SD DIAO CHAN GUNDAM - ROYAL PURPLE CUSTOM

READ TIME 5 - 10 MINS

YELLOW EVERYONE, this is Unlock Project, we are pleased to bring you this week’s SD Sangoku Soketsuden Diao Chan Kshatriya Gundam custom process, ver. Royal Purple Custom. CHECK OUT OUR PROCESS BELOW.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Big Idea
Process: Sanding
Process: Priming
Process: Paint
Conclusion

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BIG IDEA

The idea is to customize the SD Diao Chan Kshatriya Gundam from the Sangoku Soketsuden series. This is just the beginning as we will be doing a kitbash with this kit, so stay tuned for part 2!

To see Diao Chan’s building process and experience, you can click on this link to view the video on our YouTube.

We will be going through the entire process from sanding to the colour of the SD Diao Chan for this custom colour! Get your SD Diao Chan kit here!

PROCESS: SANDING

Materials / Tools used:

Dspiae Sanding Sponge Set #180~#800

This sponge set is a good bang for your buck, and is good to use for beginners or even veteran modelers. We sand off the nub marks and seam lines using #400 grit and progressively to #600 and #800 to get a smooth finish you can even go up to #1500 for a smoother finish. By going to a higher grit for a smoother finish your paint job will come out better, sanding is always important when it comes to modelling.

PROCESS: PRIMING

Materials / Tools used

HobbyMio Gray Surfacer Evo
Mr.Finishing Surfacer 1500 Gray

Priming or Surfacing is a very important step that we cannot stress enough. It is like cement between the plastic and the paint. Be sure to use a good primer for surface preparation. We learned the hard way by getting Hobbymio paint. Very cheap but often, ends up very grainy, and the bonding factor is very very poor. During the masking step, while removing tape the paint came off totally. We shall let the aftermath do the speaking (refer to pictures below). Halfway through we decided to switch to a better surfacer which is Mr.Finishing Surfacer 1500 Gray. #1500 means how fine the paint/pigment is. We chose this because not only is it very good at bonding the paint to the parts, it can also fill in minor sanding marks.

PROCESS: PAINTING

Materials / Tools used

Gpaint White
Gpaint Witch Purple (Limited Halloween Series 2020)
Hobby Mio Knight Gold
Hobby Mio Mecha Black
Hobby Mio Detailed Metal
Hobby Mio Cobalt Blue
Tamiya Enamel Black

GPaint, straight out of the bottle lacquer paint you can find. Personally been using HobbyMio paint for some time now. After using just GPaint White, we fell in love with it. Do stay tuned for a Gpaint review!

Custom Royal Purple mix

Ratio: 1 part Gpaint Witch Purple (Limited Halloween Series 2020), 2 part Hobby Mio Detailed Metal and ½ part Gpaint White.

This is the first time we mixed paint and it was fun!. Sometimes you might be surprised that you mixed it into a colour that is nice and no one has it, just note that different paints that are pre-thinned and concentrated may not mix well. Thus, try them all on one type and test the color out with a spoon first! Secondly, if you want a color to become shiny or carry some metallic effect, be prepared to use pigment or a lot of metal color as solid color paint doesn't bring out the shine if you don’t add enough. White may not be the go-to color to make your paint brighter, instead it pales and changes the shade. Alternatively, you may want to try working with brighter paints and darkening it with black or dark metal paints instead.

We changed the original gold parts on this kit to knight gold for a brighter finish. We also did a backwash using enamel black to detail the horns and grooves. To leave a clean finish from the enamel black, we wiped off excess using GAIA Notes Finish Master R, and alternatively, you also can use a cotton bud.

Instead of reverse wash, another method you can try is to just spray over the colour when it dries. The black will remain since it’s the darker tone, so you don't need to hand paint. For the masking, you can use a toothpick to press onto the panel lines so that paint won’t seep through.

If you want to do a reverse wash, you can spray the whole thing with enamel paint and then slowly clean off the areas you don’t want black. Then the desired areas will be covered with black only.

CONCLUSION

The journey is just the beginning for this kit. We tried new techniques like backwash / reversed wash, hand-painting the outcome is not to the standard we want to show you guys. We will be doing some of the black parts again and kitbashing for this kit. So do stay tuned!