MG Strike Noir

I hate V-Fins, I really do. I think they are pointless and other than for cosmetic reasons, I really do not think there should be any reason why Gundams should have them. Actually, I understand why they need to be there, the Gundams have to stand apart from the rest of the mechs in the same way the mono-eyes almost always designate a mech as that of the antagonists. 

So for the Strike Noir I opted to cut the V-Fins out. It made the mech less heroic but more "gruntish", something that I think matches the color scheme that I made for him.

I found the inspiration for this scheme from the Transformers Animated Bulkhead figure. I realized that I do not have a lot of green mechs and I really haven't used brown as an accent so I went ahead and literally copied off the scheme from the toy.

The backpack is one heavy beast. It's almost impossible to make the kit stand unless you have it mounted on an action base. That being said though, when mounted, the kit looks awesome. It's massive and takes up a lot of space so I ended up keeping him in storage. Once I get a decent glass cab I'll most definitely get him out.

This kit was hand-painted except for the inner frames which was painted from a can and dry brushed. I used Reeves Acrylics and dry brushed the whole kit with Tamiya Flat Silver to give it the metallic grunged up look that I was aiming for.

I've been contemplating and I think I find hand-painting kits more fun than spray painting them. Yes, it takes more time, but the feel is somehow different. . Even my fiancee told me that my hand-painted kits look and feel so much different from the ones I spray painted with and I think I know why.

When I hand paint I am not that careful with mixing paints since I use water based stuff only. When I work with lacquers I tend to be too careful because the paint is toxic and messy. Also, since I've sworn off hobby paints for now, I get a very limited range to begin with from the paint supply store and so I need to mix even some of the most basic of colors and that's not much fun. The prep time with using an airbrush is a major bummer as well. Since I do not have a dedicated time to model and I do my kits in bursts of 10 to 15 minutes during drawing breaks I get stressed out by all the prep time that I need to do. The room smells bad too after a painting session and when the kids go here I get worried a lot. 

However, the time spent with an airbrush is really time well spent. Painting is faster and once I get around to figuring out a way to cut my prep time and mix better looking colors I think I'll be able to get the same results I had when I was hand-painting and since my goal with this hobby is to figure out the fastest way to get around my backlogs I think the AB is the only way to go.