1/72 Transformable VF-25S Super Messiah Valkyrie Ozma Lee's Unit Part 2

Missile and landing gear paint party
Starting to work on 1/72 Transformable VF-25S Super Messiah Valkyrie Ozma Lee's Unit after the long introduction before Christmas. ^^

A couple of parts that require heavy paint work identified even before Part 1 are targeted for this first round of work. ^^


The missiles sets should be in white, while the interior of the covers should be in gray.


(Left) Painted the interior of the covers gray using Gaia Color 074 Neutral Gray IV.
(Right) Excess gray paint on the edges is scratched away using a knife. The delicate molded details on the parts are panel lined after the paint has dried.


The missiles are a lot harder to paint. ^^; Multiple layers of White Surfacer from Mr. Hobby are used on the parts to cover up the base color. Special caution is needed to make sure that all sides of the missiles - 15 on each set are properly painted. ^^;
As you can see, some of the top sides of the missiles still have their base color exposed. That's not an issue since they are going to be painted in another color.


Once the white paint has dried, the top sides of each missiles on the two sets are painted red using a normal marker.
The bright glossy paint effect from using the normal marker on the missiles is great in giving them an outstanding look on the parts that have been painted white. ^^


With panel lines added to the two missile sets.


(Left) Four other parts of the missile pods and the top side of the yellow covers are panel lined.
(Right) Test fitting the detailed parts to see how the missile pods would turn out when assembled. ^^


The three sets of landing gears are significantly harder to paint and detail when compared to the missile sets. ^^;


Referencing the components on the instruction manual, the colors required for the landing gears include white, gray, black, and silver.


The main cylinders and braces are painted using White Surfacer from Mr. Hobby.
Like the missile sets shown earlier on, multiple layers of the paint are applied to cover up the gray molded color.


The wheel rims are quite troublesome to paint because of their round shape (which makes them hard to hold for the paint work) and having two sides to paint. ^^;


The details of the rims are panel lined first before the next round of paint work.


To help with the visibility issue, other details on the rear landing gears are panel lined as well.


Tiny details around tight corners, and some which are in sunken areas (the wheel rims for example), plus the fact that the they are in white now, making them hard to see are challenges to the whole work. ^^;


(Left) Super narrow slit between the edge of the main cylinder and the wheel cannot be reached by my normal panel liner. ^^;
(Right) A little bit of Tamiya's Panel Line Accent Color (Black) applied to the slit solves the problem. ^^


Following the color scheme shown for the parts in the manual, the protruding edge of the cylinders are painted gray using Gundam Marker.


(Left) The front landing gear is panel lined.
(Right) The main piston is painted silver using Pilot Super Color Silver Extra Fine and normal silver pen.


The pistons on the rear landing gears are painted silver as well.


A small bar and a coin-like detail on the front landing gear are painted gray using Gundam Marker.


The wheels are painted black using normal marker.
The difficulty in holding the parts for the paint work is not too much of an issue here, since normal marker ink dries significantly faster than model kit paints, so that black painted area can be held directly after a while in order for the other side of the wheels to be painted. ^^


Closeups on the wheels.
The bright glossy paint effect from using the normal marker on the wheels is a good contrast to the flat white paint of the landing gears. ^^
About 1.001 percent of the overall work expected for this kit done in this posting. XD With just around a week before the end of 2013, I think it's relatively safe to assume that I'll be extending the work on this kit all the way into the new year, which doesn't feel like a bad thing at all. XD