Chaos Gundam

First, let me start with an apology.  Chaos, I can't imagine how hard it was to spend 5 months in solitude inside a box, without a face, a missing right leg and an unassembled EQFU-5X mobile weapon pod.  I know that I chose to sleep mostly every night instead of spending a little time with you, I have been lazy lately and I am very sorry about that.  When I first picked you up at the hobby shop, I know you felt my passion, I know you heard my promises.  But again, try as I might, I just end up breaking those promises and hurt your gunpla-feelings.  Us humans are just like that.  If in any way you're hit with the power of Transformer's Allspark and become a real boy, please don't use your MA-BAR721 high-energy beam rifle on me and my family.  Again, I'm very sorry for ignoring you and for modifying your rifle's color since I am too stupid to mix colors.  What's the color combo for violet again?  Anyways, just to show how sorry I really am, I am going to tell you the story on how I, your god, made you from pieces of lifeless plastic to the awesome robot that you are now…

Once upon a time…

…I, your god, bought you at a hobby shop at Goldcrest, Makati as a prize for myself for passing SCSA I exam. 

This is what you look like before assembly.  As you can see on the top photo, there's a set of stickers included which I didn't use since stickers are for pussies.  The first thing I did was wash you up with soap and water to remove some chemicals that might affect painting, etc.  Consider this as your baptism.

After drying, I, your god, now proceeded taking your parts off the sprue.  This was done buy using a hobby cutter (I used a nail cutter on my previous models). 

I made sure to leave a little plastic from the sprue because cutting a part all the way might leave holes or scratches, and if that does happen I'll just use putty to cover the mess up.

To remove the "ears", I used a hobby knife to cut most of it, again leaving just a little bit plastic and then sanding those with fine sand paper (I used grit 600) until it's kaput. 

Cutting myself on my pinky instantly reminded me how sharp my super sharp hobby knife really is.  Use a cutting board.  Its A LOT safer.

After removing everything from the sprue, it's time to prebuild…

Prebuilding is very important because it's in this step where I can see parts that need modification and, very rarely, to detect manufacturing flaws. 

Most parts are snap-fit, male and female pegs hold the parts together even without using glue.

Before snapping everything together I cut the male pegs in an angle and in some parts I drill the female plugs, just to be sure I can easily disassemble everything again after I've prebuilt.  

Another importance of prebuilding is for spotting grouped parts with visible seam lines.  First example is the head.  You can see that it consist of 4 parts.  2 parts for the helmet, 1 part for the face and 1 for the "chin".  I need to fix the visible seam lines from the helmet part.

Before I glue the helmet parts together and fix the seam line through sanding, I made modifications on the face part.  As you can see on the top photo below, I cut the corners of the peg (encircled in red), rounded it a bit (above photo shows the peg before the mods)  so that the face part will easily slide underneath the helmet as shown on bottom photo.

Second modification is on the body.  On the photo below I already cut the 2 pegs (encircled in red) which blocks the bottom half of the body from sliding to the upper half.

I can glue and fix seam lines individually on the chest and tummy part.  Then slide…

Next modification is for the arms.  Seam line problem is on the shoulder armour.

To fix this, I carved the male peg part of the shoulder, making it thin (so I don't have to carve a humongous hole on the shoulder armour) and then carving the inner part of the shoulder armour all the way through the female plugs.  Then slide…

Next mod is for the antenna or what I like to call Horns.  I just sharpened them by removing those lumps (encircled in red) and sanding them until the horns are nice and pointy.

For us fans of washing, scribing panel lines is a must.  This process deepens the panel lines so that later on the wash will run through the grooves smoothly.  I used the back of my hobby knife to gently trace the lines over and over until deep enough.  As shown on the bottom pic below, the panel line encircled on the right is deeper and more noticeable than the left one that wasn't scribed. 

And now I present to you, the mighty glueless and paintless prebuilt Chaos Gundam!

Once contented with my modifications, I then proceeded with gluing the parts together.  I used Revell plastic cement.  After applying the glue, I used double clips to hold the part together and let them dry for a day.  What this cement does is it melts the plastic and welds them together.

On the top photo below, you can see the plastic ooze from the contact points and after removing those ooze through sanding, the results are on the bottom photo.  Viola! No more seam lines!

After taking care of the seam lines through sanding, I now proceeded painting.  But before that, I put the parts in skewers (or locally known as barbeque sticks) since I don't want fingerprints on them.  On some parts I just inserted the skewers on the female plugs but on parts without them, I used sticky tacks to hold the part on a skewer. 

For really small parts, I use alligator clips. 

After applying a primer, I now proceeded spray painting.  Yep, I still don't want to invest on an airbrush and compressor, mainly because I am a cheap bastard.  My only regret is that I can't enhance my kits through weathering, shadowing, etc.  But I'll live.

On the photos below, I used a technique called masking.  I used tamiya masking tape to cover up portions which would require another paint job so it'll be okay to spray paint over them. 

On the photo below, you can see that I masked a portion on the chest which is supposed to be painted red.  It's pretty hard painting lighter colors over darker ones and so masking is necessary.

Although I use the masking technique, there are some parts that still need hand painting.  On the photo below, I have masked a portion on the shield before spray painting the rest with black.  After painting and the masking tape removed, I then proceeded hand painting the detail.

The final part in detailing is filling panel lines.  In most parts I use a technique called washing.  I used a ratio of 70% water and 30% black acrylic paint for the wash.  Scribing the panel lines helps a whole lot in this technique since the wash runs smoothly on deeper grooves. 

First, you put the tip of the brush full of wash on one end of the panel line and then you just let gravity control the wash.  In some cases, I use a plastic straw to blow air on the wash in angled or long lines.  Paint blots on the starting end of the wash is unavaoidable and to remove it I just rubbed it off gently with an appropriate thinner, in this case, a cotton bud damped with water.  I still use a pen (Steadler .02 and .05) for other panel lines impossible for washing, i.e. eyes, details on rifle, etc. 

…And on the fifth month, I rested…again. 

After my rest, I put every part of you in its place.  Posed you a little and took these awesome photos. 

…And then I blogged.