u/Raid_PW

I’m three weeks into my PGU build now, I reckon there’s about 40 hours work gone into it at this point. It’s a very impressive kit, but it’s been a bit of a challenge that other PG kits haven’t had because of what makes it impressive.

Painting stuff; I wanted to keep Bandai’s multi-material build intact as I think the colour variation looks pretty good. I didn’t like the gold though, so those parts have been swapped either for Duralumin (basically a slightly warm silver) or the same orange/yellow I’m using the yellow parts. I also swapped around some of the metallic and grey choices in the knee area, and four white sections I’ve done in chrome. I’ve not really done any weathering yet; the majority of that is going to come with the armour parts and accessories, as weathering the frame is really labour intensive (and needs an awful lot of thought put into it for it to look right).

So not to bury the lede any further; I had a disaster with the hip joints. The tolerances in this kit are *much* tighter than previous PGs, and paint in the joints just gums them up in a way I’ve never had an issue with on other models. I knew the hips were a problem area from early reviews of the kit, I just wasn’t expecting quite how much of a problem they were going to be. In attempting to rotate the leg out to the side, I completely tore one side of the joint, and badly damaged the same part for the other leg. Yes, it’s my own fault, but honestly those parts are terribly designed - there’s a very obvious (at least once you see how it gets damaged) weak point. You’ll see in the third and fourth photos in the gallery that I’ve had to completely replace the hip joints with 3D printed parts I designed myself - they don’t have any of the articulation Bandai’s design gives, but even before I started building I thought those were over-designed and overcomplicated. I’m going to put the parts up on Thingiverse once I’ve finished them, so if anyone makes the same mistakes I made, they at least have an alternative, as many countries aren’t served by official parts replacement services (the UK being one of them, much to my annoyance).

And I think I’m getting my photo process dialled in properly now. Like the hip joints it’s massively over-complicated (there are five lights!) for what I need, but playing around with it has become a hobby in and of itself. I’ve had to resort to focus stacking to get the angle and focal length I wanted, while still keeping most of it sharp.

So I made a start on the latest PG kit this week. There's probably 30 hours work here so far, and I feel like this is only about a third of the kit. This is just a straight, painted build so far, I've barely started on weathering it, there are just a handful of small hand-painted bits where I thought it needed a bit of extra contrast.

The issue I'm quickly realising with this monster is that there's just too much detail. I'm not generally a fan of panel lining at the best of times (I think it's often overdone), but I think if you panel lined everything on this kit it'd just look a mess. I do love how far Bandai have gone with detailing, but you have to understand that you'll see half of it while putting it together, then it'll be hidden forever.

I did want to stick with the same level of colour separation that Bandai moulded the kit in, but I've adjusted some of the choices they made. I wanted to try and make as many of what look like structural elements (the bits that surround the components that make the thing work, the bits that they'd mount the armour to) the same colour, so particularly around the knee joint I've inverted the metallic and non-metallic parts. I *hated* the gold parts, they were way too gaudy for my tastes, and I've chosen a slightly warmer silver (Duralumin is the specific colour) for these, as well as reverting a lot of the vent cowlings to yellow as they were on the original 80s design.

I will say that I'm not keen on the photo-etch metal stickers. I love the look of them once they're in place, but only if you manage to painstakingly peel them off the sheet they come on. This is the first time I've used them, and it took three goes before I worked out how you're meant to do it without putting irremovable bends in them. A second set of these would have been nice. I've chosen just not to use the vast majority of the 3D stickers; the extra detail isn't needed, and I don't think the green really works with the rest of my paint job anyway. They're also an absolute pain-in-the-arse to apply.