The various Eva-02 kits are still sitting around the room, gathering dust. Early in the year I just went through the usual cycle of getting disappointed with the slightest of mistakes and then abandoning the project. I had paint durability problems on that kit and put it aside to figure those out on other kits. There's a big local con each year at the end of May and I always want to build something big and amazing for it, leave it for way too late, have no chance of finishing it and my peak disappointment with myself usually is around April/May when it sinks in that shit ain't happening yet another year in a row. So this year when that happened I finally decided to check out the local IPMS chapter. Looking at models on the internets is nice and all but having monthly meetings where you can look at them up close and talk with other modelers is quite a bit more stimulating. So working with those monthly meetups and my short attention span in mind I decided on quick painting practice kits. "Quick" meaning doesn't take years and years. Missed out on the June meeting.
Brought a half-painted kit for July. Finally brought a finished one for the August meetup. Offsite link to finished kit since it's not Eva related. After that it was another few months of false-starts on practice kits and crazy build ideas. The Nerv Commander VTOL arrived in the mail early October and I decided that this would be my next quick, straight paintjob for practice that would be done by the November meeting. It wasn't done by the December meeting either but now it seems like it's well on it's way to get done by the January 5th meeting. Yaaaaaaaay.
Since the last update, the red stripe got painted one:
Turned out not too bad
Everything up to this point has been Mr. Color lacquer paint. One of the few things left was the recessed intakes on the boosters and main body. To avoid lots of painful and potentially leaky masking I just sprayed the vents with Testor enamels.
Cleaning up around the intake using lighter fluid. It will dissolve the enamel but will leave the lacquer paint untouched.
And there we're finally all cleaned up
Intake on the body which has a slightly rounder edge and not as deep, have to be a bit more careful here but meh, good enough
At this point I assembled some of the pieces and did some more Smoke Grey spraying to try and blend the shading better. Probably overdid it in a few places but oh well. Practice kit is for learnan.
Things left to do at this point:
-The enamel, given its nature needs more time to fully cure. I was going to leave it for another day but the weather is rainy for the next 3 days
-The enamel needs to be sealed with a clear coat before the next steps. Since rain and not spraying for 3 days the clear coat is likely to go on Friday. After that at least 24 hours to cure for the clear coat
-Decals go on Sunday
-Decals sealed with another clear Monday
-Panel line wash and other weathering is Tuesday
-Final clear coat goes on Wednesday December 31st and that means I would have finished a grand total of
TWO model kits this year
-Potentially add a day to any one of those steps in case of screw up. That might throw me into next year for finishing a kit but I don't care as long as it gets done by the 5th of January for the IPMS meet.
While all the paint drying and curing is happening I will be tackling two Gundam projects that should also be finished by mid-January at the latest. After that the Volks Eva-02 is back on the table. It's 98% built and should be mostly painting. If all goes well that gets done by the February 2nd IPMS meeting.
After that god knows what will happen because I've done some inventory about 2 weeks ago and I have 52 (fifty two) kits that have been started on the road to painting and were never finished. Twelve of those kits are actual Evas, five are Eva-related. And that's what's already been started in some way. There's eight more Evas and four Eva-related kits untouched in their boxes. And neither of those numbers include the scratch-building ideas.......
Yeah I got lots of stuff to keep me occupied.....