Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Intermediate Gundam Modelling Tutorial Video - Vol.1 - MG Titan's Mark 2

First of all this is a widely available video on Youtube and I'm sure some of you may have seen it already. I watched this video for the first time... a long time ago. I can't remember. But as I'm going through building my RX-77D I decided to take a look at some of the videos again to get some ideas for the processes that pro modellers like to use.

Although it's not my favourite video in the series it is a good one as the techniques the modeller uses (Sorayama Ryuji) aren't that advanced, but they do require a lot of patience. I would be interested in knowing the total time he spent on making it.

For these posts I'm going to do a running commentary of what's going on. Let's get to it.

Part 1:



3:20 - First we can see that he STARTS by spraying the surfacer on the individual panels before cutting. Like I did with my MG Impulse and with the Sinanju (didn't take pics of that part). Now while I believe that Surfacer and Primer or two different things I think how they're used in this instance largerly achieve the same objective; preparing the modelling surface for painting and smoothing over imperfections. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

3:50 - C.Men. Semen?! Sorry. OK well I can totally understand why he'd do this because I had this exact same problem on my GM Powered. I didn't prime and sprayed right on the part and sure enough the edges were still in orange. I am using a similar technique to this on my RX-77D but I'm sanding it by hand and not using a design knife to make the C Men/surface. Thing is... for this model he's not doing a drastic colour change at all so I think this step could be omitted. But for the sake of perfection/completion/safety... It makes sense.

5:23 - 500-600 grit! I'm using 240 right now to prepare my surfaces... Too rough? I wonder. We'll see after I prime it.

5:53 - They don't say what he does about the nubs...

6:10 - Some parts seem to be sanded down and others don't seem to have been touched at all, as in the surfacer is still totally intact - compare the shoulder and the cockpit hatch. I wonder why?

7:00 - 2nd round of surfacer! But it is a good way to see errors that you might have missed.

7:20 - Drawing his own panel lines... That must have taken forever.

7:35 - Holes... good idea. I'm going to steal that one.

8:40 - That tool looks useful. I could have used that when I was trying to do the lines on my G04. Man was that difficult. Just the design part, nevermind the execution.


Part 2:



0:40 - To make one bit look deeper he raised the whole surface... a bit extreme but I understand it. Gauging it out with the other tool would have been uneven. Kinda clever actually.

1:45 - OK this is just a space/equipment/jealousy thing. Setting up all those parts on sticks like that... and being able to spray in his room... WITHOUT gloves or a mask. With a decent chair and desk. I can only dream about that right now.

1:55 - Surfacer round 3! Wow. That's a helluva way to be exact.

5:20 - Black undercoat for the silver to make it darker... hmm... Probably works better when you can control the flow/stream/pressure/consistency of the paint with an airbrush. This technique won't work well with cans I think.

6:00 - 4 hours to paint?! Wow. That's why I never do all my painting in one sitting.

6:30 - I LOVE this lining technique. Thing is you need to thin the lining paint with something that won't destroy the paint job underneith. And how do you do that?


I enjoy these videos but I'm often left without of lot of questions at the end of them, and my Japanese isn't good enough yet to understand all of the explanations. I can make out bits and pieces here and there but... I'm a long way from understand all the words and grammar patterns used for this type of talk. Oh well.

Notes:
-It seems like he left all the seam lines intact.
-They didn't talk about what he did for the lenses and the face.
-I wonder if he had any problems with movement because of the paint/surfacer.

8 comments:

  1. The way I do the panel lines is with enamel paints diluted 10 parts thinner to 1 part paint over acrylic paints. The enamel thinner does not react with the acrylics and cleans up with a bit of thinner on a dust free cloth. There is another one in this series of someone doing a VF-0S where you can see the technique clearly.

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  2. oh the hasegawa one? ive seen that. you're right. for lining tutorials it doesnt get much better than that one.

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  3. I realy like this "Pro Modeler" video series because they show many difrent tehnoques used by japanees pro's. I'm gonna start working on my MG Impulse tonight so those videos gave me a few more ideas.

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  4. For the panel lines what you do is use different paint types, so that if you've painted with acrylic paints, then you wanna do the pannel lines in enamel or vice versa as the different paint types dont mix. Of course you want to thin a lot

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  5. so you probably need seperate thinners for each type of paint you have then...

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  6. That's how I interpereted your question - I have read somewhere of people using lighter fluid, ethanol/ 97% Isopropyl alcohol as opposed to thinner. The technique is called "wash" right? Check this out: http://www.gamerabaenre.com/panel_line_wash.htm

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  7. omg how much time did i just lose by going to that site?! i read a bunch of tutorials there. wow! ive been there before but just to look at his WIPS and models... the tutorial section is something else! Thanks for that link! I learned A LOT!

    I actually did a bit of plamo shopping today and found the enamel thinner (i've been using laquer all this time) that i need to do the wash. But i already have lighter fluid so i might try that first. i didnt buy the enamel thinner because it came in a very large tin (more than i need). and i'm pretty far from that stage yet.

    thanks for the link man! that really helped a lot!

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  8. No probs man. I think he specifies in the bottom of the tutorial that the lighter fluid is Naphtha based, and it was much easier to use as well. I see zippo fluid on dude's desks in pics occasionally, and a quick search indicates Zippo fluid is naphtha based. You may want to investigate further.

    If it's not too much trouble, could you please go into a bit more detail about scraping the primer on the edges back? In what instances would this be necessary and why? Is a second coat of primer required?

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