Gunpla Build - Master Grade Wing Gundam Ver. Ka (Preamble)

This turned out to be quite the build.

Before we really get into it, there’s a couple of things I want to go over. The first is the color of the model. It’s not exactly what you think of when you think of Wing Gundam:

The first thing that stands out is that the entire inner frame is brown. Not black, not grey, not black-grey, but brown.

Moving on, the outer armor isn’t a pure, plain white, but more of a cream color.

And then there is the matter of the orange runners. I think they’re supposed to be something of a golden yellow - and they kind of are under the right lighting. But I’m pretty sure they plastic is just straight orange.

So here’s the million dollar question - is this all intentional? Is it supposed to have this slightly-off-but-still-similar color scheme? I’m leaning towards “yes”, but it could go either way.

Here are the reasons I think it may not be intentional:

• I've heard (unverified) claims that a lot of kits from this era have extremely poor color accuracy, allegedly due to the high costs of plastic at the time. The story goes that Bandai just bought a bunch of basic (and cheap) colors in bulk, and used them as much as possible across all models.

  I have at least one other kit in the backlog from this time period, and it too has color issues, so I'm primed to believe this may be true.

• There are other mobile suits that have golden yellow parts - in fact, I have two of them on my backlog. One is the High Grade Methuss, which is another very old kit which also has very orange-y parts.

  I also have the Master Grade Gundam Alex from 2019, which obviously is a much newer kit. It uses parts that actually look golden yellow:

  

  This leads credence to the theory that Bandai couldn't (or wouldn't) make fully color accurate plastic for older kits, but now can (or will) for more recent ones.

• All of the promotional photos make the body look more white than cream:

And now for the reasons why I think it may be intentional:

• It’s a Ver. Ka. The second one ever in fact. Do you really think they’d cheap out on the colors for a then-new, extra special class of Master Grades?
• Cream and brown (and orange) actually pair really well together. What’s more likely - that these colors that just so happen to go well together all just happened to show up together coincidentally, as part of a cost cutting measure, or that they were put together on purpose?
• When I scan over the promotional images with a color picker tool, the inner frame actually comes up as brown, while the body comes up as a mix of either cream or some kind of grey. I’m certain that Bandai painted the model(s) used in these photos, but perhaps the paint job is closer to the color of the runners than I thought.
• If you make Wing Gundam cream and brown and orange/golden yellow, it no long shares an exact color scheme with Shenlong. That fixes one of the biggest pet peeves that I (and other fans) have with the design of the original five Gundams.

Whatever the truth may be, I decided I was going to leave the colors as-is. Part of that is due to laziness - it would be a huge pain in the butt to try and repaint the whole thing. But I also think it’s interesting tweak to the original Wing Gundam color scheme. I’d rather keep it that way than make it look more traditional.

Still, this is one of the first times I really started questioning whether it’s time to figure out a ventilation scheme in my basement so that I can finally buy an airbrush. Sooner or later I’m going to run into a kit with truly unacceptable out-of-the-box coloring.

Dry Transfers

I did a rather poor job with a few of the kit’s dry transfer decals. Normally these kinds of decals are “tough” - that is, they won’t transfer onto the plastic without applying a ton of pressure and elbow grease. This is a good thing, as it ensures that you can position the decal exactly where you want to.

But these particular dry transfers were sticking to the plastic before I could even try and tape them down in place. As a result, a few of them look warped and misaligned.

In some cases they also started to scrape off, forcing me to touch them up with paint.

In my defense, I had to apply some of the decals to nonflat surfaces, which makes it a lot harder.

Stickers

I know I initially said I wasn’t going to use the stickers, but I changed my mind. After a bit of experimentation I discovered that they actually looked decent when applied on the cream colored plastic; it’s the only place where the transparent border surrounding the decal is barely visible.

But even with that being the case, these stickers were a pain. These “old style” decals have a ton of extra border area surrounding each marking, far more than modern stickers (which try to have as little border as possible).

Here’s what I mean:

Even though the transparent border is largely invisible on the cream colored plastic, the fact that it’s so large means that sometimes you still need to trim the decals just to get them to fit and/or line up properly.

That’s not too big a deal, except for the fact that sometimes trimming a decal creates rough edges that end up looking worse than if you left it alone.

Long story short, I only trimmed some of them, meaning that not all of the stickers are properly positioned or aligned.

Seamlines

This model has a few seamlines. Call me a fool, but for a long time I assumed that seamlines weren’t really a thing on Master Grades. I’ve since learned that’s not the case, but I digress.

I had problems removing some of the seamlines on this model, because I had a lot of trouble getting some of the parts to fit flush.

Now, I’m nowhere close to an expert on the engineering aspects of Plamo, but it seems to me that molds for older kits weren’t made to quite the same level of precision that is possible nowadays. Some parts - including but not limited to old style polycaps - simply don’t fit as snug as they do on newer models.

And of course, if two parts aren’t fully flush, it’s impossible to effectively remove the seamline. In the end I did my best that I could, but there are some places where the seams are more visible than I’d like.

Does Any of This Matter?

I have this habit of getting really worked up over mistakes, or when a build just doesn’t quite go the way I imagined it would.

But then a days or weeks pass by, and I put the finished model in the lightbox, and … none of it matters.

In some cases, those mistakes are simply not visible. In other cases, they technically are, but I’ve forgotten about them, and so I don’t actually notice them.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’m trying to give myself some grace for a less than perfect build, and to accept that it’s okay if I’m a little bit lazy (or even sloppy) from time to time.

Now to the Build

I’m sorry I didn’t get to the actual build in this post, but I feel better getting some of this stuff off my chest. Plus, I think it will make the actual build post a lot more straightforward, since I won’t have to explain all the things that went wrong.