Ever since I built the Real Grade Mk-II, I’ve maintained that the ol’ 178 is my favorite Gundam of all time, so this was a real passion project for me. Despite the fact that it was super-important that I didn’t screw this up, I still decided to use the kit for a couple of experiments in terms of colors and techniques, and the short version is, I’m really happy with how most of it came out. In fact, I think this is my best paintjob to date. The plan was to do a more muted version of the classic Gundam colors with dark blue, titanium gold and brownish red, plus pre-shading and weathering. As much as I like the MG 2.0 version of this suit, the colors are just way too cartoony and toy-like for my tastes. The Mk-II is a badass war machine, and I was hoping my color scheme would bring that out more.

The general process here was basically a slightly updated version of what I did with the RX 78-2. I base-painted, shaded and highlighted everything, then snapped it together, did the weathering on the armor, then pried it off again for the final top coat. I did paint the inner frame before assembly, though, so no build review this time, I’m afraid. The short version of my thoughts on the build is, it’s simple, but effective. Everything is really solid and works perfectly, but the kit’s also pretty old and simple, so it’s not exactly an engineering marvel.

The inner frame is all Tamiya gun metal over Vallejo’s black primer. I painted all the parts separately, topcoated them (Vallejo satin varnish), snapped them together, then drybrushed everything with Tamiya’s chrome silver, followed by another topcoat. This way, everything was topcoated at least once, and it was still a relatively efficient way of getting it all done. I didn’t do any detailing on the inner frame – I briefly considered it, but it’s not like I’m ever taking the armor off again now that it’s all painted and in place. With hindsight, I could’ve done a little something on that large exposed section between the shin and calf armor halves.

I did run into a few issues here and there where moving parts that I thought would be hidden turned out to be visible and needed to be painted, and the knees would probably need to be modified to avoid the paint getting peeled off the first time you bend them. I’m really not sure how to avoid any of this with future builds, though – there’s only so much you can anticipate before you just slap the paint on and hope for the best.

Replacing the bright yellow with Tamiya’s titanium gold is something I’ve been meaning to try for a while. Ever since I fell in love with this color when I used it on the Death Stinger, basically. I’m really happy with how it came out – it still reads as yellow, but less garish and more… I dunno, realistic, I guess. As usual, I drybrushed the parts with white, then topcoated it with Vallejo satin varnish to preserve some of the metallic sheen.

The red on this kit is really bright and oversaturated out of the box, and another color from my Death Stinger build that I’ve been meaning to re-use was this red brown/red mix. This time I kept track of how I did it – it’s exactly 50/50. I applied this over a white primer with black pre-shading, and it gave me exactly the muted, desaturated red that I wanted. The scratches and chipping were done with chrome silver drybrushing.

On the blue parts, I tried highlighting for the first time, using my own custom mix. The base coat is just Tamiya’s blue over a black primer to make it darker, and it didn’t seem like pre-shading would work. Initially, I was a bit worried that the highlight on the shield was too bright, but after the decal and the weathering, it seems a lot less obnoxious and I kind of wish I’d been more bold with the highlighting on the chest, if anything.

Obviously I did the most work on the white parts. First I primed ’em white, then pre-shaded with light grey. As with the highlights on the blue parts, the pre-shading originally looked too intense, but the weathering took care of that. Now it all blends together very nicely and helps bring out the shapes of the armor more.

The weathering started with scratches and chipping in gun metal, but this time I didn’t brush the scratches on individually as I did on the Gun Sniper (where it worked) and the RX 78-2 (where it kinda didn’t) and instead used a mix of just simple drybrushing over the edges and dabbing a very frayed brush down vertically to create a few more individual scratches and chips on the surfaces. This is easier to do than detail painting and actually ends up looking more to scale.

Next I did the panel lines, which was a bit of a struggle. Vallejo’s gloss varnish is kind of sticky at first and takes some time to cure properly. And despite the fact that I really gave it several days to cure and I just used india ink heavily thinned with water, it was still a problem to wipe off excess and mistakes in some places, plus some of the panel lines, especially on the face, were made so shallow by the paint that it didn’t work properly anymore. Not too big of a deal because I was going for a weathered look and thus a bit of unevenness actually works, but it was still frustrating. As is the fact that the topcoat attracts dust like glue in the time it takes it to cure. I’m considering other options at this point, but I’m not going back to spray cans.

The streaking worked much better – I just did the vertical streaks by dabbing on a bit more thinned ink and then wiping it across the surfaces with a brush. And finally, I added some heat streaking around the vents by drybrushing on Gunze flat black, as per my usual method.

The feet also have some brown and grey sponged on, same as on the RX 78-2, because they would be dirty. I didn’t slop any dirt on the rest of the kit, though, because with hindsight, it really doesn’t make much sense that the same dirt would be on the shoulder armor.

If you look closely, you might also be able to see that I originally wanted to do the paint chipping with a sponge and actually started this way on the feet, but I realized pretty quickly that it didn’t look the way I wanted and switched to drybrushing.

Notice also that the white armor on the left foot is cracked. It just snapped in half when I tried to take it off for topcoating, so I kinda had to run with it and pretend it’s supposed to be battle damage. I stopped trying to take apart the feet, though, and instead masked off the inner frame.

Also, a quick word about the decals – these are Bandai’s official waterslides, and they are fucking fantastic. The material somehow manages to be so thin that the edges practically disappear once they’re topcoated, yet it’s still stiff enough to be easy to work with, unlike some third party waterslides that fold in on themselves and crumple up when you move them around. The waterslide sheet also has multiples of almost everything and a ton of extra markings that I could’ve used in lieu of the same grey box everywhere if I wasn’t such an idiot and had realized it early enough. I’m really happy I got these.

The backpack is black with silver drybrushing to match the guns and because I didn’t know what else to use here. Notice also that I replaced all of the cloth tubing with coil springs from Wave. The cloth tubing is purple to match the color of the inner frame, so it had to go, and I’ve always liked the look of these springs.

Doing this was a gynormous pain in the ass, though. The springs are the exact same diameter as the cloth tubing, but since they’re not elastic, almost every part they come in contact with needed to be modified to make way for them, and I also broke off one of the parts on the knees that you slide a piece of tubing on because I applied too much pressure. I’m very pleased with how it came out, in the end but this was clearly the most troublesome part of the build.

Once all the weathering on the armor was done, I pulled it off the inner frame again to topcoat all the parts individually. Apart from the aforementioned leg armor piece breaking in two, I managed to do this without damaging anything, but I really need to either give up on shiny inner frames or start modifying armor pegs so taking the pieces off for topcoating doesn’t take two hours anymore.

The final touch was the cameras and the vents, which I wanted to keep shiny and thus added after the topcoat. The cameras are clear green over silver, and the vents are gunmetal. I actually painted the gunmetal sections on the ankle armor before the final topcoat, but I quickly realized that was a mistake. They were easy enough to mask, but it’s really just poor planning.

As for accessories, you get what you’d expect with a Mk-II: the rifle with two spare clips to attach to the shield, the bazooka plus one spare ammo pack, the shield, the vulcan headphones, and two beam rifles. Like the suit itself, it’s nothing fancy, but it all looks great.

The dark parts on the bazooka were painted black with silver drybrushing, then topcoated semi-gloss. The barrel has some mild pre-shading around where the dark parts connect plus, obviously, drybrushed soot around the muzzle. I also painted the rear vent grill silver and the camera clear green over silver.

The rifle was really straightforward, as you can see. Gunmetal and black, silver drybrushing on everything, clear green on the camera. Also, the usual black soot around the muzzle. It thought about doing some detail painting, but it looked good as it was, and with the general muted look of the build, I didn’t want to clutter up the gun like a christmas tree.

The main attraction in terms of accessories is the shield. I dunno, I just love Gundam shields for some reason. The colors are the same as on the suit – blue over black primer, the brownish red for the slit, white with light grey preshading and titanium gold where the yellow stickers would go. The projectile impact mark was done with the same drybrushing technique as on the RX 78-2; that just worked too well for me not to recycle the idea. I also chickened out and didn’t do any actual impact damage again. The rest of the weathering effects are the same as on the suit itself – chipping, drybrushing, streaking.

The bad news is that since I also painted all the inside mechanical parts gunmetal, the shield doesn’t contract anymore and I had to shave off a good bit of plastic on the inside to get the parts to fit once they were painted. Oh well. I like it better at full size anyway.

Nothing much to say about the beam sabers – some mild pre-shading, scratches, and heat streaks because it really is a science fact that beam saber blades cause heat streaking. Honestly, you guys.

And finally, the vulcan headset. Same stuff as everywhere else here, except I painted the antenna chrome silver. Black with silver drybrushing, clear green over silver for the camera, brownish red for that one round piece, you get the idea.

The kit also comes with a diorama base, by the way, but I decided not to use it for the time being. I much prefer displaying my kits in action poses, so it just seemed like a waste of time.

And here he is all put together. Poseability, as you can see, isn’t all that crazy, but certainly good enough for a kit that’s well over a decade old at this point. The legs have sliding armor parts, possibly a first for an MG, and of course that’s become a staple of Gunpla design now. Everything else just does its job and looks good doing it, really. The one thing that really kind of sucks is that the hip joints are just a polycap on a ball not the modern universal joint we’ve come to expect. This really doesn’t work well and hampers poseability a good bit. No Seed pose with this one.

As I said at the top, I really think this is my best painjob to date. Pretty much everything came out exactly the way I envisioned. The muted color scheme works better than I’d hoped, and I finally got the pre-shading right. The weathering is a bit heavier than I’d planned, but the more important thing to me is that it looks more to scale than on pretty much all my previous weathered builds. There’s still stuff I would go back and change if I could, but there always is, and I feel like I’ve learned a lot from this build. Maybe what makes me happiest is that I finally got vertical streaking that looks the way I wanted.

I’m thinking what I have to try next is some different paint types and materials. I’m still working more or less exclusively with water-based acrylics, and I really want to try some oil paint washes and pigments. I was actually originally going to use pigments for the dirt on the feet here, but I didn’t have the right color, and I knew the sponge would work, so I defaulted back to that. I also really need to start puttying seam lines. This kit has some nasty ones that I wish I’d fixed, but I’ve never done that before. We’ll see.

For now, I’m really enjoying how satisfying this build was. Everything worked more or less exactly the way I thought it would, so while it all took longer than I expected, the whole process was more or less frustration-free and fun. I picked up some new tricks along the way, and the end result looks exactly like the very specific idea I had, except better.

Oh, and before I forget, do I recommend this kit? I most certainly do. At least if you don’t mind the OOB color scheme or intend to paint it. It looks a tad dated at this point and doesn’t have the amount of surface detail we’ve come to expect of Gunpla in recent years, but other than the hip joints, it can still hang with modern MGs in terms of poseability, and it’s really, really solid. Nothing spectacular or unusual, everything just works really well, nothing pops off, and the build is fun.