MG 1/100 Gundam Astray Red Frame Kai (Painted Build)

Hey Builders, 

Welcome to GunplaWorks. Today I have a post on one of my bigger projects, the MG Gundam Astray Red Frame Kai, with a candy red paint job for the frame. As you may know, the Astray Gundam in all of its iterations are best known for their unique design, with an exposed inner frame. For this reason, many people love the design of the Astray. 

For those of you who might not use an airbrush, or think its too costly, this might be for you. Many people ask, is it possible to attain the same metallic red color by using spray cans? (the cheaper alternative). The short answer is Yes, but I will get into it a little more later. 

For this project I used Mr. Hobby Mr. Surfacer 1000, Tamiya Color Clear Red, Tamiya Color Gold Leaf, and Tamiya Color Gloss Black. The order I went in was Surfacer, then black, then gold, then clear red. I used about one can on average for each, so I still have some left of each color. 

I decided with the myriad of red parts, I would just go by the runners. Here is the black gloss over the surfacer. 

After, I coated the black pieces with the gold leaf. Be very careful, this part is very important. Make sure you coat all the sections of the piece that you need to be coated in red as well. If you leave some black sticking out, the gloss red will not look as good over it. 

The next part was to coat the gold pieces in the clear red. 

Its hard to see because of the lighting, but it came out pretty well. 

Painting on the runners calls for one drawback. It is hard to see all the sections of the pieces clearly, so you may have missed some sections when spraying. It is also difficult to get in all the nooks and crannies, while leaving a lot of risk for pooling through trying to get in closer in between parts. 

Painting Aside:

Here is where I will talk a little about the spray paint. Yes it is possible to achieve a candy coat of metallic red or whatever through the process of priming, black, (gold or chrome) and then a clear coat of what color you're using. In theory and in practice it works. However it leaves a lot of room for mistakes. I found a lot of  sections that I missed when I was painting, (left black, or left slightly gold). 

If you try to paint in this way, I suggest taking off the pieces, and taking your time making sure the coats are smooth and thorough. The other thing is, make sure you mask off the pieces that connect together, or you will have a hard time fitting pieces together. (I used a hobby knife to scrape off excess before putting pieces together). 

Finally, a small tip. What happens if you missed a section? You can't very well go out and spray clear red over again and start from scratch. It's too much of a hassle. Here's a little trick I used. I took a small plastic saucer (the kinds you might use at a fast food restaurant for your ketchup or sauces or whatever) and then covered it with plastic wrap (the kind you use to seal food) leaving some slack. Then I cut a small hole at the top, enough for the top of the spray can to fit, and then pushed the spray can with the plastic saucer so it would be contained inside, and then used a brush to brush whatever pieces needed to be touched up. This helped me fix a lot of my mistakes. 

Here is part of the torso being built

From the side. 

After awhile, this is my progress. The upper body pretty much finished. 

As you can see on the forearms, on your left, I did not coat enough gold, thus the red sat on top of the black, and is much darker. On your right, I didn't spray enough red, so the gold comes out more, making it lighter. I touched up both towards the end. 

Red on too much black is much more difficult to fix than just not enough red. Be careful when coating the gold!

Here is the inner frame on the leg

I love the design of the leg. The way you put it together really makes each section pop out. Having the frame and then putting the white armor pieces on top, and then putting more red pieces over the armor really gives for a unique design. 

Finished. Prior to building the weapons. I gave him a beam saber. 

Hey, that's not your big sword...

Borrowing from Shinn Asuka and his Sword Impulse

The swords are to die for. Here are the Tiger Pierce and Gerbera Straight. 

I painted the gold parts of the swords with the Tamiya Gold Leaf as well. You may find that if you build this kit, you won't like the "gold" that it comes in. It's very unattractive. 

Here he is with the Tactical Arms II L

Thoughts about this kit:

A few things to say. I really love the design of this kit. However, I would not have purchased it if I was not planning to give it a paint job. The red and gold that it comes in were not to my liking, and though the colors are accurate to the manga/anime art, I don't like it as much as the candy coat. I found that the red color molding that the plastic came in was much too bland. 

But you can feel free to disagree with me. 

This kit has amazing articulation. You can sort of see in the picture above this one, that he can do some pretty awesome slashing poses without a stand. He is also very sturdy (though I'm not sure if that's because the paint makes the pieces fit together that much more snugly)

The Tactical Arms II L looks amazing, however it is much too heavy for him to hold without a stand in Sword Form. Though the kit comes with a stand, so that is very helpful.

The Tactical Arms also changes form into Arrow, flight, V, and Delta, so the different poses you can achieve are just awesome. 

You can check out some of the photos HERE

 Until next time!