1/144 HGUC Zeta Gundam

Construction Complete! (8/21/10)

Rules of Engagement:
Going with the original color scheme with slight changes (because the basic colors are always sold out in stores).
Main Colors
TS-26 Pure White instead of regular White
TS-15 Blue instead of Cobalt Blue (wth's the difference?)
TS-8 Italian Red instead of regular Red (Slightly brighter)
TS-40 Metallic Black instead of the weird combination of 90% Navy Blue, 5% Black, and 5% Red...also replacing all interior gray parts with it.
Secondary Colors
X-8 Lemon Yellow instead of Yellow (darker)
X-11 Chrome Silver (for detailing wires in joints, maybe the rifle and hyper mega launcher, still undecided)
X-25 Clear Green over silver (for the eyes, because hand painting > foil stickers any day of the week)
X-23 Clear Blue over silver (for main camera, same as above, need to find time to buy a bottle of this)
X-18 Gloss Black (minor detailing like the parts around the eyes, replacing larger panel-lines w/ this instead of markers)

It's a torso....and yes, I'm quite lazy


I've always liked the face design of Zeta, but I never thought I'd hate a piece of plastic as much as I do now...the thing was impossible to get a good grip on for painting the eyes and panel-lining the "mouth". End result was so-so, but I sure as hell weren't going to clean it and start from scratch. I'm relatively happy with how the vulcan/head vents turned out, but the main/rear camera are a little sloppy...again, not going to bother doing it from scratch. (At least it looks better than lolFoilStickers.) Now that the hardest part (painting the ****ing eyes...) is done, the rest should be a breeze.

It's aliiiiiive~ Now all I need to do is finish all the insignificant parts...like the arms and the legs and the waist and the accessories and EVERYTHING ELSE. *lazy face*

So like...the shoulder piece is one of those pieces where they tell you to put a sticker on but don't give you markings on the piece itself as a visual guide...what a pain.
w/ and w/o sticker (as you can see, it has no markings on the side):


It goes without saying that painting the yellow stripe was a pain (I still refuse to use stickers)...it wasn't perfect, but at least it's done.

Arm's inner coils were painted silver, prettier than leaving it black no? Anyway, my Fall classes starts next week, so I'll probably pick up the pace and finish this by this weekend.

This is the reason why Bandai is absolutely evil:

They expect you to color the rims of the black parts red and the body of the red parts black...an absolute nightmare. (Before you say "lol it's because you're cheap and buy high-grades", certain master grades pull the same stunt; such as 1/100 MG F91's feet parts.) I mean, painting a red part black is fine because black is darker than red and will easily become opaque in 2-3 coats....but painting a black part red takes FOREVER. It must have taken me at least 8 mist coats. As for the result...

Surprisingly, the thing balances itself well with just the wing binders and the waist part. Hell, Zeta was made for space combat anyway, so maybe I can stop here and say it doesn't need legs, it functions like Zeong...jk. It isn't perfect; I'm aware that the lines weren't solid and parts of the red's tint didn't completely match the others, but I can always use the "this is just a high-grade" excuse. Anyway, the legs and feet are almost done, just have to finish covering up this 1 massive screw-up that I made...

Legs/Feet complete, as expected, they were fairly simple in construction, but the ankle verniers took a good deal of time because I couldn't get the paint lines straight.
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Main body assembly complete~ Now I just need to get the accessories, the extra parts needed for wave rider mode (in the interest of time, me being lazy, and the fact that I'll probably never pose it in wave rider mode, I've decide to stop after finishing the regular MS), decals, and final touches.
**On the side note, I didn't realize this thing only supports 12 images per post, and that emoticons count as images...guess I need to restrict myself if I want to get the completion shots in.**

Accessories:

Tried my best detailing the weapons, but the hyper mega launcher is supposed to be completely blue w/ a black barrel, so it still looks rather plain. At least the beam rifle looks ok.

Hyper Mega Launcher:

The hands on this kit is totally not designed for it to hold this. The only way to get it to work is to tuck the back portion under its arm, but then the wing binders are in the way...At least it's a relatively pretty piece of blue plastic.

Beam Rifle & Shield:

Beam Rifle actually looks pretty good; I'm glad they didn't skimp out on the sliding part (for use in MS and MA mode alternatively). Shield is a basic 3 part snap-on, not really much to it, but the design is unique as far as shields go.


That's right, a cheap solid white plastic beam saber that's a single piece connected to the alternate hand...this is as cheap as it gets. There's no way anyone can convince me to paint this part, it'd be a waste of time and paint. As for the Grenade Launcher, they give you a blue piece of plastic w/ a dowel and expect you to use your imagination...there isn't even a small groove or panel line to suggest there's a hole or hatch there.

So I'm finally done~ *lazy face*, this definitely wasn't my best work, but I was distracted half the time w/ other stuff and had to rush through the end of it. At least the thing looks better than a usual high-grade. Anyway, feel free to leave a comment and all that good stuff, cheers.