Frame Painting
Taking the experience from the previous project into account, I started out by masking all the joints.
This helps the model to stay posable even after it is painted.
As with all metallic colors, I start the painting with a glossy black base coat.
I used a polyurethane acrylic glossy black primer for this first layer. Polyurethane acrylic requires to be applied with a higher psi than regular acrylic paint. It starts out looking a bit thick and clunky at first but it smooths out evenly as it dries.
For the metal layer, I divided the pieces into three different colors: titanium silver, titanium gold, and copper.
After giving it a top coat, I started the assembly of the frame.
Upper body:
Lower body:
And the completed frame:
Joint Covers
I decided to paint the joint cover armor pieces metallic as well. As I did with the frame pieces, I started out with a glossy black base then I painted a chrome metal color over.
Once the chrome layer cured, I masked them and added partial candy coat layers with transparent yellow and red.
By combining transparent yellow and a little bit of transparent red, I created a gold color candy coat. (I also colored the clear color mono eye piece with transparent red while I was at it).
Exhaust Pipes
I wanted to do something different for the exhaust pipes that are found around the head, waist, and legs. Instead of the usual metallic colors, I wanted to give it a much nicer chrome finish.
I first started out by painting them with enamel black (Alclad II gloss black base).
Because the enamel black takes longer to dry than acrylic (note that I mentioned longer dry time, not longer cure time), it can produce a much nicer high gloss finish than regular acrylic glossy black paint.
Once the black layer cured, I went on and used chrome lacquer (Alclad II chrome) to give it an extra shiny finish.
Once the chrome layer cured, I sealed it with glossy top coat (Alclad aqua gloss).
Verniers
For the verniers, I also wanted to give a nicer metallic look like the exhaust pipes but I decided to try something different. Instead of using enamel black for base layer and top it with a chrome layer, I tried using a lacquer silver (bright silver candy base) directly as the base layer with no primer/surfacer.
The particular silver I used allows the application of it as a base layer without any prep layer (which is usually glossy black). This also means there is no surfacer that also acts as a filler that hides any minor scratches leftover from bad sanding work on the bare plastic. If you look at the photo above, there is a painfully visible dull area on the right half of the vernier. To prevent something like this from happening next time, either I'll have to be extra diligent with the sanding work or add a surfacer layer before the silver base.
Once the silver layer cured, I went on and used enamel transparent yellow (Alclad candy yellow enamel) to apply the candy coat.
Once again, enamel dries slowly so it resulted in an extra smooth finish.
For the bigger verniers (particularly the ones on the backpack), I wanted to color the inside with red. I masked up the vernier and used lacquer transparent red to color the inside.
Unfortunately part of the masking failed and the red spilled over. I fixed this mistake by using a q-tip soaked with lacquer thinner and gently rubbing off the red layer of paint.
I was quite surprised how well this worked. I had to be very careful to only wipe off the top-most layer and not hurt the yellow layer underneath. Fortunately, everything worked out nicely.
No comments:
Post a Comment