MG 1/100 Wing Gundam Ver Ka

At last, I finally built one of the first MG kits I ever bought. Back when I first got into Gunpla, nearly a decade ago, this was one of my ideal kits I wanted to buy and build. I bought it but was too afraid to build it until I gained enough experience on other kits. As time went on I sort of transitioned to resin figures and did Gunpla on and off, but I finally got around to handling this one from the backlog.

My goal for this kit was to make a nice clean and shiny build, following more or less the original color scheme with the exception of a few accessories or parts here and there.

Overall it turned out decent. I feel like perhaps it could’ve been better, but I gave it my all and that’s what counts, right? My main struggles were the following:

Struggles

• I wanted to try a colorshift paint at least somewhere, I’ve been wanting to for a while. I thought I would give it a try on the gun for this kit. I found one set that was readily available was from Turbo Dork, and it seemed to have decent reviews from others that have sprayed it (particularly for wargaming). Unfortunately, I tried and tried and could not get it to spray well no matter what. I did hear they made it thicker and changed formula a bit sometime not too long ago. I tried spraying with a .5mm gun, thinning using Vallejo flow improver, and no matter what it just wouldn’t spray well. It’s super thick and gloopy out of the bottle, but even if I thin it to the point of being too thin, I still never got a good spray. I eventually gave up and went copper, but I guess I’ll try again in the future, maybe….
• I was using a new knife, and in several places I over cut my nubs. I should’ve been more careful since on a clean kit I tend to notice them.
• The overall “posability” of the kit is a little lacking, after having built it. The gun is too long to really pose well. The guns on the shoulders cannot have the “covers” opened to reveal the guns with the head on due to fit (I opted to just remove the covers completely). In fact, I can’t really fit the covers back on at all with the head in place. The energy tank on the arm is a little tricky and leaves little movement for the arm due to it’s size and hits the back wing and whatnot.

Things I do like on the kit however are the legs. The inner detail and framing is pretty good, and the outer armor goes on and comes off pretty easily as well. The upper body / arms are not quite as easy to adjust, but so far I haven’t really had any kit where the upper body was super adjustable from an inner frame / outer armor perspective.

Lessons Learned:

• Colorshift paints can be hard to use, not like the videos! In all the videos of the Turbodork paints, they sprayed easily and nice. Not for me. I tried so many times until I gave up. Oh well.
• Triple check you are done before calling it done. I’ve made this mistakes many times, and I may never learn. I finish a kit, take photos, and then realize I left something off. In this case it was green stickers. Even worse, on the arms I couldn’t get the clear parts back out easily enough to add the stickers after the fact either.
• Kits with big guns are hard to pose. I had this issue on the FA gundam as well. They just don’t pose well with weapons, at least for me. Maybe with an action base and some glue to help hold position, but otherwise no.
• A 24 inch photo booth for MG is a requirement. Up until now, I’ve been using a 16″ photobooth. It’s been hard to shoot some kits in it since 16″ doesn’t quite give enough space. Saint-ism has a very good series on photographing kits though, and recommended a 24″ booth. I set up a new one and the photos got much better and easier to take. I still need to work on lighting positioning a bit to remove some glare on backdrop, but overall much better results.