I never owned the first one, but have enjoyed building some Gundam models recently. He does not look good built straight out of the box IMO. I painted all the pieces except the blue ones, and the prepainted ones. The blue pieces with water slide decal flames were clear coated to seal the decals. This is a must especially if you plan on posing him any kind of way because if they are not sealed they will flake off. Over all it reminds me of a bigger Master Grade Gundam (minus the non posable hands) and I enjoyed putting him together. If I didn't have the ability to do the decals or paint him I would have been thoroughly disappointed, so keep that in mind if you are not experienced or just simply hated doing those things. I mean he is a model and there is some work involved building him.

 

I am currently in the process of applying the decals and lemme say one thing: FUCK DECALS. Seriously, maybe I'm terrible at them, but it's taking forever and they're sliding all over the place and flaking off like a mofo. I'll have to incorporate the crappiness into his battle damage.

Compared to DMK-01 he feels cheaper but mostly that's due to two things: a) the hands are molded, instead of fully articulated, and b) the design is just simpler overall. As everyone should know, he barely looks like a Transformer at this point, having minimal vehicle parts on him. Don't get me wrong, he still looks AWESOME, but not as cool as DMK-01 IMO. He's definitely easier to pose though due to less moving parts. Also, there are only a few parts that fall off without glue, as opposed to DMK-01 which basically fell apart if you touched him unless you glued stuff on.

Also, Jtotheiso is very correct that he will NOT look good without lots of paint and decals. Do yourself a favor and get some good silver spray paint. That's all you'll need. That and a little bit of gold paint for the parts which you will spray over. I appreciate DMK-01 SO much more now for being pre-painted with these insanely frustrating flames everywhere. It's really killing me to put them all on myself. It sucks.

In short: Still awesome as hell but due to the simplified design and the lack of pre-applied decals he doesn't feel as satisfying as DMK-01, but he is simpler and easier to play around with. Pics to come.

 

Looks good, waterslides are a pain though.

 

I'm looking forward to seeing some epic build videoes of this guy on Youtube

 

Agree, the decals suck, with total no. of 55pcs. (Takara, really??)... 

 

Hey, i think this thread should be on Radicons section...

 

Its an actual model kit you can buy, its not a custom.

 

But he said he has repainted it, so i think it deserved to be called a custom hence featured on Radicons (his silver paint apps is very clean & gloss is amazing). Anyway just my 2cent...

 

yea true, i mean in the first post of images, it gives the wrong idea that the figure looks that way when its a really nice custom

 

Great pics!

Try to crop them.

 

A bit disappointing about the hands but knew that already, the decals though are very annoying to have to put them on.

Though, might make it worth it to do a complete paint job.

 

Here are some progress pics, since after a whole day I only got HALF THE GODDAMN DECALS ON. Ugh, I hate this. It's an awesome model though! After spray painting and adding the decals I'm going to use my gundam markers to re-apply some areas of gold and blue that I spray-painted over, then I'll use them to add battle damage like little scrapes and cuts in the armor. Lots of little silver lines for battle damage did wonders for my DMK-01!


Straight out da box:


After spraying all the silver pieces:


All parts complete:


No decals:


Half decals!

 

looks nice^^

When I get a chance I'll have my wife take some outdoor pics with her Rebel.

 

Newb question here, but is it possible to apply the decals and clear coat everything while its still on the spru? Without being a huge pain in the butt that is.

 

I don't see that being a problem at all, being careful not to mar the finish when cutting them off.

 

I wouldn't recommend it. If you're just using the snap-fit on the pieces, you're applying a fair bit of pressure on some parts to get them to seat right; no matter how good your clearcoat is, there's always a shearing risk when fleing and pushing styrene. If you're planning on using glue, that's also bad for decals, since a stray drop will mess up your decal. Also, you run a risk of damaging the coat and decals when clipping the parts from the sprue and sanding them down.

Decals as the final step (before environmental weathering, if any) is the way to go, just to be safe. But, do what makes you most comfortable; one joy of model kits is that everyone has their own bag of preferred techniques.

 

Wouldn't that mean clear coating the whole figure? That's what I'm tring to avoid.

 

Might I ask why? It's much easier to just spray the whole thing, plus you get a uniform finish, rather than patches of varnish over bare plastic.

If you really only want to clearcoat just the decal pieces, then I'd still recommend taking them off the sprue, cleaning them up, putting the decals on, and then clearcoating them all in one go.

 

I guess you're right. Never really thought about spraying the whole thing completely assembled. Thanks for the input!

 

No prob. The layers I use for models usually go something like this:
1) Primer, for paint adhesion
2) Paint
3) Gloss varnish, for better decal adhesion (decals like smooth surfaces)
4) Decals
5) Clear coat
6) Weathering
7) Topcoat

If it's a vehicle model, I'll usually assemble the main body before starting to paint. With mecha, especially modern movable-frame designs, the skeleton can all go together, and then the outer armor pieces can go through steps 1-3 before final assembly. Since you're not painting very much of it, there's no reason not to simply build the whole thing first.
Have on hand toothpicks, tweezers, and a couple of soft brushes to move the decals around, and be careful where you put your fingers. If it were me, I'd do the decals in stages, letting some of them set before continuing, so that a butterfingers moment doesn't move a decal you just painstakingly put into place.