Nigiyaka Pepper Craft: Elysion: Assembly and Completion!

Finally, finally got round to finishing Elysion who's been sitting around way longer than I would've liked. It's been busy for me during these past few days and it's going to get even busier since my parents are coming home for the holidays. I don't think I'll be able to get round to completing the rest of my LBXs (12 in waiting, or something to that number, I've lost count) any time soon, but I really don't want them to reach their first homecoming anniversaries without being built. That just seems...sad ^^;

Looking very, very worn (◍•ᴗ•◍)

Anyway, I've learned a lot of things building Elysion. One is not to apply plastic cement after you've primed. Another is primed surfaces are not friendly to hand brushing, but workable if your paints aren't being stubborn. And Tamiya Metallic Blue (X-13) is fucking stubborn paint.

I had initially painted his blue parts in X-13 and the shiny bits in the paint refused to mix, making the parts looked like they weathered themselves. I went over them in Flat Blue, which kind of did the trick in smoothing out the color.

More learning / progress pics under the cut.

Weathering.

It was also my first time panel lining. I used a 0.2 Uni Pin felt pen, and all I have to say is fuck panel lining. My hands weren't the steadiest and black ink was all over the place. I had decided to remedy that with some heavy shadowing which made the unit look a whole lot more worn than I had intended.

It worked anyway. It looked good. The ink in the grooves hadn't dried when I went over the parts with a toothbrush, creating battle scratches of some sort that you can't see very well in the pictures below.

Lost the stickers again, so I painted his face (primed white, painted silver), or more like poked at it with toothpicks, with Clear Red and Clear Green. It looks really messy here but it looks really good on assembly. Nonetheless, I'll be neater next time.

Look at this thing that reeks of handbrushing! But I'm really proud of it tho. The red bit there was a mix of Clear Red and Flat Red. And even as it dried, it held a sort of "wet look" which is most likely the effect from the clear. It was an interesting discovery...