08.18.04 » Good Internal Pictures!!!

I took good pictures of the internals today. Click Here!

I still need to do the dusy weathering and the rust, but will be waiting till I get the armor to that point so I can do it all at once.

08.21.04 » The Old Grind...

I want this Zaku to look as if it's been in active service for years. To do this I'll be denting and damaging the external armor in places where it would have more contact with itself, the ground, or other MS in combat. I have a second shield thanks to Vengeful 1 so it has been damaged and will be replaced with a relatively new and undamaged shield in the diorama. The damaged shield contains strips of styrene in the hollow area to give the illusion of a multi-layered armor.

To do the damage, I'm used my dremel. After all the damage was done, I placed the parts onto skewers. I included a pic of how I put parts onto the skewers since people have actually asked me that.

I am painting the insides of the armor first and will be using the same technique as I did for the internals. The only difference will be the addition of rust. Since a lot of the externals don't have "holes" I have had to use stickytack to hold the parts to the skewers.

08.24.04 » Axe About Weathering the Armor Interiors

For the external armor, my first step was to paint the insides the same metallic gray as the internals. Then, the same black chalk wash. After that though I did another chalk wash using several shades of pastels mixed with water to make rust. Instead of removing the excess with a damp paper towel, I used a stiff-bristled, yet soft brush.

I applied it in areas where water may seep in an start the rust process. I figure that these parts will be rustier than the internals since the internals would be well-oiled and maintained.

After I put a very thin flat coat of Future on the rust to keep it from dusting away and frem getting fingerprilted or pulled up by tape, I'll do a very slight drybrushing with the Run-n-Buff. I tested the flat coat on the rust earlier. If I put it on too thick, it darkens the pastels. However if I lightly spray it, it leaves them relatively as-is, but protected from the drybrushing and masking tape.

I also have a shot of the painted, damages, but unweathered heat-hawk axe.

08.25.04 » Long Live Tamiya Extra Thin Cement!

And their basic putty too. I'm just about ready to start painting the camo on the exterior of the armor. First though, I need to deal with a nasty little seam. The two halves of the leg armor have a seam which just looks bad. A few of the other seams like this I scribed out to be panel lines and they look fine. The leg seam however...

Now that the internals are 95% done (still needs a little rust) I can put the two halves together. I snepped them on and ran Tamiya Extra Thin (E.T.) cement down the crack. I waited a bit and squeezed to that the melted halves and plastic squished together. After it dried, I sanded them down. There was a few hairline cracks in the seam so I put some Tamiya Basic Putty on my putty pallete with a drop of the E.T. Cement. THis thinned down the putty so that I could apply it into the cracks easier and I didn't have to "glop" it on and risk messing up my internals painting. I'll sand the putty tomorrow after I'm sure it's fully cured.

I also began "building" the armor. This will make it easier to line up my camo and instead of having to mask a ton of insides, I'll only have to mask the little bits of the joints that are exposed. Here's some pics »

Also, here's a pic that I found somewhere online (no clue where) about a year ago that inspired my camo scheme. My final camo will be closer to this than the lineart which I've changed slightly, but haven't re-posted yet.

08.26.04 » Altered Beast

I altered the color scheme image a bit to show what the final piece will look like after my tweaks and changes. Mostly just lightening the camo for scale, camoing the elbow disks, the red elbows, and fixing the darks/body to what I'm painting now.

Altered Scheme »

Old Scheme »

08.27.04 » Camo Painting - Part 1

I've put together the arms and legs and masked off the internals. I used masking paper and tamiya tape for this. After that was all masked, I painted my first color which was my light green. I went with the light green first because it's easier to paint darker on lighter as opposed to lighter on darker. (see first pic)

After the light green had a bit to cure (about 24 hours) I masked off what I wanted to keep light green and then painted the next color which was the light tan-gray. It's as light as the green so it really didn't matter which one I painted first. I'll be leaving the tape on the parts and masking off the tan when it's dry enough. Probably tomorrow morning. I removed the tape from the one arm piece that will only be tan and light green. (see second pic)

Next I'll be painting my blue-green color then finally the olive drab. When that's all done, I'll remove all the tape revealing the camo pattern.

08.30.04 » Camo Painting - Part 2

The camo is all done. After removing a ton of masking tape I found that it turned out very nicely except for a few spots that needed touched up. Those were easy enough to fix however.

The first pic is how I used small strips of tape to outline my camo scheme. You can see the brown paper used to mask off large areas which saved me a lot of tape. The second is of a few un-futured parts and the last is the finished leg camo with Future.

Next up in order is »

• Decals
• Gloss Future
• Panel lines, base paint on nicks and dents, minus molds
• Flat Future
• Weathering
• Flat Future

08.31.04 » Decals

I've been adding my usual plethora of decals to this kit. One major difference is the size of the decals. The shield's is about 3.5 inches tall. In the pic below, you can see a few of the parts which are already done. These are the only parts which will have the flower petals on them. It's good to have a theme, but bad to overdo it. I also chipped some of the decals purposely to simulate the markings paint peeling or being chipped. Again, I have to watch that I don't overdo it.

09.07.04 » Weathering

It's been a while since my last update. Since then I've gotten a lot done on the externals. I've still got a little bit more to do, but the Zaku will be done soon.

Here's what I've done since the last update:

• Finished placing all the decals
• Added another gloss coat of Future over only the decals
• Used oil-paint thinned with Testors thinner to do a panel-line wash. The color I mixed resembled a grey-brown muck which shows up light on the dark parts and dark on the lights. After the paint set-up a bit (5 minutes) I used clean paper-towel bits and wiped away the excess.
• Gave all parts a flat-coat of Future
• Painted all the chipped and dented damaged areas with the same metallic gray used for the internals
• Used a thin black chalk wash inside of the damaged areas and brushed it out with a stiff brush when dry.
• Used 'burnt sienna" oil paint and a small brush and streaked the rust-stains on in places that looked like water would pool and run from.
• Gave all damaged areas a slight dry-brushing with Rub-n-buff.

And that's it. Whew! Next I'll add another flat-coat of Future which should take the shine away from the Rub-n-buff and seal in the oils. I may add a little shine back with a slight drybrushing here and there. After that, I'll have to add the dirt and dust.

Here's some pics »

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