kits, has absolutely dogshit-looking plastic out of the box, because the expectation is that you'll give enough of a shit to paint it.
Double unfortunately, it turns out the local scale modeling convention is the first weekend in June, which is June The First, and this lit a fire under my ass to get this done.
So far I've primed it black, sanded the shit out of some pieces, primed those pieces again with black, then spent half a day on half my usual ADHD medication dose clearing my office work table, setting up the four year old airbrush hood that I've never actually ended up using, airbrushing some unsatisfying shades on the kit(they look worse in real life, trust me), and then falling back on my old standby of "hand painting everything".
Part of this is that i don't particularly want to have to mask things for airbrushing and then wait days between windows of dry enough weather to do spraying (the vent hood has no duct(well, it does, but the duct doesn't fucking attach properly) so i have to full open my office window every time i want to airbrush), and part of this is--actually, all of it is that i understand how to hand paint and while i know how to use an airbrush, i don't really know how to use an airbrush, and i don't want to spend the next month getting to that point, given that airbrushing does take a long-ass time regardless.
Anyway, I'm still going to have to mask when i get to repainting colors and blacks on some of these pieces, but i have to stop for now so that the white paint actually fucking dries, so here's some progress shots.
The problem with plans is that you have to stick to them, or they don't work. Anyway, progress has been made; two of my four overcoat colors(Turbodork "Pearly Gates", a pearlescent white, and "People Eater", a really nice smooth purple that i am barely doing justice) have been fully applied; my other two colors(a weird mixture of TD "Bullion" and "Bees Knees" that approximate a serviceable gold metallic, and "Dark Net", which is like a dark red/green tint that makes black pop real nice) are mostly in place.
I mostly gave up on my wet palette in favor of this silicone mixing tray I got from Turbodork because it's hand-washable with just water, and I've been painting parts basically as I got to them, so i was mixing paints drops at a time. Once this is "painted", I'm going to have to wash the shit out of this with Nuln Oil to line out panels, but I'm going to have to leave this to cure a few days before I'm bold enough for that.
Man, I hope this looks good. I can't be objective any more.
Now Gundam Marker is my best friend
Anyway I tried to nuln and the wash wouldn't take, probably because i did not heed my own advice and wait a few days. This is a consistent thread in my projects; I will say "oh i should let this set up before i move on" and in my heart i know that's true, but the moment i look back at what i was working on, it's all "let me just do this" and then I'm off on some new bullshit.
Anyway, gm01 and a .45mm micron, along with my old and dear friend Real Touch Black, are here to save the day. Real Touch Black is an MVP, by the way; you can get really nice panel lines out of bare plastic with it by just working over the line then smoothing it out with a cotton swab. You can't do that on painted models, but it will still work for adding a sharp shadow to a place you need one.
We're starting to look pretty good. It still looks very obviously hand-painted, which will have to be fine, unless I want to put money into a second one of these.
I actually might, because this was fun to build, it's been fun to work on, and I think I've learned enough about my hand-painting technique that I could, provided I can both plan in advance and get a decent fucking dry day so that i can airbrush, do better on a second take.
All that's really left to do is fix the paint on the left wing(you can see a huge glob in the last picture there, I've sanded and repainted it, just waiting for the ol boy to dry up and get to curing, mask and paint the under-wing rifles, and then top coat the whole bastard so it's good to travel. Hopefully I can do that in the next week or so, maybe this weekend if weather cooperates, and I can finally feel good enough about this to put my name on a registration form.
Also, I need to buy a motorized turntable, something I didn't realize how badly I wanted until I tried taking a video of this with the little dinky one that came with my vent hood. If I'm as smart as people seem to think I am, it'll embed below. I tried to keep background noise to a minimum, and you can really see the color shifting paints pop.
EDIT: MY DISCORD LINK BROKE. NO MORAL
We're just about done with the boy. It's been rainy when I've had spare time, so I haven't yet had a chance to put the last layer of topcoat on the rifles that now grace the wings. I'll do it tonight or this weekend if the weather holds, and then all that's left is to actually register this thing for the model show coming up and hopefully win.
I've learned a lot on this guy, like that i can spray acrylics with the window shut so long as my fume hood is on, and that i can't solve every problem with spray acrylics no matter how much ventilation I've got. I'm working on the next guy, but there's no way I can have this ready by next Saturday without losing sleep, which i already don't get enough of, so that's out.
Anyway, Wonderfest is the first weekend in June, here in Louisville. If my robot isn't on display, something's gone terribly wrong. I'll keep you posted.
