Ramblings of a Gunpla Novice

As my blog was only made as of two days ago, there is a lot of catching up to do in regards to the Zaku II "Kai" I am working on. After watching Gundam 0080 War in the Pocket again I was feeling in a particularly Gundam enthusiastic mood when I stumbled across Gaijin's racecar-yellow Sinaju. Inspired by its sleek German stylings I decided I must too model myself a sleek suit. Having just watched Gundam 0080 the sleek contours of the Zaku II "Kai" immediately came to mind and I ordered away! All in all I've ordered a hefty amount of material for one HGUC kit:

• HGUC Zaku II "Kai" 
• Decal Sheet from Samueldecal
  
• Assorted new Vajello Model Air colors
  
• New can of Armory Grey Primer
  

The model itself came last week and as you can see the box is rather mangled:

A bit of shame as I like to save the box artwork for collages later. Next time I'll have to order from somewhere else.

While the arrival of the new paints will prevent me from doing any painting at all until Friday, I was able to get an extensive amount of preparatory work done. The Zaku II FZ has been semi-assembled and is ready to be mounted and micro-masked for priming and then airbrushing. I've also used some Vajello pumice I normally use for basing to fill in any gaps between pieces. Seamless shoulders for me too! Woot!

Parts galore!

I'm leaving the cables on the sprue for easy access to other parts of the model and also for their easy painting.

Can't wait to do some poses with this.

A nice thick shield. 

Super cool alternative head!

There was one accident though. While cutting off the rubber ball joint for the head I accidentally made a tiny incision into the next of the joint itself, thinking it was part of the sprue. While at the time the minor cut didn't seem like a big deal, it proved to be disastrous. The ball joint later gave away completely while I was examining the flexibility of the head! The broken ball joint was even stuck inside the head although with a bit of tenacity and an exacto-knife I managed to get it out. I've since repaired it with superglue, but that will be a eventual fragile point of the finished model. It's not a completely devastating anyways as the head itself has really poor mobility.

Along with probably all future products, I'll be airbrushing this Zaku with my handy Aztec A470. To that extent, I have acquired the following materials:

• Blu-tac alternative
  
• 11" wooden sticks
  
• A cardboard box
  
• A sheet of styrofoam insulation (more on this below)
  

After thirty minutes of effort this Sunday, I constructed two shallow boxes with styrofoam inserts. They will serve to hold the wooden sticks to which the parts will be attached to throughout the rest of the process.

I've also dug out my old masking materials. Most of the time my Flames of War miniatures didn't require them so this is going to be a bit of a new area for me. As you can see below, I have both the worlds tiniest masking tape (okay maybe there are smaller) and some liquid mask as well. I'm thinking for now I will use the tape for any joints that I need to mask, and the liquid mask for any panels I wish to mask for whatever reason.

That about concludes preparation. So any time after Friday when the weather (and my homework load) is favorable I'll get to the fun part: priming and airbrushing! I can't wait.