PLAMO DIARIES

Like i mentioned in  a previous post , this pandemic gave me the chance to work on a few kits in my backlog, one of which was this  SD BB (No. 209) G Generation-F RX-93 Nu Gundam . I wanted to warm up with what I thought would be a simple kit before tackling the  Millennium Falcon . I was right about the simple part, but this kit was much more involved than I thought.

Way back when I had just started with the kit , one of the first things I did was to attempt to hand-paint the details inside the turret gun wells using Gundam markers, which were the only paints I had at the time. I didn't care too much about screen accuracy at the start, but I came to regret my color choices as the build went on. Still, I couldn't be bothered to redo it for something that I knew would hardly be seen.

With the decals and gloss topcoat in place, it was time to move on to weathering the kit. My challenge was that, aside from panel-lining and light usage of Tamiya Weathering Master, I had never seriously weathered a model before. For this kit, I researched a bit and saw lots of recommendations to start weathering with an enamel or oil wash. I was hesitant about using an enamel wash because I was still worried about aggravating  some of the cracks from before  even though the model was already protected by layers of lacquer topcoat. And I didn't want to deal with the smell of that much thinner. Oil paint wasn't really in consideration either as I didn't want to buy some new oil paint tubes and turpentine. Instead, I had an idea to make my own wash using my really old (nearly 20 years I think) Prang semi-moist watercolor set. If it turned out bad, I could just wash it off under the tap, I thought. To be on the safe side, I searched around for tutorials or discussions on the u

The Millennium Falcon comes with an assortment of colored panels and markings. And to reflect them on this kit, you can choose between decals and good old-fashioned masking. I definitely wanted to avoid the masking route because of a bad experience in a previous build and because I thought it would be easier to just use the decals. Bandai was generous enough to include both sticker and water slide decals in most of their Star Wars kits. The stickers are actually really good, but I decided to go with the water slides because I think the colors are slightly better. And I actually enjoy the process of applying them.

For my first few posts, I'll be backtracking on some builds that I had already completed , most recent of which is the Bandai Millennium Falcon 1/144 The Force Awakens version. My dad insisted that I pick up this kit when we were in Japan in 2016. I had built the 1/72 Resistance X-Wing  the previous year, so I knew the quality to expect. And for 4000 yen, it wasn't a hard choice. And this was before I knew I hated Disney Star Wars. But that's another story altogether.