Astray Red Frame: Session 5 & 6

Session 5 finished up where I left off, which were the arms that I was working on.  But the amount of work and effort that went into finishing the arms took up an entire session alone.  The main time consumer were the hands themselves.  Aside from clipping the pieces off and then sanding down the excess plastics, to get the more accurate appearance, I have opted to do some minor painting using the Gundam Markers as a source.  I then realized that this is much more difficult than it seems, due to the fact that the pieces were small to begin with and that physics tend to get in the way of making clean paint on the fingers.  This may end up being rectified later on by adding in red paint or removing the extra white residue that overflowed.  But for some of the pieces, they turned out pretty well and I managed to get one perfect paint job done on a piece to say the least.  Stability is a bit of a tricky issue as I do not have the equipment on hand to really keep the piece steady as I navigate the marker around it.  I personally do not know how mess it could have become if I was using this or the traditional method of coloring.

After the hands were done, I finished up by assembling the shoulder pieces and adding in whatever minor panel lines were visibly seen in the stock photo on the back of the manual.  Despite the pair of shoulder pieces being small and minimal work, I had a couple of lines already inked early in preparation as I recognized the parts.  Others had to wait until they were cut from the sprue.  The result was 2 nice looking arms that look a lot more detailed than an painted version.  And when they were attached to the body, the model is starting to look increasingly better than before.

Session 6 is looking similar to session 4 with the basic assembly of the arms.  I looked over the assembly manual several times to check if the parts I am piecing together are internal or external.  I believe that this time I was a bit more aware and cautious to not assemble the parts together as soon as the touch up paint and ink dries.  In that respect, I ended up taking longer to finish off one leg completely.  I am hoping it is to be worth the extra time to study the parts so that I can make proper panel line inkings to bring out the extra details of this model.  Yet after each session, I still wonder just how in the world I will do the two swords that is drawing closer to cutting time.