I’ve been planning a for a trip to KL (Kuala Lumpur) for a while now since I ran out of acrylics paints. Previously I bought tamiya paints from One Utama in Damansara. I did some research in the Malaysia based forum and found out that there is a Hobby shop in City Square ( Opposite Ampang Park).
[Some of the stuff i got from my trip to Kuala Lumpur]
Notice at the background of the picture, my IWSP Gundam was all ready for the first coating of dark grey base color. Since this will be my first time applying the max technique.. we’ll see how the IWSP Gundam will turn out. Anyhow..
I’ve set foot once again in City Square. The last time I was there, I was still in high school, which is almost 20 years ago. The place doesn’t look quite alive like the newer shopping centers but that don’t matter as the hobby shop is the one I’m after.
The Gunze Sangyo acrylic paints and Mr Surfacer was bought in City Square but the Future Floor Acrylics was bought from Ace Hardware in Ikano Power Center. The Bandai Modelling Tools kinda neat and don’t cost too much. I got that from Toy’s R Us in City Square Basement. That shop was there for ages.
The Future Floor Acrylics retails at RM 56.50, almost bought two but decided to see how long that one bottle will last. If you are wondering what on earth does a modeller do with a floor cleaner, you can google it. Basically I use it for the final coating of the model. You can make your model shine or you can add Tamiya X-21 ( Flat base acrylic) to it and get a satin finish to. The MK-II gundam’s final coating was not done using Future, but a mixture of Tamiya clear gloss (X-22) and Tamiya Flat Base (X-21). I use the ratio of 1 part flat base and 10 part clear gloss.. add thinner to it at a ratio 1 to 1 and voila, you’ll get a nice satin finish to it.
Apart from making a final coating for your model, Future can also be use to make clear plastic parts shine. Just dump it in a Future liquid, making sure all the parts are submerged and leave it overnight. Come tomorrow morning your clear part will be clear and shiny.
I’ve downloaded almost all of my gundam photos in flickr and feel free to view the photos there.
www.flickr.com offers 100MB of space for you to host all the picture and the interface are pretty slick. It even have the tool to automatically post the picture to your blog from Flickr.
According to the website, the space it offers is 100MB of space per month. Since I’ve just registered at flickr, I’ll to wait another month before I find out if that really the case. Enjoy the gallery
Perfect Grade gundam kit can cost a fortune but for me its really worth its price. In previous post I’ve suggested you have a look at www.dalong.net if you want to see any Gundam Kit (unpainted) with a detailed review. Since the pages are all written in Korean, it’ll be great to see how the google translation deals with it. Wait… I’ll check it out
Well the translation certainly isn’t great but at least you get some idea of what the webmaster trying to say… which is better than nothing.
Back to the topic at hand. A perfect grade gundam kit stands at 3Ocm and the details are just amazing. All the joints are can be articulated and you can certainly pose the model in way imaginable. The only limitation being that some of the armor may hinder the movement of the internal skeleton.
Did I mention that each of the fingers can be articulated and movable? The external armors are removable and some of the hatches are able to opened and closed.
All of the models in Dalong.net are unpainted. It just doesn’t do justice for a model of that amount of detail to be left unpainted.. to me; it’s just not right. Another thing is that some of the more experience modeller (me; not one of them) use scribe pen to put more panel lining onto the visible armor plates. A scribe pen is a pen with needle like tip to etch the surface. You can buy it or you can make it yourself.
I’ve seen a blog that actually shows you how to make one of these scribe pens with old mechanical pencil and a needle.
Finally got around attaching a Youtube video review of RX-78 Perfect Grade Kit. Run a search for Gundam PG in youtube and you’ll get several video reviews of a Perfect Grade Gundam Kit.
When I was doing the MK-II Gundam this is the one thing that really troubled me… how the hell do I paint the eyes on the gundam. I’ve googled it and go through forum and search specifically on how to paint the the eyes. Alas, I never did find out the techniques…. until just now.
I was randomly searching MK-II trying to find out the full model name of the kit and stumbled upon the site. These are his steps taken to paint a Gundam eyes:
1. Paint the clear plastic with a coat of black.
2. Air brush a layer of white on the eyes.
3. Use tamiya clear green (or clear yellow or clear blue) on the white base you paint in step 2.
What you’ll get is eyes with kinda glowing effect on it. I’ve yet to test the method. I’ll give it a shot for my upcoming IWSP MG gundam. I”ll post the result when I come to it.
For the MK-II however, I did not paint the eyes. I just stick the sticker (god forbid) supplied with the kit and spray painted a few coats of clear to make sure that it doesn’t peel off. I was a bit surprised at how good it looked.
This is where I Found the post. Gamerabaenre. The site also provide tutorial and tips on how to airbrush your precious Gundam Kit.
After spending a few hours yesterday in setting up my camera and tripod, I’ve managed to get some shots of the painted gundam. These are some of the shot that I’ve uploaded ontoww.Flickr.com.. all in all there are 23 pictures. Feel free to use the pictures in your blog or website. All that I ask is that you provide a link back to this blog.. apart from that you can pretty much do anything you want with it. Even sticking it up on your forehead.. ;P
I played around with the white balance and lo and behold I’ve got a yellow tinted picture that kinda look cool on the gundam. The actual backlight is suppose to be white. In all of the shots I don’t use any flash. Flash will ruin any great pictures.
