05.10.04 » Concept Work

For my next project, I'll be tackling the Master Grade EX-S Gundam. It's a rather large and "partsy" kit. I don't think I'll be doing anything modification-wise to this piece. I may add some LEDs, but other than that, it'll be OOB. (out of box) Best case, I light up every "green" spot on the kit. Worst case, I do the head and booster lights. I counted 27 green parts which would need lit if I went the "best case" route. Plus the 4 boosters. If I go that route I may look into skipping a battery and going with an AC adapter. LOL!

Color placement-wise, I got inspiration for the white on the shoulders and stripes on the booster pack guns from an EX-S I saw in Model Graphics a while back. The rest of the color choices are because I think they look cool. The color that I don't feel is coming off very well over the web is the blue/purple color. I'll be mixing that to be a very pale blue-violet with airbrush fades of a lighter version of the same color. Kind of like I did for my ReGZ. The reason for the blue-violet is to compliment the orange and yellow accents on the rest of the kit.

Decal-wise, I was looking through a book on WW2 nose art that a co-worker of mine had and decided to base my "Miss Iota" decal idea off of some that I'd seen. It's amazing the varying quality of the nose arts. Some were crap while others were simply amazing. The rest of the decalse are various text markings and such. I drew my girl "simple" due to the limitations of the ALPs printer. There is a screening to the purple and orange, but it's slight thanks to Peter and Models4U! Thanks man!

There's no made-up back-story for this kit. I'm basically doing it because this is the way I want it done.

06.23.04 » Painting... FINALLY!

I finally finished sanding and got to painting this thing. It has so many parts that it took me longer than usual to get started. Plus I took a week off to do the GunTank. Anyway, I have 3 colors sprayed so far. Here's some pics:

07.03.04 » Ink

The painting is almost done. All I have left is to paint the lenses and that won't be until I'm done with the decals. That's because I don't want a flat coat of future over my lenses.

Currently, I'm inking all the parts. It's taking forever, just like EVERYTHING with this kit. I have decided that to save time, I'm going to build what I can as I ink before decaling. The reason for this departure from my norm is that it took 3 1.5 hour airbrushing sessions to apply 1 coat of future to all the parts. By building sub-assemblies, I'll have less skewers to paint later. Here's some pics.

07.04.04 » Ink is complete!

I'm done with the inking. Next I'll give the inked parts another coat of Future to seal the ink from the waterslide decals and also to give more gloss for applying the decals. Here's a few more pics:

07.06.04 » Decals

I started adding the decals today. Here's a pic of some of my progress. The other sides of the pods and shoulders are decaled as well as other misc. parts.