Mecha Talk

Great info and thanks. Oddly I have a sneaking suspicion I know where 'ThoseGundamGuys' have their meets because one of my good friends lives in OC and her roomie is a hardcore gunpla builder. can't be coincidence.

The other question I have (since it's clear I have to distinguish acrylics and enamels when it comes to top coat sprays, if I use paint from the gundam markers and apply with a brush for detail work, what kind of paint does that count as?

I'm experimenting with the only can of Testors primer that was available at my local arts & crafts shop. While it goes on evenly, it takes ages to dry and can't be sanded. Luckily, I can either scrape it off or break out my enamel thinner. Has anyone ever had a similar experience?

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Here's a quick little tutorial I wrote up for some cosmetic modifications. Included in this tutorial:
Cable replacement with wiring and metal beads
Part lengthening using styrene
Part reshaping using a styrene framework and putty
An extreme method to adding LEDs to kits
Scratch building/kitbashing a sniper rifle

http://thosegundamguys.org/2011/05/24/c ... to-gunpla/

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Those Gundam Guys

1st Annual Southern California Gundam Model Competition

I bought a Kotobukiya 1/100 R-1 kit (Real Personal Trooper Type-1, Super Robot Wars OG), and have a couple of questions:

1. This is probably obvious, but can I follow the same basic steps for building a Kotobukiya kit that I normally would building Bandai Gundam kits?

2. I was thinking of following the project flowchart at http://otakurevolution.com/content/laymans-gunpla-guide-gunpla-project-flowchart for painted kits. Would this be a good idea, or is there a better method to build a kit?

This will be my first 1/100 kit, so I'm trying to do as much research as possible before getting started so I don't end up with too many "wish I had known that earlier" moments. Thanks!

Gunpla Building Video Podcast, episode 2: The painter: http://gamerabaenre.com/?p=2565

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Those Gundam Guys

1st Annual Southern California Gundam Model Competition

Hey Hey I'm fairly new to building, got back thanks to AGE and I looove the Clanche design and honestly, because its a grunt, I feel compelled to make a squad with my own costume paint schemes.

a Clanche Custom in a cherry Red in place of ...that teal...green, a normal Clanche in a deep purtple instead of salmon...and I don't know wat to do with a 3rd...

Main question is, as a beginning amateur, whats the easiest, cheapest and yet still efficient way to properly paint them so that the paint doesn't come off with time? I wanna hope Spray paint would be an option but you never know, so..what should i do?

I would suspect gundam marker with coating, but don't believe me

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I mostly just use paint for panel lining and to fill in details, so I can't help you with my personal experience outside of that, though I'm just starting to use spray cans myself, and I've been looking into a couple things beforehand to prepare for it. A lot of Gunpla builders spray their kits with primer before they start painting a kit (I've never really needed to use it, myself), and they apply a top coat after the paint has dried.

Top coats are usually clear, and they say that it helps protect the paint jobs from getting scratched easily (again, I haven't needed to use it before). Top coats can also affect the finish of the kit. If you want a flat/matte finish, quite a few people seem to like Testor's Dullcote, and there's also a Gloss Coat for the opposite effect. I think the Testor's topcoats usually run around $5 a can, and they can be found almost anywhere.

Something else you could invest in are some thin barbecue skewers and a specific type of alligator clips. Some alligator clips have a pair of prongs on the "open end" for lack of a better term (you might have to do a little bit of searching for these specific ones. I know I had to), and if you have a pair of pliers handy, you can squeeze these prongs around the end of the skewers. You can then use the clip to grab a part by the peg or another normally unseen part of the piece you are painting, and paint it on the clip. This makes painting a lot easier, since you don't have to worry about smudging your paint job with fingerprints.

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I see.... do people spray do this to the entire plate BEFORE they snap the pieces off an start building? or paint after its belt or each piece individually? Because in my case I don't intend to get fancy, I just want to turn all the blue...teal...color to a glossy cherry red and for another clanche, make it a glossy decepticon purple. I'm just wondering if all these steps to paint plastic would result int them being harder to put together because it would like...thicken the side of the pegs and the holes said pegs go into, considering I can't jsut go into a store and buy these guys for a meer 13 bucks, this process isnt exactly cheap for a casual hobby canadian

I usually work with Master Grades and have only painted once, but I think you could do the entire plate just fine. If you are really worried about the pegs or holes becoming thickened or clogged, you could always use a tiny bit of masking tape over the peg or hole. While the peg/hole will remain unpainted, most pegs and holes aren't visible in the final product anyway.

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ah I see, I was just curious if anyone else has had experience in spraying the entire plate to know if it makes a difference in construction

I would use caution if you're going to paint it all at once. Working on a MG, I once painted the ball joint on a thumb as well as the grove it went in only to find out that it made it too tight! I nearly twisted the ball joint off getting it out (don't know how I'll fix that).

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"When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up." -C. S. Lewis

Beware the Haro

You can always scrape a little paint off the pegs -- and if you're doing things "pro" style, you'll often see the pegs snipped off for non-moving parts anyway, in order to better control the alignment (less of an issue in today's high-quality molds, a bigger deal on things like IMAI Macross models from the 80s or the 1st-gen Bandai Mobile Suit Gundam models).

However... it's the sprue points that'll drive you nuts: do you really want to get a nice smooth paint job, then deliberately cut a hole in the edge of the paint that you'll have to touch up by hand? It's generally going to look better if you trim and sand first, then paint.

An exception is a limited number of models such as the Hyaku-Shiki MG (or was it the HGUC) where all the sprue attachment points were designed to be non-visible, because the gold color is a coating applied to the entire sprue, and cutting it off results in the same issue.

I rarely spray-paint, but when I do, I spray the entire plate. Then I remove each individual part and, if needed, apply a dab of paint over the point where it was attached to the sprue.
Usually comes out pretty well.

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