Ghostychan's Entry - 1/1200 Magellan - Federal Republic of Germany

(Only edited the images in terms of cropping and resizing - picture of the Flag is from Wikipedia, but since no author was mentioned on the respective web page, I can only link Wikipedia as source)
I wanted to build a 'Gunpla Ship' for quiet some time now - initially planned on purchasing the EX Model set, but this contest was the perfect excuse to purchase this 1/1200 'Old Grade' Magellan Kit from 1983! (which makes it the oldest gunpla in my possession - even older than my 1/144 PsyCo Zaku (1984))

My 'personal' colorscheme I sometimes apply on model kits (the last being my HGUC Qubeley) is Black/Gold, so, living in Germany, with the colors of the flag being black, red and gold, I just needed to add some red ^^



Well, one thing bothered me - although it's called 'gold', it's not gold - it's rather the 'yellow' from Revell Aqua colors (flat) (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Germany#Design )

But I sticked with 'gold' as you can see below.

on the Build - besides the (by far not as good as 2Old4Toys' Sumo) removed seam lines, I added some additional antenna on the bridges, modified the right arms of the 1/1200 GM's, added little beam sabers to the GM's, removed the center piece of the arms of the 1/1200 Ball's - finally, added some clear Pla-Plate (and for the balls some clear Pla-Pipes), in order to make sure they don't fall down so easily.



Painting - well, painting was far more fun then removing 'THE SEAMLINE' - recently used some acrylic paint retarder on a Sniper Zaku, I think I should have used it for the red as well,... - back to topic.
(unless otherwise stated, all colors were applied using an Airbrush)
I painted everything with Mr. Surfacer 1200 first, and, except for the GM's and Balls, followed by Revell Aqua Color Black (flat)(acrylic paint)
Next, I painted all red parts red, using 'carmin red' (again flat, again Revell Aqua Color) - I masked some areas with masking tape, but on many other locations, I was a little bit too lazy >_<
Well, I didn't apply a thick coat of red paint - I used my 0,2 nozzle and painted the red parts, giving it some shade.
Next up, again some masking, I applied Mr. Super Metal Color Super Gold (or how Super it was)
Well, only one turret was painted using MSMCSG with my Airbrush, the rest were painted using a hand brush (like mokanaman said in one of his Airbrush tutorial Vid's - it's NOT reocmmended,... v_v', although I had no problem with lacquer paint over acrylic paint when using an air brush ^^')



Anyways, now the last paint - I masked the flag of the base and painted the 'frame' (if you want to call it this way) and the arm of the stand using Tank Gray (Revell Aqua Color (Flat)).
Still using Tank Gray, I painted the antenna and the gun barrels.

Final step - painting some panel lines using some thinned enamel paint (flat black) - well, I only 'washed' the gold areas, since I found the details on the red parts to be fine. (basically just the turrets and these,... solar-collector-wing-things)



Well, if you want to know, why the Balls and GM's still have their original paint scheme, and no 'German' paint scheme - well, for the GM's I'd just have to change the white to black, and for the balls ad a little bit of gold to the arms/cannons,... I could have done it, but a) the contest entry is the Magellan, not the included GM, and b) this way, the GM's and Balls stand out

Well, last thing to say - thanks to 2Old4Toys and iShop2go for this great contest! I really enjoyed building this model!







note to the photos - I used the... was it lowest or highest? anyways, the Apeture I used for the photos was f2.6, in order to get some decent depth of field, especially when looking at the ship from front/back, an higher f number would resulted in some larger depth of field, but with the shutter speed dramatically increasing - stupid camera has the mounting for the tripod on the far left side! it's falling down all the time, so I had to use f 2.6 (I'd have used f 8 If I could) and take the photo with shutter speeds up to 1" without any tripod or similar - higher ISO? Well,... no! - I hate the noise, and espacially on a model kit, it'd harder to distinquish dust/painting defects/noise than with some low ISO, like 80 (eighty) in this case.


Anyways - any further questions? Feel free to ask!

Wow, this is a great post Ghosty! Thanks for your entry. I hope others take note.