The Inner Frame

Sounds all ghostly and cool don't it? maybe that's just me? I'm not alone am i?I'm not the only one spending ours painting something that your only going to see 5% of? am i?

well even if i am i truly think its worth it. I really mean that i think painting an inner frame not only adds to design detail and helps improve your general painting skills but also helps you to understand the overall build.

so onto the PG Strikes inner frame. this one is one of the few gundams where you see a lot of the inner frame (yes if u see it on the outside i guess its no the inner frame) but hey ho glazing swiftly over that. There are several areas where the dark grey parts of the inner frame show through on the Strike mainly the knees and shoulders but also in other areas. another PG that painting the inner frame on, really pays off is the strike-freedom, having the gold frame really nicely painted makes a huge difference.

so onto what I'm doing on this build. the technique I'm using on this is simple and very effective.

The technique is called dry brushing, something I've learnt a long time ago in a land far far... well you get the idea. the basics are simple and work best (I've found with metallic paints with a lot of pigment in them). The idea is dip a wide soft brush into a paint, draw off as much as possible and then start painting a paper towel.

no i haven't finally lost it. your aim here is literally to get rid of as much paint as your can from the brush. once your done and you cant see any more paint coming off on the towel you can start on the model. The best results I've found come from dragging the brush quickly and gently across what I'm painting, almost as if dusting it. this allows a small amount of pigment to come off on raised areas. 

in the case of the PG Strike I've used a Tamayia Chrome and its picked out the raised areas on each part making it look like a brushed steel effect. This to me is simple and looks really nice, on the less visible parts i tend to pass from side to side and just let as much colour as i feel is right fall onto the parts. 

a more exposed area in the model, say a knee, i would make sure the brush strokes are in the right direction to make a weathering effect (ill talk about weathering effects more when I'm finishing the kit).

as always these are the things i do and i hope people can find them useful the last few images are just of the frame as i have finished it.

the next few blog will be really short as it'll just be small things i find in the build process.

Gundam 1/60 PG Strike gundam build blog

Gundam 1/60 PG Strike Gundam Build

For the next few weeks/months, this blog going to document my techniques and time building the Pg 1/60 Strike Gundam.

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Excuse the elastic band

As i said in my earlier post i really enjoy building these models more than anything else about them. Don't get me wrong they look amazing when built and posing them and photographing them has its own rewards, but 90% of my enjoyment comes form building them

Before anyone thinks Ive gone all elitist

by building a PG, I've built near on 100 gundams

 and other kits from HGs to PGs and 

i just thought as i had this one when 

i started this blog then i would use

 this on as a starting point. Ive also 

got the MG hi nu ver. KA to build

 after this with the HWS add on to go with it.

So to get to it, i wont bore you with numbers of pieces and pictures of boxes i think every knows how to open the box and the baggies inside. 

just on a side note/disclaimer I'm not saying this is the only or even the best way to build a kit, its just my way and i like my results. I'm always open to suggestions and this will be the first time i paint the inner frame. i always believe that even the best builders can learn new tricks from the newest enthusiast.

So lets get to it....again. the first thing i do when building a kit and Ive checked that everything is there is to just gently wash all the parts off with warm soapy water. i find this helps to get rid of any oils and residues left from the manufacturing process and makes it easier to apply the next step.

The next step is apply the panel lining, when i first started building, i would do this when i had finished but i soon found that made it hard to get to certain areas and even getting a nice line was difficult on a curved surface. 

For this project I'm using pigment markers on the visible surface and panel line accent liquid on the inside of the panels just the give the fine lines some definition. the above picture shows the first pass. ill usually do 2-3 passes with a pigment marker as i like a nice defined, almost manga like black line. its down to personal taste though really.

This process takes a long time, after putting all the lines on i usually got back with a cotton bud with a small amount of white spirit on (and i mean really small just dabbed in it) and take off the excess. this is the worst part for me, i really want to get onto building the kit and see it rising up and see the articulation, but to me this is one of the things that makes the most difference to the end result.

in my next blog ill cover the inner frame. sorry this one was so long hoping i can not blab so much in the others.

A brief history of panel lining

Hey guys , let me start off by saying im no master builder but i love it and i think im half decent at getting a quality job done. So, i've been building Gundams of all sizes and degrees of complexity since i was 10, ( a good 20 years now) and i've always been amazed at not just customs but just well built and finished standard builds. to that end i've spent countless hours snipping, filing, cutting, panel lining and coating figures. over the years i've got better, (at least i hope i have), at what i think in a standard build makes the most difference, Panel lining. 

That's what this (long winded) post is about. so i started off as a kid not doing it at all and the models were fine mainly toys and i did't care that the white expanses of plastic looked bland and unbroken, hey i was a kid. but then i got older and at about 17/18 managed to get a decent internet connection and was able to see what the good builders were doing. so the hunt started for a byro thin enough to do the panel lines, yeah i know that's not how it should be done but with no model shops and being impatient i tried it. guess what, it was crap. so then i went online and searched for what they used and.....

BEHOLD the Gundam panel liner and markers. so i ordered some up, at great expense, and tried it it. I WAS AMAZED, the tip fitted the panels perfectly and if u ran over some parts it was easy to rub off, led to evenings cleaning blackened fingers. a few years after that my collection shrunk and nudged by my wife to be i brought a PG, thing was huge and amazing and i wanted to do it justice. i went to the local games workshop and brought some paints and tried some washes and paints but couldn't get on with it, paint every where, i wouldn't come off as easily and i had to repaint the white areas and white is a PAIN! so then i went back to the panel markers but when using them found they left some bare lines where the panels were bigger on the PG and running it backwards and forwards left a deep black at one end and a grey bit in the middle.

So ill bring this to a close i tried sharpies, Too thick, brushes uncontrollable, Gundam paint markers just a mess and Gundam panel liners just too pricey and really hard to get in the U.K. so below is a picture of everything i've tried including the recent Tamaiya "panel line accent colour", which is great but hard and takes a lot of time cleaning up, nice for inside panels where the ink like substance can run freely though small detail lines. in conclusion the best, easiest to get hold of and cheapest solution is on the end of the picture Pilot DR 0.1 drawing pens. same as a Gundam marker but a deeper black and a finer point and easy enough to get hold of for a couple of quid.