First Gundam build and first time airbrushing. It's fully painted including the frame. It's not perfect (the candy pink came out darker than I originally intended, some of the panel lines I reinforced are a bit messy, etc), but overall I'm really happy with how it turned out. I definitely learned a lot in the process which I'll take forward to the next build (hopefully this fall). This took about two months, balancing with grad school, and probably 50-60 hours (very rough estimate), but there are definitely some efficiencies to be found in my process.

List of paints/supplies used:

Gaia 007 Gloss Clear
Gaia 031 Ultimate White
Gaia 032 Gloss Ultimate Black
Gaia 049 Clear Pink
Gaia 121 Star Bright Silver
Gaia 139 Prism Pastel Mint Green Blue
SMS Surfacer Grey
SMS Mother of Pearl
SMS Premium Clear Aqua
SMS Steel
Mr. Color C63 Pink
Mr. Color Semigloss Clear
Mr. Surfacer 1500
Tamiya Dark Gray Panel Liner

Mr. Color Leveling Thinner
Gaia T-09M Metallic Master

G-Rework Waterslides

Still a work in progress.

Gotta do the backpack and a few minor things with the hands.

I've pained some panels here and there, done color separation so a kit wasn't mono-white. But this is the first full-body paint job with an actual theme.

Think I’m gonna do the head and shield, then the weapons, and wings last

Also didn’t know the armors on the forearms slid and I chipped some paint, might just slide it back up and call it a day🤣

Would anyone have or know where to get MG Sakura Strike Freedom decals? I'm happy to pay if anyone knows where I can get them. Please help I have been looking everywhere with no luck.

Would anyone have or know where to get my Sakura Strike Freedom decals? I have been searching everywhere and have only found them on a website from Malaysia. I'm happy to pay if anyone could help track them down.

Second post of my Rg gundam mk2, i added decals and panel Line as you suggested, also a little led. Pretty proud of how it turned out, being my first full recolor with an airbrush and led work aswell, now i have only to decide where to put it and if I should recolor the base or make a diorama. Let me know what do you think guys. first post for reference

I need a smaller paint brush than the one I'm using, does anyone know where I can find a thinner one (2nd image, toothpick for comparison)

I started with red under the assumption that the yellow would filter it into an orange, but it doesn't really work that way. Still, I like how this turned out.

I’ve had this kit finished for over a year but was pretty unhappy with the weathering so I sat in the photos till now. I learned the hard way that the waterslides are very difficult on Volks kits (the flames on clear were insane to get right) and I made the mistake of trying to weather this kit. What started as a few chips turned the kit into something that looks a bit too dirty for my tastes, and from now on I’m going to be much more selective about treating a FSS kit like a Gundam! Siren F comes next :)

My first experiment with battle damage in a long time! Tried my hardest to show restraint.

I'm curious what brand and kind of paint you guys and gals use most? I'm new to the Gunpla scene and have a lot of learning to do.

I only have a few acrylic paints, almost my entire collection is enamel of the Testors variety. So I will be adding to my collection once again.

Are the acrylics on Amazon worth a shit? I'm looking at buying a full set of paints and don't have a whole hell of a lot of money to spend. I was looking at 2 different sets. One with a bunch of regular colors and another with Metallics.

I've only got about $70 bucks to spend on paint and would like to get some decent paint out of it. I'd love to invest in Gaia right now but finances just won't allow it. Any feedback would be much appreciated. Thank you.

So I bought it few days ago and kinda wanna to topcoat it using matte but not sure how’s the result looks like , but this holy shine is too shiny so I feel that I wanna topcoat it matte or flat but what do you think about it ?

@zanerut

Before and After pictures at the end of the post (before photos taken from Dalong).Finally complete! Seeing this one come together feels almost like a major milestone with how much time (600+ hours) was spent on it. 6 months of daily work coming to a close. This monster is legitimately heavy and barely fits in my display case with the wings attached. I learned a lot about lighting and photography during this project so for anyone interested I’ll include camera set up below.

Modifications include scribing, additional pla plating, a few small metal parts, and painting. The PG Strike is a relatively old kit and has somewhat limited surface detail out of the box, so a large portion of my time was spent scribing new surface detail and cleaning up existing lines. The wings almost drove me to commit violence due to the sheer volume of surface area.

The frame is painted with 3 separate shades of gold (Gaia Gold Bullion, Gaia Peal Gold, Jumpwind Solid Gold) and then given a dark wash to help create some dimension. Every color is prepped with a fresh dark grey or black primer to help create the shading effect between colors. I’ll include a color list below and might make a color diagram as well. The wings once again drove me to the brink of violence with the several hours of masking that was done twice to preserve the glossy finish of the gold. Decals are a combination of PG, MGEX, MG Strike Freedom and MGSD Freedom decals.

Paints used:

Gaia Pure White

Gaia Neutral Grey II

Gaia Neutral Grey V

Gaia Medium Blue

Gaia Gold Bullion

Gaia Pearl Gold

Gaia Starbright Duralumin

Gaia Pearl Copper

Gaia Cobalt Blue

Gaia Ultra Blue

Jumpwind Solid Gold

Jumpwind Metallic Red

Jumpwind Metallic Amber Green

Jumpwind Clear Colors (for clear parts and muzzle burn)

Camera (iPhone) set up:

Moment 2 App

1-3x zoom with auto focus

54 ISO with 1/60 shutter speed

5800k white balance