HGUC Gouf Custom WIP #1

Well here's my first WIP for my Gouf Custom.  I'm not gonna go into the specific techniques of everything I'm doing.  Eventually I plan to make 'tutorials' on that stuff.  Anyway, I'm just kinda casually working at this guy.  I started on the legs and by sanding them to 600 grit.  There's a few reasons behind the sanding.  1, Paint and primer stick better, 2, The weathering effects I'm going to add will stick better, 3, I'm planning to flat coat this at the end and the sanded finish will give me a head start on the matte effect.

First coat of paint on the feet.  I don't know why but I love painting the feet on HG's.  It's just really easy to throw some grey on there and bring lots of detail out.

Real quick.  The paints I'm using on this guy are Tamiya Acrylic XF-24 Dark Gray (one of my favorite paints), X-7 Red, X-19 Smoke (I'll talk about this stuff in a bit), XF-53 Neutral Grey, X-4 Blue (not pictured, and Model Masters Gloss Black enamel.

Some shots of what I have so far.  I thought adding the grey to the little trapezoid-y details would... well add more detail.  Looks like some of my foot paint scraped off... grr.

This is what I'm using the Tamiya Smoke for.  I'm basically just dry-brushing this stuff onto the frame and mechanical pieces.  The stuff is pretty goopy so it leaves this oily effect when it dries.

Here's what I'm going to use to primarily weather this guy.  I used these on my MG Char's Zaku II and I liked using them there.  However, I feel these will work and look better on the smaller 1/144 scale HG's.  Depending on how these turn out on this Gouf I may start just using these for quick HG paint jobs and stick to preshading with an airbrush on my MG's.

I almost forgot.  I decided to give this Gouf a Zaku Machine Gun.  As far as I know, there's no reason why a Gouf or Gouf Custom wouldn't have one.  Anyway, this particular one is from the original HGUC Zaku II and was molded in a weird purple-y grey that Bandai liked to use for a while.  Personally I really don't like the purple-y grey and threw some primer on this thing.  I'll probably try to emulate the RG coloring on this just because.

Well that's all for now.  My goals are to get the whole kit sanded and all my detail painting done.  Then I'll hit it with the Tamiya Weathering Master.  Then I'll hit it with some Alclad Flat Kote to seal the weathering and paint in.  It'll also give the kit a uniform matte-ness that a weathered kit should have.

Til next time...