Vernier Detailing
For the shoulder verniers, I already did color separation between the actual verniers and the frames but I wanted to add more details.
I masked out the outer portion of the verniers by punching a hole on a large masking tape and sticking it on to the edge of the rim.
I added two layers of clear blue over the chrome. This created a nice blue flame effect on the inner portion of the verniers.
First set of circles came out beautifully.
I learned from my previous mistake with the revolver bullet chambers so I made sure to cut out a new masking tape after each hole was painted in.
The inner colors came out beautifully. But this wasn't over. It was time to add more details to the base frame.
For once, I decided to be a smart man and gave these a try. These are metallic color Gundam markers. Before I went into painting in the tricky bits of the vernier frame, I decided to give it a go with a less challenging piece.
I basically took a piece and used a metallic green marker to paint in the small circle. Impressed with how easy it was to paint this in, I decided to move on to the real challenge.
I first painted in the small circular molds with a gold marker. Unfortunately, I went too thick with the marker paint. I also painted in the other miscellaneous flat molds with the silver marker.
To finish it off, I painted the curved molds with copper paint.
I placed acrylic copper paint on a wet palette and used a toothpick to paint in the details. This was a technique I tried for the first time and it came out pretty nicely.
Not a foot fetish
My next challenge was to mask some tricky areas of the foot.
On the right, we have the bottom of the feet that has its own vernier grills. I wanted to do here what I did for the shoulder verniers by adding chrome outer frame and blue inner frame.
On the left, we have ankle guards with a small concave areas on the sides. These parts are supposed to be painted yellow on the larger portion and chrome on the edges. This one was going to be super tricky.
I first started out by cutting out small circles to mask the corner of the edges.
I then decided to give this guy another try...
The last time I tried using this, I ended up re-painting the hidden portion of my Wing Zero twice.
I painted the edges of the concave area with the masking sol and covered the rest with regular masking tape. I then painted it chrome, masked the edged with a thing strip and painted it with clear yellow.
This was the result:
Now I just had to peel off the liquid mask....
Sigh...
So I brought back the alcohol tub.
Fortunately, the other part of the foot was much more straightforward.
The masking came off very cleanly.
That completed the outer rim. I waited a few days for this to cure and went back to masking the outer rim as well.
After making sure all the openings are sealed tight, I added clear blue to the inner areas.
Beautiful.
Clear Over Clear
Here is another piece that needed masking.
The goal here was to paint the orb green while leaving the rest yellow. The conservative approach here would be to re-do the orb with green candy coat. Unfortunately, this would mean I'd have to add several more layers to this piece and risking the possibility of making the paint layers too thick. The final result would be black primer + chrome metal coat + 2 clear yellow layers + black base coat + chrome metal coat + 2 clear green layers. All that being said, that was still the safer way to go about this.
Unfortunately...
... I like to live dangerously.
I started out by adding a layer of clear blue. My hope here was that the clear blue layer will make the final result look green. It wasn't looking very promising after one layer but I decided to give another layer a go.
I actually did do a test run with a plastic spoon ahead but this came out way better than I expected.
Third Time's The Charm
Remember this guy?
It was once again time to give this guy a go.
As always, I start out by masking the edges. Since the panel lines were cut very deep this time, I was able to use a modeling knife to cut them clean with very little effort.
The red part came out nicely. After letting this cure for few days, I went on and masked everything but the small part that I wanted to paint gunmetal.
I learned from my mistakes from the shoulder verniers so instead of directly painting the gunmetal over the chrome color, I decided to paint a new layer of glossy black first and then coated over it with gunmetal.
I can't say I'm too happy with the quality of the panel lines but I was very happy with the masking results for the wings.
Also included in the photo above are the pieces that also had to go through the repair process along with the wings. If you look closely, you can see that a single layer of the red clear coat peeled off with the masking tape. At this point, I decided to be more careful in the future and just move on.
After I added some clear coat on the wings, it was time to add the finishing touches with panel lines.
When I tried to wash out the excess enamel with lighter fluid, the lighter fluid ate through some of the chrome paint. I can only assume the clear coat didn't properly coat this portion of the piece very well so the lighter fluid easily corroded through.
I did not want to rework the wing for the fourth time so I just took some silver Gundam markers and painted over.
Masking Hell
Here are a few small pieces that needed masking.
So the masking hell started.
And once they were all masked, I coated them with a glossy black layer followed by gunmetal.
For once, everything came out perfectly with no significant flaw.
More Vernier Detailing
For the leg verniers, I wanted to add similar level of details as the shoulder verniers. I started out with some clear blue to give them the blue flame look.
I also wanted to paint some details in gold. Learning from my previous mistake, I squeezed out the Gundam marker ink onto a palette instead of applying it directly to the mold. I then used a toothpick to paint in the pieces.
Even though painting with toothpick is pretty accurate, you can see that I still had a few parts where it spilled over the edges. I remedied this by taking a clean toothpick and wetting it with some lighter fluid. I then gently rubbed off the excess ink.
I proceeded to do the same on the other piece as well.
More Failures
After a day in alcohol bath, I took out the ankle guards and scrubbed off the remaining paint.
This time, I started by painting the whole thing gunmetal first.
After giving it a clear coat on top and letting it cure for 2 days, I went on and started painting in the details with a Gundam marker. Then tragedy struck while trying to wash the excess ink with lighter fluid...
You can see that the lighter fluid started eating through the clear coat and then into the gunmetal layer as well.
This wasn't the only piece I was having this issue...
I really should give more time for the clear coat to cure before starting enamel wash.
Polishing
Here is something I tried using for the first time.
The polishing process first starts with sanding the surface of a fully cured clear coat (3 or more layers of it recommended) using a 2000 or higher grit sandpaper. Once that is complete, I take use a microfiber cloth and some compound solution to rub the surface that was sanded down. I start with the coarse (red) compound and then I moved onto using the fine (blue) compound.
Here is what a piece looked like before polishing:
And here is what the same piece looked like after polishing:
You can see that the piece after polishing has a much more glossy look.
The idea behind this process is that a glossy clear coat does not necessarily have a perfectly smooth surface formed after it cures. So I make the surface smoother by sanding it down with high grit sandpaper and compound solutions (compound solutions are basically like high grit "sanding paste").
Seamline Conversion
There were some seam lines on the thigh armor that I felt would make great panel lines so I decided to try out a new trick I learned recently.
The process starts out by cutting the edge of the pieces diagonally using a flat blade.
Though this is sufficient for converting the seam line into a panel line, I wanted to make sure the newly created panel lines were more even so I took a 1mm scribing chisel to clean it up more.
Once that is completely, I went ahead and sanded them down to clean up the rough edges.
We have what the pieces looked like before the modification on the right and what it looked like after the modification on the left.
Joint Paints
Get it? hurhur
While doing some partial assembly to prepare seam line removal, I noticed some of the painted joint were giving me trouble. The layers of paint made the joints so thick that they had trouble moving once the pieces were assembled.
I tried to remedy the situation by filing off the paint on areas that are meant to fit into other tight areas.
Then I randomly came across a brilliant trick online.
Masking the joints.
Obviously, this does not help with joints that are already painted but it should help a great deal going forward.
Today I Learned
- Clear coat needs more than 2 days of curing time to safely perform enamel wash
- Avoid painting joints
- Careful not to overdo with Gundam markers since it's very easy to cake with them
- Liquid masking is not idea for clean edge masking
- Masking over clear color requires extra care - either give it more time to cure or put a clear coat over it