Full Styrene Custom Base and Texturing with Paints

I wanted to do a quick project that would help me focus on painting and weathering so I decided to pull out an old unfinished project and crafted a quick base using styrene. As I've said in my previous post HERE, I am trying to improve my bases and the overall presentation of my builds. I want my build to look like sculptures.



I basically used my old 1/48 Zaku and removed most of it's limbs. I will need to detail up and add battle damage effects on the kit before painting. But painting and weathering of this project should be fun as I am working on a 1/48 scale. Meaning rust streaks and paint and armor chippings are very much visible unlike on 1/100 kits.

After setting up the pose of the limb-less kit, I then started painting the ground work. As is obvious with the photos above, the ground work and the whole base is made entirely of styrene. I used PU reducer to melt all those styrene chips together.



I am using the paints to create rough texture and not "paint" the ground work. After the modifications on the kit, I will be re-priming the whole thing using Vallejo Surface Primer ( Black ). I want to show everyone how I quickly added texture to the smooth surface of the styrene ground work with paints. I left this curing earlier today and should be nice and hard once I get home from work.



I basically hand brushed 2 coats of Vallejo Grey Primer. It surprisingly dried after around 30 minutes and dried smooth. Weird as I was not careful and just applied the primer thickly. Apparently the Grey primer has some sort of self-leveling properties.

I think but I am not sure, the Vallejo Acrylic Studio are the cheapest paints from Vallejo. This huge bottle only costs around 8 small bottles of Vallejo Model Color. Such a bargain for a paint this much. I was expecting lesser quality in terms of opacity from this paint. However the photos shows just a couple of coats which reveals that it is very opaque! Pretty high pigment count for it's price range.



I do think lighter colors of the Vallejo Acrylic Studio are not as opaque. As lighter colors tend to be more transparent and requires more coats of paint to fully cover the surface.

I did not let the Vallejo Acrylic Studio to dry at all... I immediately dabbed some Vallejo texture paint ( Oxid Paste ) to the surface. Resulting to some blending of textures and colors. I honestly need some Vallejo Black Lava texture paints as that paint has heavier or has a rougher texture. Adding a bit of Black Lava paint should give more variation to the texture.

This will dry to a nice rubbery - plasticky material and once you dabbed more paint or texture paint, you will be producing a rougher texture. The textures shown on the photo were hand painted on a very smooth ( primed ) styrene ground work. So painting over this surface should produce a rougher texture.



I then need to modify the kit and add battle damaged effects soon. Once I finished working on the kit, I could then re-prime the whole piece and start the actual painting. As I've said, I used the paints above to create the basic texture of the ground work and not to paint the kit. Stay tuned and you'll see updates of the results soon!



Last tip with dabbing paints and using texture paints... make sure you use really old OR really cheap brushes as texture paints ( much more dabbing texture paints ) will ruin your brushes. Ruins brushes much more than dry-brushing actually.



Thanks as always for dropping by! Until next post guys! Just enjoy the hobby! :)

1/48 ZAKU project WIP - quick initial mods

Just wanted to share some quick work I have done on my 1/48 Mega Size Zaku I got from GreattoysOnline.com. The original plan was just to straight build the kit, remove seam lines and place on top of a diorama as inspired by Julius Lim's 1/48 Zaku diorama " LOST ".



However I thought of doing some quick scratch building for the waist of the Zaku to practice for my future sbing projects. I always dislike the short skirts of the Zaku as it looks like girlie skirts or boxer shorts. The Zaku skirts just looks too revealing for me.



So I decided to add another layer of skirts to the existing skirts. Note that instead of replacing the existing skirts, I added another layer which adds up to the complexity of the overall look. The sb'ed skirts does not totally cover the original skirt armors thus giving it a layered armor. I also did a quick crotch for the kit as I also find the original crotch not too manly enough. The butt skirt was also extended and might bulk it up a bit with either putty or more pla plates.



Aside from the white scratch built parts, and the tedious seam line removal. I re-drilled the holes all over the kit as they look too shallow. I also removed a section on the left shoulder armor and have yet to decide what to put in it. A mesh is the quickest way to cover that or layering of pla plates. Notice also that I sawed portions of the head part so that I could access the mono eyes even after seam line removal.




IMPORTANT SB TIP!



I am not much of a scratch builder. In fact this is the year that I will try to practice my basic scratch building skills a little bit more. BUT I would like to share a tip out of observation.



Make sure that you clean up scratch built parts much more your detailing.



Notice that I stopped the scratch building at this stage of the build and blogged about it? See that the crotch part is totally clean already even without the use of putty?



Basically the tip is simple, make sure that the " base " shape is clean already before you move on to detailing. It is easier to sand and file simple square boxes before you add those tiny little details that you might over sand while trying to clean up initial mistakes and imperfections. Anyway this tip will be much clearer as you follow this project. Now here are some photos guys...