Oh my lord, the older I get, the less I want to do full write ups. Although, who knows, people might have questions? Or maybe you just think my ramblings are whimsical? HERE WE GO!

First thing I will say is that this kit is beautiful and wonderful. The amount of detail and shifting plates gives a whole new depth to the suit. I usually hold off on doing a full assembly, but I built the head as soon as I finished sanding the parts. This was partly for me to get a feeling of how the LEDs will light up the assembly itself, but also because it was pretty badass.

Normally, I sand down all of the plates and put them into a plastic organizer to keep things all put together while I build the endoskeleton. This suit made me want to wait until it was finished because of how many plates there were. Luckily, I continued while I built the endo despite getting really tired of sanding and sanding. Sometimes, I have an issue with gouging on the “wrap around” pieces like the upper arms and legs, but all of the plates were very segmented so the end result won’t be as rough as my Tallgeese.

The Sazabi and Nu Gundam are pretty similar in scale and its pretty impressive considering the last kit I was building was the Tallgeese. Wing kits are usually pretty small, but these Ver Ka kits are MONSTERS. The MG Unicorn / Sinanju even feels pretty small in comparison. My poor Xacto knife even seemed measly in the hand of the Sazabi.



Pictured Above: Sinanju Stein, Sazabi, Tallgeese EW Version, and Sinanju Ver Ka. Now, the Wing kits maybe small, but they’re FIERCE … or not. This just goes to show that Universal Century is the bee’s knees.

I’m used to keeping a lot of the endoskeleton together when I prime them. This time around, I decided to stick to one coat of primer and do touch ups with the color once the first coat dries. The reasoning for this is because the Tallgeese was VERY difficult to get back together once painted. I’m shocked it didn’t break as I do not have very gentle hands. I have a feeling I will be taking apart the legs in order to do touch up paint to keep a rather consistent color. I was holding onto a thruster as I painted them and it did not go as smoothly as the rest of the pieces because it kept shifting. Those legs are pretty beefy.

I just finished painting the first coat of gold. It. Was. Painful. These pieces are insanely intricate and I am a little worried about too much paint caking on the pieces. Also note, when you’re painting with gold, don’t use yellow lights. The gold seemed very thick and well covered until I took a photo with a white LED flash. ALL THE UNPAINTED AREAS. It took a bit of time to clean it all up.

After using heavy pigmented colors, moving onto white was quite a chore. I upped my 2:1 ratio of paint to thinner to around 4:1 – 3:1, depending on the coat. The first couple coats were VERY runny and I decided to lower the flow of paint through the bottom of my airbrush. After realizing it would take at least 2-3 coats, I made sure to gingerly add the paint each sitting. This turned out very nicely and I only have a few spots where red was showing or there were imperfections.

The next issue at hand was dealing with spotty primer while working on my last few pieces. Apparently my hand oils were making it hard for the primer to take hold. Note to self: gloves. All the gloves.

I was going to be sticking to white and gold, but I decided to add a few accents with matte black. The backpack was where it really stood out nicely and worked well with the entire kit. Then I started adding pieces at the ends of waist plates and the feet. As I didn’t plan this entire thing out, I was flying by the seat of my pants. It turned out better than expected, so I just went with it.

While most of the kit fit together nicely and is finished, I’m still trying to work out using chrome with clear colors in small coats to make the weapon blades look nice. I get very … short sighted and try to coat as much paint as I can at a time and it comes out very very messy. I need to perfect this for when I get back to my MG Unicorn and the PG 00 Raiser. Good thing I used this as an opportunity to learn to slow the fuck down.

I actually found my “slow the fuck down” Zaku the other day. When I was still painting a lot in my NYC condo, which was NOT IDEAL FOR PAINT FUMES, I had a Zaku that I was going to do an interesting mix of glues and greys. I kind of rushed the masking and the paint mixing and it all looks liked a muddy mess. Since that time, I kept that Zaku out to remind me to slow down and I am glad I found him again to remind me of that valuable life lesson. Seriously. Take your time with this shit.