Gunpla WIP #1 - 00 Gundam

I've now finished my first gunpla build after a long hiatus. I looked back in my posts and it was quite a few years since I last bought and built any gundam plastic model kits, or gunpla as they are known.

I don't know how I got back into it now, I think I found a really well polished YouTube channel and then bought 2 kits and a lot of the modelling tools I didn't have first time round. Quite a time and money sink, but I wanted to get back into it and really put more effort into kits as opposed to snapbuilding them without painting.

I purchased 2 1/144 kits, a HG 1/144 00 Gundam GN-0000 and a HGUC 1/144 Char's Zaku II. Chars Zaku I've always wanted to build because Iove the zaku design and the 00 Gundam because it was supposed to be a good first kit, and wasn't too expensive-if I messed up, not too many problems involved.

I put the 00 Gundam together first and took a couple of weeks to fully build, prime and paint it. That included time waiting for parts to dry and more equipment to arrive in the post as I kind of kept finding more things I didn't have, sandpaper, paints, brushes, bamboo skewers and crocodile clips for spraying model parts. It can be done cheaply, gunpla, but you can also shell out for the hobby if you like, with advanced stuff like airbrushing being an option.

So it was actually a really rewarding experience seeing the kit evolve from sprues and runners, through a nice uniform primed grey, and especially the learning curve of thinning down Tamiya acrylics for hand painting on in layers. This was one thing I found really fun, the painting. I also found it frustrating though, as the white I put down initially turned out to be gloss. That wasn't the finish I was looking for, so I bought a Tamiya flat white and the gloss became something of a base coat. Also the grey primer showed through the white in places, even though I had put down multiple layers. So it was a case of trying to get paint thinned just perfectly so that you can put down smooth layers but not too thin so that you're basically putting down a wash. I don't think I got the hang of it and was recommended citadel paint if I'm going to hand paint for my second kit.

All in all, I'm happy with my progress with the first kit, and I'm looking to go into other types of paint ie sprays and do some weathering techniques for my next kits.

I'll update with more of these WIP or works in progress posts in future! I have photos on my phone but the blogger app is terrible and will not let me post anything, and the browser version of blogger doesn't appear to let me upload images into the posts...I'll keep trying.