Back to the Unicorn !

Test build is finished!

And has been for some time. In fact, I have been neglecting to post updates for the Unicorn and for that I am sorry. At the moment, my Unicorn looks more like this:

I have actually been able to put time in most night, thanks in part to my wife taking a trip for three days to see old friends in Kyoto. Which means I have done quite a bit of work and have been progressing through the build at a steady pace.

You don't see the hands in these shots as I haven't bothered to test build them. I will be doing the finger mod and then painting them sometime soon. I am not in a rush for that part at the moment. I hope I don't forget and have a handless Gundam, though.

I have actually moved on to the painting of the frame while I prepare the armor.

Here's the half the frame parts and the pieces of the psycho frame that needed to be redone.

And here are some odds and ends such as extra frame parts, psycho frame parts that have been topcoated, and some pieces of the weapons.

In an effort to make the psycho frame really stand out I have decided to gloss top-coat the psycho frame pieces while flat top-coating the frame and armour parts.

The frame is Tamiya TS-38 Gun Metal. Due to the way the kit is engineered, I can spray the arms as one piece.

And the legs in the same way.

Uh oh! Here I go again....

Yup. Masking. This is part of the shield.

The other night I glued the rifle pieces together so the seam lines can be removed.

However, before doing so I had to check carefully the way in which it is assembled. If I glue the pieces together, will I be able to assemble it after the painting process is completed? The short answer is, not quite. However, there's always a solution to be found when you work with plastic which you can cut, distort, shave, file, and glue back together again after making a mistake with your cutting, distorting, shaving, and filing.

Here's the piece that would cause a problem.

In order to allow this to slide into the front pieces of the rifle, which are now glued together, I took my nippers and cut the edges into an angle, somewhat like an arrow.

With this angle, I can start pushing it into the groove inside the rifle parts and it will only place stress on the pieces at the last moment when the widest part goes in. Hopefully my glue will hold, but doing some tests with it revealed that if the parts do start to open it will only be at the edge of the rifle parts and these parts are covered by another piece later on. I think it will work, but can't say for certain.

I have also test built and modified the backpack to fit the aftermarket thrusters.

Yes, that will work nicely.

And the backpack has been painted and gloss-coated in preparation for decaling.

That is Tamiya TS-28 Olive Drab 2. While I think that colour looks dead sexy, I don't know if I will use it for the feet. I may have my feet be the same colour as the rifle and bazooka (TS-48 Gun Ship Gray). TS-28, 38, and 48? That wasn't planned in advance. I swear.

I intend to custom decal this kit like I did the Sinanju, however, I noticed when looking at the manual that the decals for the backpack are all dry-transfers. As this is the case, I will use them for the backpack and add some others if I feel it is lacking something.

Another thing I hadn't planned on doing when I originally was thinking colour scheme, was to have this kit be two different colours or tones. However, looking at the kit for a good length of time and noticing how many angles and pieces there are for the outer armour, I thought that it may break it up a bit to have two different tones of Gray be my colours. Once I start painting the armour and evaluating the effect I will let everyone in on what colours they are.

One sad piece of news I should mention. I lost piece A-14. The smallest piece of the entire kit. I had attached it to a stick in order to topcoat it and as I was pulling the lid off the top-coat can the motion must have caused it to fall. As it didn't make a sound I didn't notice until I went to spray it. Moving everything in my room and cleaning the floor, desk, chair, and work table failed to turn it up. What sucks about this is that Bandai will only replace psycho frame pieces by the entire runner. If I want to have Bandai replace the smallest part of the entire kit, I would have to pay 1,000 yen for the entire A runner. No.

Luckily for me, Lupes has offered to send me that piece, thus saving the project and the universe at the same time. We are all indebted to you, kind sir.