You know, I should probably stop trying to predict build timelines. Two month builds tend to stretch into eleven month ones way too easily. Here’s a fine example of my horrible planning skills. I give you Gundam Astaroth Nox!

Gundam Astaroth Nox – Build Talk

So what the hell took so long? Mostly life. Plus mad ambitions. And a bunch of failed ideas.

As far as life goes – setting up my new workshop, more work, as well as multiple cases of burnout probably amount to 3-4 months of not building.

Now, if you’ve followed my previous builds, you’ll know I like to try new things, learn new techniques. Well, this time I decided to step up my scrachbuilding, detailing, weathering and learn some LED wiring. Who would’ve predicted it’d take a while?

To be fair, original plan was much simpler – stick the cloak from MG Exia Repair on one shoulder, paint, weather, done. As the time went on, the cloak got tossed (and good riddance), replaced by a bunch of more interesting ideas.

The Plan

Eventually my vision for the build came together, seemingly all at once. I decided on a sort of night ops / urban combat unit. Lightly armored, focused much more on agility than speed.

Between Dantalion, Kimaris Trooper and other Astaroth variants I had enough parts for a decent kitbash. Two shotguns, somewhat inspired by Reaper from Overwatch, as well as a sword, felt like the perfect weapon loadout for close quarters combat suit. Finally, I decided to build a base from scratch. A hangar elevator, with blinking LEDs. Crazy idea that I stuck with nonetheless.

I ran into some more hurdles along the way, like having to redo quite a few parts multiple times (including the shotguns – first attempt was a disaster), hangar floor glued in wrong… and so on.

As painful as the build itself was at times, I had a ton of fun painting and weathering this kit. Big reason for it was completely abandoning many of the usual steps we see in Gunpla. There was no pre- or post-shading, no sponge chipping, no washes… hell, no panel lining, really. Instead, I incorporated hairspray chipping into initial painting stage (admittedly it could’ve gone better). Once the decals were on, I used oil paints and some pigments to do entire weathering, trying my hand at OPR technique (see SM.03 Review for more on that).

All in all, I learned a lot and enjoyed painting process like never before. While there are some things I could’ve done better, I’m really happy with how this kit turned out.

I’ll try to get entire WIP on Facebook soon-ish, but for now you probably want to see some more final pictures.

Gundam Astaroth Nox – Gallery

And I’ll be damned if it isn’t the best model photo shoot I did so far. Hope you enjoy!