#ko gunpla

[athena-gundampla]

HG 1/144 Prototype Earth Federation Forces Mobile Suit RX-78-3 "G3 Gundam (Trans Pride Livery)" [Beyond Global] (Bling Knockoff)

Happy Pride everyone!!! This year's pride month build is pretty similar to last year's, adding a trans pride colour scheme and gradient shield onto an otherwise pretty standard kit.

This kit is a Bling knockoff of the Beyond Global version of the RX-78-2, with a custom cyan/magenta colour scheme that I felt would fit perfectly with a trans pride build. Bling's knockoff is pretty much identical to the base RX-78-2 Beyond Global, however unfortunately instead of recoloring the plastic for this scheme, they've simply painted over the sprue, which meant I needed to manually paint over all the nub marks. It's otherwise a very impressive knockoff, with smooth painting, perfect detail, and even a set of knockoff G3 decals with plenty of spares for customisation. The G3 is essentially another RX-78 that made it off Side 7 in pieces, and in the novels replaced Amuro's main Gundam later in the series.

The Beyond Global kit is nominally a High Grade, but it's designed to have as much articulation as possible, and be as colour separated and detailed as a Real Grade kit. There's a ton of articulation, including pivots at both the wrists and upper arm, a cleverly designed shoulder and torso for shoulder articulation, and even a torso flexion and ab-crunch! It can easily get a to lot of the human-like poses you see in the anime.

Apart from fixing up the visible nub marks with an extra layer of paint, and a basic silver and gunmetal weathering for all the grey parts, I added a trans flag and a trans rondel to emphasize the trans-flag adjacent colour scheme. I'm really proud of how the flag turned out, as I feel it's representative of my improved masking skills. The rondel is a little messy, unfortunately, but I still think it adds to the kit. I also ended up painting the eyes and head sensors with my gold marker, which helps them stand out, especially since there weren't any foil stickers included.

Apart from this, the kit was so well colour separated that there was no need for any further touch ups, apart from applying decals. I'm not sure what decal sheet was included, but it's one of the highest quality decal sets I've ever used. The decals are fairly durable and extremely thin, with minimal borders, and they lay super flat against the model. After topcoating, they look as though they've been tampo printed onto the kit, unlike Bandai's, which often notably stick up a little from the surface. I was even able to mask and paint on top of one on the thigh with no issues.

There's a nice little instruction sheet induced for decal placement, but I also improvised a little and included a few of my own spare decals to help bring everything together, especially on the shield and the beam rifle.

As above, the kit is super poseable, and can easily hit and maintain a lot of anime accurate poses, especially given the lack of polycap usage (although a lot of the plastic parts still resemble the polycaps they were derived from). I had a lot of fun trying out poses I couldn't quite hit with my older Origin version of the RX-78-2.

This kit comes with a few hand options for posing, including an open left hand, two open fists for the beam sabers and shield, and a right hand pistol grip. There's also the standard gundam Beam Rifle, with a little peg for attaching to the rear skirt, and both a curved and straight beam saber effect for different poses.

Overall, this is one of my favorite builds so far. I really enjoyed the decal process, and I love how the unique colour scheme helps it stand out on my shelf.

[athena-gundampla]

KK Model KO HGUC 1/144 E.F.G.F. Mass Production Mobile Suit RGM-79[G] "GM Ground Type"

Alongside the other KK Model knockoff kit I got for my 08th MS Team set, I also picked up their GM Ground Type kit.

While a limited run of Ground Type Gundams were able to be mass produced during the latter half of the One Year War, the lack of resources and missing the prototype data held by the RX-78-2's learning computer meant that most of the independent mobile suit teams were supplemented with the cheaper and less complex GM, mostly GM Ground Types for on-earth operations. This includes many of the Southeast Asia teams, such as the 07th and 03rd Team featured in the 08th MS Team anime.

The GM Ground Type as a kit is fairly similar to the Gundam Ground Type, sharing much of the torso, waist, arm, and leg design. It features a simpler backpack that is not compatible with the weapons container system, and lacks the chest vulcan and grenade launcher, having a simple dual chest vent instead. The knees also lack the extra armour, being a little simpler and flatter.

The KK Model version includes the extra round details on the ankle armour, but is otherwise identical to the base HGUC's level of detail, featuring more panel lines and greebling than on the Gundam Ground Type. Along with the large decal sheet that comes with the parachute pack, I had more than enough decals for all 4 models.

In terms of colour separation, it's nothing special. You need to paint the lighter coloured border on the chest vents, and I ended up painting the triangle detail on the chest rather than using a decal.

This kit recieved the same weathering as the rest of my 08th MS Team kits, with a healthy amount of paint chipping, rust, and overgrowth to supplement the visual detail. I also added some chrome paint behind the visor, and detailed the various sensors with metallic markers and gloss topcoat applied with a brush (as the KK Model set lacks the metallic stickers you usually get for sensors).

I also added a few spare 1/144 missiles I got from a friend's fighter jet kit, gluing them to the backpack. These serve to supplement the 6-tube missile launcher from the KK Models parachute pack set, which I added to this kit instead as the MG version of the GM Ground Type includes it. The fighter jet missiles are the perfect length to represent spare ammo for the missile tubes, although given that each double tube can be easily removed from the launcher's body, it would've been nicer to have spare tube "magazines" that could be switched out as each one was spent.

The GM Ground Type comes with quite a few optional parts. There's the 08th MS Team style shield, which includes the flip-down stand to let it act as mobile cover. There's the same bazooka and accompanying rear-skirt clip as in the parachute pack set, which has a removable magazine and a hinged handle that lets it sit more easily on the kit's shoulder.

There's also the net launcher, which looks great with a coat of grey paint, a little bit of detailing, and a few decals including the warning pattern around the muzzle.

The kit also includes the 100mm machine gun with wire folding stock. You can actually replace the box magazine with pieces from the side-skirt to "reload" it. The hands are compatible with most of the weapons from the 08th MS Team lineup, although the kit lacks the pistol grip hand option so it can't hold the 180mm cannon. There are two open fist options, as well as a left-handed open hand. Just like the Gundam Ground Type, the GM Ground Type has two beam sabers stored in its calves (one more than with the actual mass-production GM and GM-II). The KK Model kit includes the beam saber set from the Gundam Beyond Global kits, with two straight and one curved beam effect, which is great for posing.

The kit is fairly nicely articulated, able to hold some really nice poses without too much issue. The're an excellent ab crunch and great range of motion in the shoulders and hips, although I feel like the shoulders could use at least one more joint to let it hold weapons two-handed a little easier.

Overall, this was a really fun kit to put together, and I'm glad to add more to my GM and GM-like collection.

Next up, I'm back into MGs!

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[athena-gundampla]

Earth Federation Army Southeast Asia Ground Forces 08th Independent Mobile Suit Assault Team

HGUC 1/144 E.F.G.F Mass Production Mobile Suit RX-79[G] "Gundam Ground Type" KK Model KO HGUC 1/144 P-Bandai E.F.G.F Mass Production Mobile Suit Field Repair RX-79[G] "Gundam Ground Type GM-Head" HGUC 1/144 E.F.G.F. Mass Production Mobile Suit Shiro Amada Custom RX-79[G]Ez-8 "Gundam Ez-8"

The 08th MS Team is back! One of the first posts on this blog was of the HGUC Ez-8 and Gundam Ground Type, and now they're back as a properly complete set, improved with all of the modelling techniques I've learned in the past 2 years.

Recently, I found a listing for the KK Models knockoff of the P-Bandai exclusive HGUC Parachute Pack Gundam Ground Type, which is the only way to get the revised parachute pack from the second half of 08th MS Team, as well as the offical GM-Head replacement and the 1/144 6-tube missile launcher. I picked it up as an opportunity to bring my older 08th MS team kits up to my current standard, as well as an opportunity to finally add Karen Joshua's unit to my collection.

Compared to the official Bandai HGUC Gundam Ground Type, the knockoff is of noticeably higher quality. The plastic is just as crisp in level of detail, but the individual panel grooves are deeper, there are a few extra details on the ankle guards, all the pieces fit together much tighter, and the torso attachment is redesigned with an extra peg to hold it together more securely. Otherwise, the colour separation and usage of polycap parts is exactly the same.

The kits are completely colour correct, apart from some yellow within the vents on the knees, the grey bar on top of the shield, and the red within the thruster nozzles. You also need to add some of the grey for the chest vulcan.

The parachute pack included in the P-Bandai version is rather disappointing in comparison. The safety bar is moulded in white for no reason, and needs to be repainted. The grey details on the bottom of the parachute canister as well as the light-blue parts on the verniers also need to be painted, as do most of the weapons.

The KK model kit came with a large sheet of decals, and between this and another 08th MS Team knockoff, I had enough decals to fully detail all 3 kits and give them their designations.

I did some pretty heavy weathering on all of the kits, using the designations and some details from the show to determine what damage I added. All the kits recieved the weathering that I outlined in this tutorial, with lots of notches and gouges cut into them, some bullet holes added using my new hand drill, and plenty of sponge chipping. One thing I did do different is using my Tamiya enamel black wash to detail the damage, rather than watered down acryllic paint. As I wiped this away, it left some really prominent streaky stains, which helped make the kits look especially battleworn.

I also added some large splotches of rust over the kits, mainly along the lower legs and skirts, by layering black, brown, rust, and orange. I watered down the rust-coloured paint which led to some nice bubbly distortions in the dried paint, and by limiting the amount of orange paint on my sponge, helped make it look like small rusty highlights. I also made the rust paint into a wash to add some nice streaking to the two Gundam Ground Type weapon containers.

For some extra detail, I sponged on a forest-green contrast paint (Citadel Creed Camo) to represent areas of chlorophyll staining and moss growth from crashing through the overgrown jungle.

In terms of other unit-specific details, I kept Unit 083 (Terry Sanders Jr.'s unit) mostly as it was in my original build, apart from the new coat of paint and matte topcoat. Some extra bullet dents and scarring on the legs help tie it to the other kits, but apart from the simple "083" numbering it hasn't really been customised.

Unit 083 is the original Bandai kit, and you can really feel it when posing. The joints are quite loose, and it often struggles to maintain a pose. Additionally, the specialised pistol grip hand option is quite weak, and even touching the weapon is enough to make it fall apart.

That being said, it is still very poseable, with great knee, waist, and torso articulation allowing it to hit a lot of great poses.

The kit includes two beam sabers and beam saber effects, two open fist hand options, and a right-handed pistol grip hand option. There's a 100mm machine gun with a folding wire stock, an experimental beam rifle, and a small shield, which has a fold-out stand that lets it work as mobile cover, or a rest for the 180mm cannon.

The 180mm cannon can be broken down and stored neatly in the included armaments container, designed to neatly clip into the rack on the kit's backpack. It's extremely long, and looks great when posed in-front of other kits.

Despite the weak joints, the kit is more than capable of holding the weapon when standing.

The second ground type is the KK Models knockoff, and my Unit 082 (Karen Joshua's unit). Karen's unit takes quite a bit of damage, having its head destroyed by an Acguy in the second half of the series, and being replaced with a spare GM Ground Type head.

I recreated some of the damage from the scene, chipping and gouging at the neck and equipment rack, and adding a ton of soot and grime to the destroyed area.

As a model kit, the KK Model Parachute Pack more than stands up to Bandai's official kits. The polycap parts feel a lot stiffer, and everything holds its pose a lot more securely. The Parachute Pack includes the GM head, as well as the original Gundam head option (which has a new trans-green UV reactive eye part), and the parachute pack, which clips securely onto the closed equipment rack.

Most of the optional extras are identical to the normal HGUC Gundam Ground Type, including the beam rifle, 100mm machine gun, and 180mm cannon. The P-Bandai version includes an extra open left hand, as well as a c-clip that can swap with an armour panel on the rear skirt to hold the included bazooka. There's also a net launcher, and the 6-tube missile launcher.

The net launcher and missile launcher aren't properly colour separated. I needed to paint the tubes for the missile launcher, using the same green contrast paint as I weathered with, as well as the body of the net launcher.

Overall, the kits are otherwise incredibly similar, and after all my weathering, you can barely tell the knockoff from the original on the shelf.

The Ez-8 is the other original kit in this collection. Detailed up with the new decals from the KK Model set, as well as a ton of weathering, it looks really impressive, but when posing you can tell that it's a somewhat weaker kit. This kit has a much higher reliance on polycaps, even using some for the ball joints, which makes the rear-skirts on the ankles rather loose and prone to popping-off. The neck has a significantly smaller range of articulation than with the Gundam Ground Type too, and the shield attachment is a lot simpler and lacks the extra articulation and fold-out stand of the HGUC Gundam Ground Type versions. However, it also has some better features. The weapons actually tab in to the specially designed right-hand pistol grip, which make the hand less prone to falling apart when posing.

In terms of colour separation, the Ez-8 requires the chest vulcan to be repainted in grey, as well as the bar on the shield, and the forward antenna. The inside of the thrust nozzles needs to be redone in red, and the red detail on the chin and tip of the forward antenna needs to be painted as well. The head details are particularly annoying, as without these painted details the kit looks very cheap and unfinished.

Just like the Gundam Ground Type, the Ez-8 has fold-out hatches on the calves to store the beam sabers, and comes with two beam effect parts.

The Ez-8 was meant to be a reinforced and repaired Gundam Ground type following the destruction of Shiro's Unit 081. It uses a lot of non-standard parts due to the lack of data from Project V (as 08th MS Team takes place before White Base visits Jaburo). However, you can tell that the reverse happened with the model kits - the HGUC Gundam Ground Type took the limited knee and ankle articulation, and awkward shield attachment, and improved on them. That being said you, can still pull of some cool poses with this kit.

Overall I'm super happy with how this revisit turned out. It makes me somewhat tempted to revisit a lot of my other older kits with my better modelling abilities.

Please reblog, it helps more people see my posts.

[athena-gundampla]

JMS Knockoff HGUC 1/144 Neo-Zeon Prototype Mobile Suit Moon Moon Repair AMS-123X-X "Moon Gundam"

Moon Gundam is here! I've always found this design to be pretty interesting, and especially after reading the epynomous manga, I really wanted to pick one up. However, despite being retail release, it's super hard to get one, so I just bought the JMS knockoff version.

There's really not too much different in this knockoff. The blue plastic was a little lower quality, the red plastic for the Psycho-Plates was clearer, and the parts fit was much stiffer and required a little forcing to get everything in position. Overall, despite cutting the hell out of my fingers, it was less of a headache than tracking down an official model (and about 4 times less expensive than the early "Varguil colours" version at the Gundam Base pop-up).

The Moon Gundam is from an epynomous side-manga set between ZZ Gundam and CCA, detailing the events of the development of Psychoframe technology and Char's descent into destructive nihilism. In the manga, the Sazabi pre-cursor, the Varguil, has its head destroyed, and it's repaired with the head of the secret Psycommu-capable Gundam, the G-Doors, and repainted. I won't go into too much detail, as the manga is well worth the read as both a CCA and Unicorn prequel. You can see quite a few of the Sazabi precursor details here, however, including in the shoulders and rear-skirt.

This kit was really impressive for a high grade. The arms and legs have almost a full inner-frame, and the legs include a proper sliding knee armour gimmick that's usually unique to MG and RG kits. However, being a high grade, there was still a lot of colour correction to be done (which was a little annoying after not having built a HG for months).

I repainted all of the directional thrusters in yellow, inclduing on the Psycho Plates. This isn't strictly manga accurate, but I wanted to tie it in more to the Sazabi's design. Techinically, the yellow chest vents and shoulder thrusters are a pastel/lime-green in the key art, but I didn't feel like colour correcting everything to this colour as these parts were already yellow. I also corrected the ankle chevrons to red, added the red stripes on the rear V-fin on the head, and added some extra colour detail to the gun. I'm particularly proud of how some of this turned out, especially the heat-bluing on the barrel. The piping on the shoulders and waist got a non-canon correction to grey, to help them stand out more as well.

I also added the green-glowing exposed psychoframe details to the head. The eyes are already mostly colour separated, but I added the green marker to these and the auxillary cameras as well to give them a more metallic look. I tried to do some fluorescent panel lining in red on the psycho-plates, but unfortunately it comes off a little too subtle to see in any of the photos.

Of course, I also did my usual metallic weathering on all the grey sections of the suit, and used a dirty brown pigment to add some soot staining around some of the thrusters and vents.

The Moon Gundam has some of the most detailled surface paneling of any HG kit I've built, so I added some RG-style sticker details. I wanted to use an official decal set, but I couldn't find the delpi decals in stock anywhere in Australia, and I didn't want to spent the exorbitant shipping fees. These stickers are mostly poached from my MGSD Barbatos, MG Vidar, and a few older RG spares I had lying around.

This kit comes with quite a few optional parts. As usual with this era of HG, there's a right-handed pistol grip, as well as two open hand and two open fist options.

There's two poseable auxillary arms on the backpack to hold the Psycho Plates, but these can be replaced with a stiff pre-posed one that holds the heavy combined plates a little more securely. The plates can be disconnected from each other to be displayed as bits, folded up into a stowed form, or kept in their "moon" configuration on the backpack, as well as added onto the forearms as a shield or "sword" using two adaptor pieces that connect to a 3mm peg hole under the "butterfly edge" throwing weapons.

The butterfly edge weapons can be disconnected, and each one has two beam effect pieces. Unfortunately there's not really a good way to display them in flight, but I gave it my best effort.

Stowed on the backpack is the Varguil's "beam tomohawk". In the manga, this can be configured to emit a beam edge for the axe alone, or function as a combined beam-saber with a hand guard. The kit unfortunately only has the second option as a beam effect part.

Overall, I had a lot of fun with this build, despite the jank and difficulty that comes with lower quality knockoff kits. I definitely reccomend picking up either a KO or the offical kit. At the very least, its got some really nice shelf presence.

Please reblog, it helps more people see my posts.

[athena-gundampla]

HGUC 1/144 E.F.F. Prototype Transformable Mobile Suit NRX-044 "Asshimar" (XW Knockoff)

The Asshimar!!! This is one of my favorite transformable mobile suits, and one of my favorite suits from Zeta overall. Its design is loosely based on the G1 design for the transformer "Cosmos", with a circular Mobile Armour mode and a chunky Mobile Suit mode standing at over 23 meters (making it a very large kit).

This kit is actually a bootleg, made by the company XW and sold under the dubious title of "Pumpkin Pie Warrior". The Bandai HGUC Asshimar isn't all that hard to get but I had to pick up this bootleg for the funky box art alone.

Surprisingly for a bootleg, the quality wasn't all that bad. It's a fairly good clone of the Bandai mould, with the same level of colour separation and detail. There's a little bit of flashing that needs to be trimmed, but the mould lines were no worse than most Bandai kits - better in some places. The clear piece that goes over the eye-sensor was a little warped but it's not noticeable once the kit is assembled. One issue I did find was that the tolerances weren't quite as precise as with Bandai kits, with some pegs being too big for their holes and certain pieces refusing to stay flush. If you assemble this kit be prepared to spend a little extra time widening holes and gluing parts down to get it to work.

In terms of the kit itself, the colour separation and level of detail is impressive. Unlike some other HG transformable kits, this one doesn't require any parts removal or replacement to transform, and there's some really impressive internal engineering to achieve this, especially with the way the legs fold in on themselves. The kit is completely colour separated, apart from a little red for the thrusters and some grey vents and minor details around the suit.

I also cribbed some of the Titans stickers from my unbuilt GM-II as well as a few other spare stickers, and added a bit of custom graffiti and markings in white, as well as some light weathering. The graffiti was a little hard to come up with given the Titans position as a fascist allegory, so I kept it limited to some kill markings and a message on the gun. The unit number is almost entirely a result of what stickers I had to hand.

The graffiti and markings were difficult to plan out, as several panels change orientation in Mobile Armour mode and I wanted to avoid parts appearing upside down.

I made sure to include a little homage to the knockoff kit's name with a custom suit name and logo!

The kit comes with very limited extra parts, including its Large Beam Rifle, two closed fists hand options, and two pistol grip hand options.

A neat bonus with this kit is that it includes an extra Large Beam Rifle, so you can pose it with two guns at once! The second rifle can be attached to the top of the suit in Mobile Armour mode, but I found this threw of the balance a little so I didn't take any photos.

Overall this was a really fun build and I'm pleasantly surprised at the quality of the knockoff. It's not as good as my XFS knockoff GM Spartan, but it's certainty commendable especially at the lower price.

Definitely recommend checking it out! Next up is another knockoff kit for AoZ April - the XFS HGUC Woundwort, if I get to it!

[athena-gundampla]

non binary sailor moon gundam

[athena-gundampla]

Xingfeng Knockoff HGUC 1/144 P-Bandai E.F.G.F Specialized Mobile Suit RGM-79S "GM Spartan"

GM Spartan is a really cool looking kit, with a a lot of cool details and an excellent set of extras. Unfortunately it's also a P-Bandai realease, and for once I couldn't be convinced to shell out the $100 or so for the actual kit. Luckily a friend from my uni's model club let me know the Xingfend knockoff clone of this kit was only $6 - a price so low I'd be stupid to say no.

So how was the Xingfeng kit? It's essentially a one to one clone. I'm not sure how they got the moulds, but they've pretty much exactly replicated the sprues from the actual kit, although they've had to separate the multicolored "A" runner into three separate pieces to maintain colour separation. The only issue was the kit being a more yellow-tan and brown rather than the JGSDF Green that the actual kit is supposed to be, although I just headcanon this kit as being a desert variant.

There was a little bit of flashing and some mould lines, but nothing worse than older HG Bandai from the early 2010s. Overall a surprisingly good experience. In fact, it had some perks over the official kit - it includes a perfect clone of the EVO Waterslide decal set and by god they're miles better in quality than Bandai's official decals. They're thin, strong, and only need a little bit of water to come off the sheet, and look super vibrant on the plastic.

I ended up using the digital camo as a base layer and placing the marking decals on top, which gives it a super gritty, realistic look.

So how is the actual gunpla then?

The GM Spartan is a super detailed kit. The legs and arms are full of panel lines, and there's some great detail on the feet with little claws and treads, which I've painted grey. There's a large reactor backpack, which has a pop-up Minovsky Particle dispenser, really cool vents detailed in both grey and brown to emphasize depth, and a pulse knife/MS combat knife.

The kit also comes with a shoulder mounted set of wire-guided missiles, a forearm mountable beam saber rack with two beam sabers and two beam effects (The Xingfeng KO effects are hard plastic and UV reactive, as is the visor), and a really cool minigun.

The minigun targeting sensor can flip down sideways or remain upright. The magazine can fold to the side to allow an extra magazine to be added to the top, or the spare box mag can be stored on the back skirts. There's also a foregrip-mounted beam handgun with its own E-CAP magazine in the handle. The handle swings freely allowing for super easy posing.

The kit comes with one left open hand, a right and left pistol grip hand, and a right and left open fist hand.

The beam saber rack can be easily relocated to either forearm, or swapped with the shoulder missiles and attached to the right shoulder, or left shoulder if you remove a part. Beam effects can be added while stored, or the sabers can be removed and posed normally.

The GM Spartan's MS Combat Knife is my favorite part of this kit. The knife actually goes into the sheath on the backpack, and can be held nicely by the open fists either upright or backhanded.

This kit does use some polycaps, but it's still overall a very well articulated and solid kit. It's not floppy or lose at all, doubly surprisingly since I'm working with a knockoff.

A neat feature of this knockoff is the dual-effect visor. It fluoresces blue under UV light, but it also glows green in the dark. Bandai wishes it had features like this.

Overall, if you can get your hands on the Xingfeng knockoff you should really give it a chance. It's a really fun kit, and at a fraction of the official kit's price.

[athena-gundampla]

HGUC 1/144 Principality of Zeon Mass Production Amphibious Mobile Suit Zeon Remnants Use MSM-07 "Z'Gok" (Unicorn Ver.)

A third Z'gok has hit the collection! This kit is a knockoff of the old 1999 HGUC kit, which I've built twice before (here and here), recoloured to the brief cameo of the suit in the Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn OVA (and I mean brief - see here for all 27 seconds of screentime). It seems to be the only way to get this colour scheme in the 1/144 scale, as the only official Unicorn scheme kit is an out of production P-Bandai MG.

Despite being a knockoff, the kit quality was fairly on par with the official high grades. It had the same colour separation, done in a really nice brown and olive green, and there weren't really any issues with parts fitting together, apart from with the hands, which I had to cut and glue together to fit. It's not perfectly screen accurate, but it's very close. I even found the foil stickers to be higher quality than the official kit, with a nice level of metalllic shine to them that makes them look less toyetic.

I put a lot more work into this kit, given that it's so simple to put together otherwise. As usual I gave it a panel line and a quick matte topcoat, as well as painting the forehead missiles (this time in a lighter grey), and added the white bands around the hands as seen in the OVA episode.

I also decided to try out using a clear gloss lacquer for the eye-visor part, which I think helps it to look more like a transparent sensor cover. The HGUC Z'gok is a bit of a plain kit, without too many panel lines or other surface detail, so I added some spare white water decals to provide further accents, which I think turned out quite nicely. I think I've improved a lot on water decal placement.

I also threw on some sponge chipping and rust effects, given that this is meant to be a Zeon remnants suit kept hidden for well over a decade since its deployment. I've outlined my sponge chipping process before, in this post, but in addition, I applied some of Tamiya's "oil stain" pigment powder over some of the black spongeing to provide a more muted, sooty look around the vents, hand weapons, and missile ports. For the rust, I used a flat brown as a base, sponging it on heavily, and then added a layer of clear rust sponged lightly on top. I topped this with Tamiya's rust pigment powder, spreading it out around the areas of paint and over the top of the decals to acentuate the effect of rust staining.

And yeah, it faceplants just as well as the other two kits.

You can really see the level of progress I've made in terms of weathering when comparing the previous versions of the kit.

I really love the HGUC Z'gok. It's such a simple design and a quick, starter-friendly build, and yet you can take it so far even without repainting the kit or learning how to scribe panel lines.

If you're looking to get into gunpla, it's certaintly a good place to start.