Summer '17: Elton's HGCE Freedom and Strike Freedom

The club has been a bit silent for the Summer. But GunPla is still a lively hobby! I spent a good week trying to get some presentable kits done. I went with the HGCE Freedom and Strike Freedom!

I decided upon these two kits purely because they were on the top of my backlog. I painted them both the same color because I realized that all of the limbs and weapons are interchangeable between the two kits. This gave me the idea that if I painted them the same, I would be able to kit bash them like toys anytime I wanted!

The painting and masking process was of course time consuming. I went with rattle cans since I did not have access to fancy airbrushes where I was staying during the Summer. I am fairly satisfied with how the color turned out but not too much with it's finish being very thick. (Common for rattle cans) I have quite a lot of experience with rattle cans so I was able to get at least all the panel lines to still show.

Masking was difficult. Since these two kits were still HGs, they still were missing quite a few color applications and part separation. My masking was alright, not as clean as I'd like. I used Scotch painter's blue tape. Not exactly ideal but it was cheap and I had it around.

I painted the frame parts of both the kits a gunmetal black. It was difficult getting the gold frame parts from the Strike Freedom to look exactly like the Freedom since it needed more layers of paint and I didn't want to thicken the part with light color primer.

The parts came along. The grey I used was a fairly light shade of grey. Almost like a primer color.

Assembling the parts was not as fun as I thought. Because of some parts becoming too thick, I ran into a lot of fitting issues.

But to be honest, those fitting issues were not something I couldn't fix!

In this picture above, I had a bit of fun in the assembly and but the arms and wings of the Strike Freedom onto the body of the Freedom. It shows how these parts are easily interchangeable. I made a mistake (not shown) in doing hand painting on the torso of the Strike Freedom. I was painting the entire kit in oil based paints and accidentally got some metallic greet paint on the actual chest itself. I ended up having to re-sand and repaint the light grey. It turned out fin but just slowed me down. Patience is key in this hobby. And here are the finished pictures. It still needs panel lines and perhaps some decals but I was exhausted and needed a break.

The Freedom's launchers on the wings are actually still missing some of the pale purple color accents that I just didn't have time to mask and paint. Therefore, you dont see any pictures of those launchers deployed!

I thought that the metallic green touches makes the kit pretty unique. I am a huge fan of pastel colors so don't be surprised to see more builds I do with pastel colors! I bet this would have looked better after panel lines and decals. One day. I still have a lot to learn. Heh.

When school starts again, there are unofficial plans that we are going to do a group build on the newly released Mega Size Unicorn Gundam! My goals for this coming Fall is probably to do more personal builds but building together is always fun! (I still have that Barbatos custom...) Thanks for reading! Hope Summer has been going good for all of you!