WIP
It’s been so long since I felt the touch of a painted Master Grade… It’s been so long handling a 1/100 kit, and it’s been way too long being able build a full inner frame without any armor parts needed. For a Master Grade, the Stark Jegan isn’t all that complex, but it’s still an MG with a complete inner frame with molded details + frame on the Stark armor on the legs. The price is steep while only adding 6 new runners, but the new runners are quite big, and has plastic stickers included (albeit really small ones), I mean, it still is really expensive at MSRP, but this a P-Bandai, who can actually get a PB kit at a desirable price in the US? Either way, the price of the Stark Jegan wasn’t gonna stop me, and I’m glad an MG Stark Jegan exists at all.
Quite a while ago, I finished up the HG Stark Jegan, which my dad got for me in anticipation for the MG Stark Jegan we already pre-ordered, and that kit was really the first time I hand-painted a kit that really transformed its look. That being said, the HG doesn’t really hold a candle against its bigger brother, build, articulation and appearance-wise, even before all the extra detailing I’m going to do. The MG has much better articulation, it’s much tighter than the HG, and color separation obviously blows the HG out of the water. There’s a lot more you can do with the MG than the HG, which shouldn’t be a surprise considering the HG is 13 years old at this point. Even compared to the base MG Jegan, I mean, there’s a reason why everybody has been waiting for the MG Stark to come out, he’s undoubtedly the cooler Daniel.
Anyway, this is just the kit before panel-lining, hand-painting and decaling. While I’ve always done the panel-lining and decaling, I’m finally putting my hand-painting skills to the test. Now that I’m working with painted plastic, cleaning up excess paint becomes a lot harder, I’m gonna have to be close to perfection, like how my dad has done it over the years. I have the HG as a reference where and how to paint, but I am hella nervous to not fuck shit up with the paint. Wish me luck!
Completed
Well, this was quite an experience. This year I finally started to learn how to hand paint on any Gunpla, and have been refining my skills with each new kit I built, the paintjobs I’ve done have always looked imperfect. Look across the kits I’ve made in the past few months, if you look close enough, you’ll see smudges, uncleaned excess paint or my attempts at cleaning excess paint with a hobby knife. Why this has remained constant was because I was eager to hand paint anywhere as much as I could, but did not have the patience to make the paint look perfect. Nobody, not even my dad, doesn’t mind as much as I do about these little imperfections.
This time, I wanted to change my way of painting the Stark Jegan. Unlike bare plastic, cleaning up excess paint is a lot harder, and considering my dad spent his efforts airbrushing the entire kit, I didn’t want to ruin it with my sloppy paintjobs. I wanted the hand painted areas the way my dad manages them for the past MGs we’ve done—near perfection. I asked him, how does he do it? It takes a lot of patience, and oh boy, was he not lying. Instead of excessively painting and fixing it later, I went dead-on precise where I wanted to paint. The gunmetal parts of the feet, the gunmetal on the chest vulcans, the silver on the brown armor, the damn pipe on the bazooka, I was being so careful on all of them my hand was shaking like fucking crazy. But damn, the way I painted, almost exactly replicated how my dad does it. I did still make mistakes, like, the triple circles on the Stark armor, I just did what I could as the circles aren’t really engraved into the part, and the silver lines on the side skirts, which was just a last minute addition. Other than that, I felt really fucking proud of myself. My dad was blown away, as he’s been several times this year. But this was a first for me—hand painting and 95% not fucking it up. It felt so satisfying once I finally finished painting, because, instead of waiting two weeks just for my dad to hand paint the kit for me, I did it within a weekend. Granted, the Stark Jegan is quite relaxed on the surface detail, but that is what makes it a great opportunity to start.
All I had left were the decals. As always, Bandai’s waterslides are the bane of my existence, so I grabbed a copy + some extras from DelpiDecal, and damn, while they don’t add too many additional decals to the Stark Jegan, especially lacking in the arms, it still added quite a bit to the appearance. I also just slapped in the huge EFSF decals ‘cuz I thought they’d look cool, and they are. Overall, my experience with this kit was amazing. The kit itself is not groundbreaking by any means, but, I’m so satisfied with how this turned out, I’m actually burnt out already, even if it’s been forever since I’ve done an MG. If I need to feed my desire to do some more Gunpla, there’s a backlog of HGs that I can do, so, see you again once that happens!