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| Halt and bask in my glory fiend! |
Back when GunplAfrica came quietly screaming into the world one of the first posts was a custom kit from modeler Chris Mitchell - which you can see here. Now he hath returned to us with a lovely custom MG Gundam X. For those of you with an appreciation for beauty there are an abundance of pictures for your eyes and some words from the modeler that can be read by clicking the jump.
All done ! The divider portion will be in the second part of this because I got plenty to say on how that mod came out. Gundam X was always one of my underrated series and was quite surprised when we finally got one.
The X for the most part is a pretty plain suit it doesn't have really bright colors like the seed kits and even though there are different color schemes (3) I wanted more of the anime look which is pretty dark. There is a lot of white (plus I hate painting white for some reason) in this kit so I wanted to break it up with some light grey.
The inner frame is in metallic grey with some bright silver for the chest and some gold on the knees for some color separation.
I also did the solar panels in purple instead of blue because I thought it went with the purple on the arms and legs . To try and get more "pop" out of the purple parts I used the rainbow style paper that is in the solar panels (which was a nightmare to cut) so when light hits it the reflection looks really good even though I couldn't show it in these pictures also all plastic pieces were covered in future shine to get them to look super clear . Did a bit of color mixing with different paints for the white and the yellow in the v fin.
For articulation there really isn't anything this kit can't do.
The back skirt is pretty long so you may not get super dynamic posing out of it but i didn't have any problems with doing any poses i needed.
Balance was great and even the hands didn't bother me with this one.The only real problem with this kit was that the satellite cannon is over complicated to "transform" and if you're not careful it will break.
Overall I don't believe in a perfect kit but this is pretty close for what it is the build is pretty straight forward great for all skill levels if you are starting out painting there are not that many different colors so its a pretty simple paint job and a good introduction into the MG line.
The divider portion was actually pretty easy mod until the shield came into play. For the backpack I took the old 1/100 version of the x divider however, the the old connector peg is round and the MG connector is square so it was the classic example of trying to fit a round peg into a square hole. There are a couple of ways one could do this that i though of.
1) I could use the adapter piece from the mg build strike full package and cut the peg on the old 1/100 and super glue the adapter from the mg build strike. The issue with this option was trying to get the peg exactly where I wanted it before you super glue it because once its glued if it doesn't work right you are pretty much screwed.
2) Find a way to "beef up" the 1/100 peg so that it would fit the mg without cutting the peg, I have seen this done by modelers online in many different ways. The most popular being use a 3d printer and just build the part .Problem with this is i have no access to a 3d printer and have never used one.
I wasn't sure how i was going to accomplish this, after staring at it for about 10 min I had a epiphany use one of the old poly caps problem solved! I glued one of the unused poly caps from the old 1/100 to the peg and then used a electric sander to make it square until it fit and that was pretty much it lol
The shield was a lot more difficult. The plastic on the old 1/100 kit was a little flimsy so i thought i could make it a little more solid by using putty. However, I decided against that because I felt it was too much work and didn't think it would make a real difference so I left it as it was.
I filled in the panel lines on the front of the shield ( the old 1/100 had panel lines all over the place) and sanded it. I was never really satisfied with the result, It never looked smooth to me even though it felt smooth .So I used more putty and sanded it down again and still had the same result. I also got to use my scriber for the first time, If you don't have a steady hand i wouldn't suggest using it I tried to eyeball the lines and that became a problem that I needed to fix later on.
Once I started to paint it i could still see the putty that was filled in through the paint (which is what I feared it wasn't smooth) but by that time there was not much i could do so I added another layer of white and even though you cant really see it in the pictures they are there.
The old 1/00 shield came in a metallic finished which at first I didn't care for but by this time in the build i was starting to get impatient.
I wasn't sure how I was going to strip the metallic finish off of it and then repaint it. Not only did I feel it was too much work i didn't think painting it I could do a better job than the metallic finish so i opted to just keep the finish.
It also came with metallic stickers and a by this time I was tired of working on the shield so I used them against my better judgement and filled in the gaps by using metallic gundam markers so its was really a patch job more than a paint job lol.
The fuel tanks were another issue but was a lot easier to deal than the shield .
To be honest I wasn't really satisfied with how the shield came out I think if I had a second shot at it i could do a better job luckily I bought two of the gx dividers so maybe later on I will try to do the shield the way I originally in-visioned.
Overall I'm satisfied with how this mod came out for it being my first mod. The shield was the disappointing factor and turned out to be just good enough but everything else didn't seem that difficult in comparison.
If you are going to try this modding job its probably the easiest to start with (Shield not included lol) I just hope one has more patience than I did lol. From start to finish from building and painting the GX to finishing the divider was about 3 weeks at one point with the shield I got so frustrated I stopped for about 4-5 days or i might have been able to get this done from start to finish in about 2 weeks but I'm not the fastest when it comes to building.
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