MG 1/100 Full Armor Gundam

Here is my completed MG Full Armor Gundam. A WIP is available here. My goal was to get back into weathering.

Kit Quality

I have mixed feelings of this kit. I really liked the design originally (prior to building), and still do, but a little less than before. Some issues I have with the kit itself is pose-ability and sturdiness. At least for me, it isn’t great. I think it tries to be great, but fails. For example, the top two shields are very adjustable placement wise given the supports they are on, but the way they attach to those supports is very weak and any minor adjustments causes it to break. You’re only option is to glue them I guess. Furthermore, kit balance is pretty tricky, it continues to want to tilt to the left or right. Added some glue to stand to help, but it’s still not great. It’s just a bulky large kit I guess.

This also makes it harder to photo and place. It just takes up quite some space. I hear the psycho gundam also takes up quite some space (although I do love the look of that one….). We’ll see if I end up getting it, but doing the FA gundam has made it a little less likely than it used to be.

Yes, there are also supposed to be plastic bags over the arm and knee joints. Yes, they were a pain to put on and after I put one on I thought it also looked dumb. It also tore. That is why they are not there on mine.

My Build

Regarding specifics of my build, it took me quite a while to get through it, nearly 40 hours. I’m pretty slow I think, but this kit also has a lot of parts.

First I did the OOB build to see how it all fits together, then I painted most of it and applied decals, and then weathered. This final posting is only the weathered kit, but you can see some of the unweathered photos in the WIP.

I wanted to focus on weathering, and in doing so I ended up trying a good number of techniques using paints from AMMO. This was my first adventure into weathering in many many years, and probably my first serious look at it actually trying a wide variety of techniques.

The outcome isn’t amazing or game changing. Of course, I dreamed that if I followed some guides and used the right techniques and products it would come out looking like all the super star weathering posts out there, but of course that’s never how real life works. But the good thing is I did try a lot of different techniques and became familiar, got more practice, did things incorrectly and hopefully learned how not to do them for next time, and my next kit will be better.

So here it is, my weathered full armor gundam!

Things learned:

• Large crazy kits look great on box art, but are challenging in the real world. They take up lots of space, they may present balance issues, be difficult to pose even if they have many points of articulation, and are hard to take photos of.
• AMMO products by mig jimenez are nice paints and weathering products. I hadn’t learned of the ammo site until this kit, and I feel like there is a lot more depth for me to dig into there. The few products I have seem great, if you know what you are doing (I don’t), easy to use out of bottle, etc. Furthermore, they have some books that are helpful if people want some guides on various techniques beyond hunting down and watching youtube videos.
• Enamel washes on bandai plastic may very well cause cracking and brittle plastic. Some of my smaller pieces became brittle after the brown enamel wash was applied liberally over a lot of the kit (several days after application), and some just snapped in two after barely touching. More details in the WIP, but if using any product with enamel thinner on bandai plastic (and thus most gunpla) be very careful and make sure you are aware of issues that may come from it and how to try and limit them.
• Don’t overdo it on chipping effects technique from mig (similar to hairspray technique). I think I left too much of the brown on when using this technique, and then had a lot of trouble trying to catch the rest of the kit up to look as dirty as the thighs. Next weathering kit I will try and do more subtle weathering.
• When using sponge and brush to paint chips, focus almost entirely on edges/raised corners. On this kit, I knew I shouldn’t apply too much to large open areas, and I tried to limit myself, but it wasn’t enough. It still ended up looking fake and dumb in some places and I had to go back and try and correct where possible after I realized it. I think this is especially important for silver spots – I think my brown / rust colored spots look a lot better than the silver – probably should be more subtle with silver just on a couple corners and edges.