Putting paint on, chipping it off

There have been a few delays, but I’m finally making real progress on the Hakuheisen again. Recently I painted a metallic basecoat on the parts as well as a couple layers of Future gloss. Now I’m getting started on painting the final colors on the parts. This project will feature a lot of “paint chipping” effect, and this time around I’ve decided to create the effect using the “hairspray” technique – spraying the parts with hairspray, painting the final color, and then using water to weaken the hair spray to make it easy to chip away bits of the newly applied color coat.

A few minor details first.

On this project I’ve spent a lot of time referring back to the Armored Core 3 opening movie and various related CG stills of the machine I’m modeling. This has helped a lot with the color choices (hint: the silver parts aren’t silver) – and every now and then I turn up some interesting bit of information… Most recently I found there are a couple little “rivet points” on the forehead visor which I hadn’t drilled in… The kit doesn’t provide these “rivet” details at all, so the ones that are now there I had to add on myself. Adding on these four that were missing was a relatively simple challenge – especially since the ones on the left and right sides aren’t adjacent – so minor errors in placement would not be especially easy to spot.

Unfortunately, however, while trying to drill the holes, I accidentally scratched the part on one side… To repair it, I sanded it down, then applied some Mr. Surfacer 500, waited a day, and sanded it down again. After that, of course, I had to repaint the thing…

Another challenge lay in the various multi-colored parts, like the forehead camera and the two red “tail light” things on the back. The recessed area needs to be painted clear red, while the rest needs to be white. The process is further complicated in the case of the forehead camera – that bit will be LED lit, so the red lens part cannot have primer or other paint coats underneath the clear red…

The “tail-lights” are another matter, however. The only challenge with them is simply getting the colors where they need to be. For the first attempt, I painted the part silver and then wine red – and then attempted to mask off the recessed area…

I mentioned before that I’ve been drawing my color choices from the Armored Core 3 opening video in which the Hakuheisen appeared… I guess it’s a matter of perspective which determines whether I’m being a slave to accuracy, or whether I’m drawing inspiration from an available resource… Anyway, I’ve found it helpful. I took a trip to the hobby shop (without any reference materials) to get some paints to fit the color scheme…

The biggest difference between the colors in the AC3 opening and in the kit manual is the parts molded in silver. In the AC3 opening these parts weren’t silver at all, they were some kind of off-white. The machine wasn’t painted in metallics and glossed-up – rather it was dusty-looking, with wear marks all over. I chose “deck tan” for the white color- and then decided to lighten it a bit by mixing in some white. The body will be painted royal blue, and the purple bits will be “Metallic grape”. I picked up various dark colors to use for different weapons and such, as well… I used Nato Black for the cannon (which appeared to have a bit of a greenish hue to it in the references) – I may use the Sea Blue or German Gray for other weapons.

I haven’t quite figured out the color for the mechanical parts yet. In the reference material it looks like black with silver showing on the edges. But my metallic basecoat is a fairly dark metallic (Alclad Steel) already – so it might be nicer to use that color as-is. I’m going to see how it looks in combination with the blue and then make my decision. This is one of the parts where I’m less concerned about accuracy to the AC3 opening…

Finally, I got started painting the model’s real colors…

I’m doing this paint chip effect, which means I had to have the metallic undercoat and a good couple coats of Future – then I had to spray the parts with hairspray, and then paint the parts and chip ’em… Since I’ve never done this technique before, and since there’s a metric buttload of parts to deal with, I started with just the cannon and the all-white parts of the model…

I ran into a few problems. First, I got a few areas where some white haze formed, just little bits of it. I’m not sure what happened… Second, on some of the parts, I chipped off too much paint. I may have to repaint those parts to get a better effect. Third, some of the white paint actually wound up cracking. I think I didn’t give the hair spray sufficient time to dry before putting on the white coat. This is karma for impatient modelers… If you rush, you fuck up. Finally, I think I got too much hairspray on certain areas – I think it actually filled in a couple small details… Plus the hairspray appears to swell up when it absorbs water, which exaggerates the effect.

I’m still getting the hang of the technique, but it’s fantastic stuff. A lot seems to depend on timing and on how much water you let the stuff soak up, and how much force or abrasion you use. If you soak too much water, large sections of the paint will simply come loose. But if you get a good amount you can chip away tiny bits or build up a nice edge-wear effect…

So next up, I’ll be fixing the areas that had too much paint chipped off – evaluating and (hopefully) improving the paint on the forehead camera and the “brake lights” – and then moving on to painting the other colors… It’ll be great to put blue on the model – but there’s also some masking I need to do first…