Quick Guide to Amateur Painting Gundam Model Kits

I was talking to a friend a couple weeks ago and he asked how I painted my gundams. That gave me an idea to make up a quick guide (and to justify the purchase of another gundam =P) on how I go about to paint my gundams.

This guide will focus primarily on the painting process. I won't go into details on building the gundams since there are many good tutorials out there already. Keep in mind that this is the way the AMATEUR way of painting. It's as "ghetto" as it gets in that this is perhaps the quickest and least expensive way of doing it. The main difference between the way I do it and the way professionals do it is that they normally would use a airbrush. Also, they would paint each pieces separately.

As you will soon see, I do neither. =P

I think I covered everything I need to cover so far, so let's get started!







For the purpose of the tutorial, I purchased a SD (Super Deformed, which means that the head is huge compared to the body, in other words, I dub them "Baby Gundams") since they're cheap and I never built one before.

taken from: http://fudoushin.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/img_8045.jpg (I was too lazy to take out my camera and take a picture of my own box).

FIRST STEP
Opening the box, you will see endless amounts of plastic bags with the pieces inside all connected to a larger piece of plastic. These big pieces of plastics are called runners.

This picture was taken from my brother's 1/100 MG 00 QAN[T]; SD 00 Raiser has three runners. I forgot to take a picture before I opened the plastic bags, thus a picture from a different model =P


SECOND STEP
After taking out the runners from the box, figure out what color you're going to paint each runners. Normally, I would separate them into different piles (ie: Red pile, Black pile, Yellow pile, White pile, Grey pile, etc). At times, you may need to color one runner with different colors, so figure out how to break the runner into the appropriate amount of pieces (without breaking the actual model pieces of course!)

As you can see at the botom of the box, there's a small piece of runner that is red. I cut that out from the blue runner.


THIRD STEP
Now it is time to prepare your painting equipment. I normally use spray cans that I purchase from Canadian Tire. They're the Krylon acrylic kind that usually costs me about $5.

Of course, paint outside, unless you have a ventilator in your room. These fumes can get quite noxious. Always make sure to shake your can well to avoid runny paint smears on your pieces, which can lead to a lot of tears and sore muscles (from sanding the paint off). As you can see quite clearly, there is no airbrush (and air compressor for that matter) present on the scene.

FOURTH STEP
Spray you pieces with the selected paint. Like I stated in the third step, it is important that YOU SHAKE YOUR CANS WELL BEFORE USING! When you spray, make sure that you aim the nozzle away from the runner and let some of the paint fly into the open air (to avoid run-ons as well on your pieces). I normally spray in a horizontal direction at a relative moderate pace. If you spray to quickly, you won't get much paint on and if you spray too slowly, there's a higher chance of getting run-ons.

Make sure to cover the entire surface of the piece. That includes the front face, the back, the sides, and top & bottom. It's IMPORTANT not to overspray! It's best to apply multiple coats instead of one heavy coat. This will prevent running as well! Since I use Canadian Tire paint, I usually wait about 3-5 minutes before applying another coat.

I usually use this box to spray my runners, thus the bluish tinge. You would hold one corner of the runner (or the top label piece [where it tells you what runner it is, ie: A runner, B runner, C runner, etc]) or whatever area you can hold onto since it won't be painted.


FIFTH STEP (OPTIONAL)
This step involves painting one piece with different colors. Most of the time, this step isn't required, however this is a SD kit (which costed me only $12). On an SD kit, details are sacrificed and many pieces (of supposedly different colors) are put together under one color. For example:

This is a shield piece of the 00 Raiser (I believe...). The bottom sword-like part should be white.

So to paint this, I would tape up whatever I don't want painted.

After taping, you repeat Step 4, which is to spray the piece with the desired color. The finished product looks like this

And that's how I paint my gundams! The rest of this post will be pictures displaying the whole thing being put together.

This is my workspace I used to build my gundam. Normally, I would use my living room table, since there's a lot more space. However, this gundam only had three runners, so I built it in front of my computer. The building process is pretty straight forward. All you need to do is read the instructions. At times, you may have to make some adjustments since painting adds bulk to your pieces, hence it may be tough to put two pieces together. In this case, use a file to sand down the connector parts so that it'll fit!

When I go about, putting my gundam together, I would outline the outer pieces to give it more detail. Notice how plain this GN drive looks...

Compared to this! All I did was to add a line using a thin felt tip (I used a Gundam marker, which is a slightly overpriced thin tip felt marker you can buy from an art store for a couple dollars less). 

And now, the finished product!

A display of the entire body

I painted the jewel on top of its head red (originally color was green...), and the fins gold using Step 5. It's hard to see, but the chest has some grey and red (originally color was all blue...), which was painted using step 5 twice (once to put in the red, another time to put in the grey). 

I hope that you find this guide somewhat of use! =)