Project: Revival of Gundam RX-78 GP02

One day as I was tidying up my closet I found a box of Gundam model kit that I had forgotten I have. It was the Gundam RX-78 GP02, the one featured in the anime Gundam 0083 Stardust Memory.

I can faintly remember assembling it but totally cannot recall when and how I got it. Anyway, the Gundam has already been built and most parts had been glue tight with plastic cement. It was not very attractive as it was only in blue and grey colors so I thought I would give it a new lease of life by repainting it.

This is how the Gundam looks like when I found it. It is 1/144 scale no grade and almost impossible to post.

It is very hard to paint light color paint like yellow over darker color surface. In order to overcome this, I use Mr. Base White to prime the surface first before painting. Paint stick to the surface better after it is primed.

This is the Mr. Base White.

This is how the parts look like after being primed.

I only use Gunze Sangyo paints that I bought from a local hobby shop called Hobby HQ. This is the only hobby shop I found in Kuala Lumpur that has the most extensive range of paint available.

As I do not own an airbrush set so I had to resort to painting with paintbrush. Immediately after I started painting I realized that airbrush was the way to go so I am now on the look out for a decent airbrush and compressor set for future projects.

One of the problems with painting using paintbrush is that the paint dry too fast and this makes painting difficult. One way to make things easier is to drop a few drops of retarder to the thinner and paint mixture. The retarder will slow down the drying of the paint and gives you a little bit more time to finish painting.

This is the retarder that I used.

These are parts that had been painted.

I apply masking to make sure that I do not accidentally paint on the wrong area. Masking can be very tedious and time consuming and it requires a lot of patient, too but somehow I found myself liking it a lot.

Lastly, I use a Gundam marker to paint the panel lines. My Gundam marker is oil based and is difficult to remove if you make a mistake so I recommend to use a water-based market instead. Unfortunately for me I couldn’t find any water-based market. I only painted a few panel lines and refrained from painting all of them because I think it will make the Gundam looks too anime-ish.

And here it is. This is how the repainted Gundam looks like.