BB Senshi Destiny Part 2

Sticker or no sticker, that's the question

Some serious painting after the little beginning in Part 1. Today we talk about the body, or rather, the "front view" of the entire model first ^^

[Body]


Gray for the chest verniers, neck area and collar. A bit of red for a spot at the end of the neck area. Nothing too fancy like those golden stripe and ornaments on Shiba-I Sazabi and Koumei ReGZ, but I'm thinking of whether to paint the light blue stripes on the chest, or to just use the foil sticker provided. Since I'll be using light blue from Gundam Marker SEED Destiny Vol. 1 set for the anti ship sword, foil sticker for the chest would make the two parts look a bit inconsistent.

And since the chest area is probably the only part with such big pieces of foil sticker (there are two of them, one on either side of the chest), I wonder how the feel of the overall model would be like with those foil stickers ^^

On the other hand, since I have been using Gundam Marker to substitute as many sticker as possible in the past, I'm very tempted to return to the old days when I have no Gundam Marker, when foil sticker totally rules XD

I do have this sort of "unexplainable" temptations and behaviors in Gunpla-ing now and then - sometimes for five minutes only, sometimes days. XD

[Skirt Armor]


Not much problem for the skirt armor as well, since the parts are molded in white. Red goes first for the verniers inside the side skirt armors, and all the spill over can be conveniently covered up by dark gray for the rest of the part later on.

I was thinking of painting the whole part on top of the crotch in blue and to use the red foil sticker for the interior later on. The simplest way I think, and since the part is small, it won't matter much anyway. But before I get to think much about it, I painted the part already, continued from the verniers ^^;

Of course I can still follow my plan and use the red foil sticker, but the color turns out well, so I don't really want to put it to waste by covering it up with foil sticker.

It's a little case of "Oops!" of me ^^;


Still need to trim some excessive paints here and there
[Shoulder Armor]


A bit of red of the edge of the beam boomerangs' storage rack.

Before moving on, you can clearly see the nub marks on the body and shoulder armors. I call them wounds, because they are the marks left behind when you clear off the gates from the parts. Almost all of these wounds leave white spots. You can avoid them as much as possible if you sand/file the parts properly. But I have have no sand paper for Gunpla use, and I never use any before actually. Might be surprising for many ^^;

My way is to use a matching color, be it from Gundam Marker, permanent marker, panel liner, highlighter or any pens suitable for the color, and paint the wound with it. When the color dries a little, wipe the part clean, and a little bit of the color used will remain in the wound, thus covering the white nubs.

I use blue permanent marker for the wounds you see in the pictures above, and the color is darker than the parts painted on. ^^; That's a good thing actually, because then you can clean it off more, but the color will not diminish so much until you get the white 'bottom' anymore. Some color would be gone the moment you clean it off, and you have to paint and clean it all over again.

[Shoulder Joint]


Blue to gray.

Was thinking of leaving it in its original color actually, but then I feel that it should be considered as part of its interior, so the common color for that, gray is used. Since the body and shoulder armor are in blue, gray would be able to distinguish the shoulder joint than those two parts.

[Forearm]


Blue to white.

The upper part, the one with the shield is molded completely in blue, so white goes in to difference between the blue shield and white forearm. A few layers needed as usual, to cover up the blue base color.

I think I'm too used to painting white on dark-colored parts from my experience with BB Senshi Sangokuden Koumei ReGZ, I don't feel annoyed for parts like this anymore. That's really a good thing XD

[Beam Shield Generator]


Yellow for all of them. One or two extra layers are needed to completely cover the blue base color.

[Hand]


Painted gray for the entire hand, both the spread palms and hands. For the spread palm, since it needs to be in a forward position, the knuckle armor is designed to be wide at the base to allow the palm to be lifted more. That leaves a large piece of connector to the palm. Painted dark gray (from SEED Basic Set) as seen in the picture above

[Leg]


Each leg is molded as a single part, so there exists a hollow interior, which I dislike very much (for all Gunplas).
They are going to be annoyingly visible in almost every poses the model makes :(
Various colors required, but just as the waist armor, painting on white parts is not a hard task at all. "Colorful" tiny spots:
- dark gray for the top of the knee armor, knee joint (on the rear side of the leg, for show only XD), and supporting thrusters behind the lower legs.
- blue for the "topping" of the leg.
- red for the mouth of the thrusters.


Just panel-lining for the bottom of the feet. Gray would be better, to show it's part of Destiny's mecha.
But looking at all the tight spots and the elevation makes me think otherwise ^^;
For the next review, we'll move on to the "rear view" of this model: the backpack and weapons ^^