Everyone once and awhile it's nice to take a break from the complex projects and build something straight forward. While rewatching Gundam Unicorn ahead of episode 7's release I got inspired by doing a very simple looking deactivated Unicorn Gundam. Nothing too fancy, but something cool to add to the collection. I did that this past weekend, started painting Friday night and finished sometime Monday.

For the most part the Gundam itself is pretty basic. Flat grey for the frame, flat white for the armor. For the grey I used up some Light Gunmetal I had laying around and coated it a few times with Future to give it a bit of a contrasting shine. Never content to go too simple I decided to throw some green in there too with an asymmetric splash of green and orange to break things up. At this point I figured, hey, why not go an extra mile with two-toned thrusters, custom thrusters on the shoulders, and a bit of decals here and there.

I managed to give the thrusters a two-toned paint job by first spraying the inside with a starter colour (a light gold I used elsewhere for accents) then sprayed the outside with a second colour (copper here). When I did the outside I tilted the rim of the thruster at just a small enough angle to allow a bit of spray to go inside. It was one of those quirks that just sort of happens when working on a kit here and there. "Hey, I wonder how it would look if I... damn that's cool!" This is something I definitely plan on doing more going forward.

Along side the Unicorn I also wanted to paint a mobile suit cage that comes with one of the MG Unicorn releases. I decided to have a bit of fun here and give it a weathered look with preshading and Gundam weathering markers. As always, when it comes to weathering, I always go a bit overboard. It's so damn fun! For the most part it looks pretty good and I'm pleased with how it came out. All of the red and silver details were hand painted. Not my cleanest work I was pressuring myself to complete the project in a short time frame.

I knew the Unicorn in destroy mode wouldn't fit but I didn't imagine it would be off by so much. To help show it off I threw in the "Sock" Unicorn to show how it looks with the gates closed. For whatever reason even the untransformed Unicorn seems a bit too large for the space. Maybe I'm missing something?

Either way, now I have the difficult task of finding a display location amongst my Unicorn collection. Along with room for two upcoming Banshee projects...

Anyhow, pictures!