Perfect Grade......sounds perfect right? Well, Bandai truely outdid themselves when they created this kit...seriously. Everyone who is familiar with the Gundam Universe has heard of the Wing Zero Custom, a truly symbolic weapon if I do say so myself.
Well, back to the topic at hand. My first gunpla kit was a perfect grade(right to the top XD) and let me tell you, I really enjoyed putting this thing together. Now, it always looked great on my shelf, but something was missing. Oh right! Paint! Even though the kit was designed to look great without paint or even panel markings, I felt that it was severely lacking and decided to get to work.
I used "gundam markers" (black) to fill in pretty much all of the panelling. While I have been told before that gray goes best on white, brown on red and black on anything else I think that black stands out the most from the painting I did to my master grades, so I decided to stick with it. Trial and error, my friends.
Other than that my tools were:
1x Hobby Plastic Sprue Cutter
1x Plastic Cement Pen
1x Super Glue (Last resort XD)
1x Box of Gundam Seed based "Gundam Paint Markers
1x Box of Gundam Seed Destiny based "Gundam Paint Markers"
1x Box of Cu-Tips (tm)
1x Black fine tipped "Panel marker"
Let it begin........
About an hour into the operation, removed his head (literally) and paneled just about everything, including repainting his headpiece gold. "I'll bite off your arms!!"
Next the legs........
For anyone who has purchased and assembled a perfect grade gundam model, you know how intricate the internal structure is, and how this is the way the model can attain such incredible maneuverability. And just like all the internal pieces, there are just as many externals as well, that needed to be pulled off and individually painted/panelled. The picture to the left shows the leg without armor, minus the feet and thigh. This took about an hour to accomplish, not too much work really, more like just shaving off extra sprues and sanding to make it look more appealing. I seemed to have gone to town with the gold marker as well, though you can't really see it here. I mean, gold just looks amazing, why not put it on an amazing mobile suit?After undressing and redressing Zero, we have this!
The arms and shoulders didn't really take that much time at all, just repaneled what I could and after breaking and regluing......yes.....his right hand, I was able to progress. Superglue/plastic cement is wonderful, but patience is even better. Can't use either without patience.
"I can stand on my own again!"
2 days, 7 hours and 33 seconds later.....I give Wing Zero Custom Mk.II!
"You look wonderful Zero! But.....still too heavy to stand without propping you up..." XD Sigh
Well, there you have it, I tried the best I could to show the steps I went through to refinish my Perfect Grade Wing Zero Custom. I may edit this later to add more pictures to show steps in more detail, but all in all, I love this model. While the frame leaves much to be desired, and as stated above the model does have a tendency to be very backheavy meaning he will start to fall backwards if I do not prop him up somehow. Wish he would have come with a stand........
^^
