This entry was originally uploaded to Imgur in 2019. I am now posting it here so I can keep all my information in one place and so that people can more easily find and access it.
So I've decided to create a build gallery concerning my journey with Volk's IMS The Bang, from the series Five Star Stories.
Now, Volks has a great reputation for their magnificent tooling and stellar craftsmanship - and this kit is no exception. There are no significant fit issues, outside of a few bizarre instances, and the kit looks fantastic when its done. That doesn't mean there aren't... problems. The Bang was the first of their FSS 1/100 line and is, notoriously, the most difficult of the lot. I can't deny that there were some questionable decisions made, and while some aspects were simply incredible, others were definitely an unnecessary struggle.
I decided early on that I didn't want to make this a statue (I could have just bought a resin if I'd wanted to go that route, right?) and would keep ALL of its mechanical function. In this aspect I did, in fact, achieve success, but... ultimately it didn't matter all that much. The end result isn't especially poseable and I'm displaying him in what amounts to the "default" pose anyway since it's probably his best look.
I saw another builder once say something along the lines of, while I do not regret building this kit at all, I would never do it again. I am of the same mindset.
It took me a year (to the month) to finish this, and several hundred hours (probably 'cause I kept being dumb).
Anyway here is very early in the build process. Not much to say. I was cutting out pieces runner by runner, clipping and sanding them, and sorting them into cheap dollar store Tupperware that I labelled with tape and stickers.
My Tupperware stack. Some of these hold multiple runners that I was positive I wouldn't confuse for each other. The first chunk of the project was just spent cleaning them and popping them right back into their containers.
One of my biggest complaints on this kit is the nibbing. The plastic is somewhat brittle, and they would put nibs right on the edges of those gorgeous sharp corners, which meant if you went in too close with your cutters, regardless of their quality (I was using pro-zetsus, which are comparable to godhands, but, you know, sturdier), you would literally pop a gouge out of the kit. Ultimately it meant a lot of manual trimming with my knife.
This image shows my having to patch a hole left by a nib I was too careless with - right next to some scribework of course.
Ignore my horrible nails.
Accidentally popped the corner completely off here. Whups. Had to rebuild it with Tamiya putty. So. Um. Don't do this.
I used cardboard like this a lot to protect the fragile sharp pointy bits. Kind of made the head look like a triceratops. If its painted, swap blue tape for Tamiya masking tape.
This is the knee joint. It was... not made well. I would recommend using extreme caution putting it together. The polycap squishes and swells easily and is borderline too big for this piece, if I'm being honest. Go slow. I was able to fix it, but now my Bang has a bum leg that is super loose.
The caps that go around this assembly are also ill considered. There are like, two or three miniscule sections that actually touch that you can lay glue down onto without gluing the actual mechanical pieces. Luckily there is not much pressure applied to the points, though I still managed to pop it a few times.
Some awkward seamwork. The top is gross but not visible in the finished piece. The flat piece in front IS visible though (though admittedly its mostly covered by the knee sections) so I puttied up the middle seam. This is actually primed, so I'm jumping the gun a little here.
These knee parts are a chore. The internal mechanics need to be painted with these V shaped sections in place, since they have that big seam in the front that has to be glued and puttied. Which meant they spent like, months masked and wrapped in paper towels while I chunked through this beast.
(You can see that piece from the last image on the lower half before it was painted)
Seamwork in progress on the arm guard. Had to do some repair work as well when I sanded too deep near the front to restore those sharp lines.
Sanded smooth.
I took TONS of photos of parts placements to reference later. I'm only posting this one to mention a couple things.
First: There are two sort of circular half-ring bars around the top of the hip frame piece that snap into place. It is super tempting to glue it. Don't do this. It is SUPER HELPFUL to have these pieces loose when you are gluing the skirt pieces into place, which is an enormous ordeal. Not fun, 1/10 with rice.
Second: On the waist piece you can see some putty. This is because someone decided to put a nib literally on the inside stair step of those mechanical ridges. What the hell, Volks.
Didn't label the hand pieces at all when I cut them out. Was like doing the world's worst jigsaw puzzle as some of the pieces totally fit hands they did not belong to.
Finished hands. I love these things. That flashing though.
The most confusing part of the instructions since I do not, in fact, speak Japanese.
These pegs, the ones drawn here in black DO NOT FIT where they are supposed to go. Period. I had to sand down the pegs and also drill out the holes before I could get them to fit.
The pegs in question on the runner. I am so glad I did not toss my runners, as I had completely neglected to cut these out.
These pegs look... absolutely ridiculous before being trimmed. Oh, did I mention it needed to be trimmed as well?
Thanks Microsoft translate. Google's translate app is also pretty great, and I normally go Google all the way, but in this one instance, I think I actually prefer Microsoft's. It was a lot of guess work with the pegs in any case, so just remember the old adage - measure twice cut once. Or, for model kits - you can always make it shorter, but good luck making it longer!
I hate these. This is the white part that goes under the shoulder pauldrons. The connections that get glued are sparse and it is incredibly prone to breaking. First round of putty. You will see this again.
My first go at priming using Vallejo's grey primer. It didn't go well. The primer began to peel off in a film, in such a way that I could just grab and lift huge strips.
Now, I have been told that the primer works much better if you let it cure, and I've talked to other people who have never had this problem at all, but my initial assumption was that the primer did not bind well to the Volks plastic. I have a suspicion this might be the case since the paint itself hard a time binding to the bare plastic, even when it was thoroughly cleaned and scrubbed (which rules out releasing agents).
A familiar friend. Most paint can be cleaned up with some combination of chemicals and a nice, soft bristle tooth brush. Thinner and purple power baths were unfortunately common in this process.
Primed! Sort of. This is actually Tamiya Sky Gray (and sometimes a custom grey because I ran out of sky gray, and sometimes Neutral Gray when I ran out of that). Tamiya likes sticking to everything, and Vallejo (my end goal) likes sticking to Tamiya. Now, I did not need to get such a clean, even, thorough coat by any means, but I was being meticulous. This was one of my first big airbrush projects (hahaha you poor soul) and I wanted to get it "right".
A quick snap of the primed pieces to give me an idea of where I was going.
These shoulders actually have a shocking range of motion, the whole torso in general actually, which multiple joints in each shoulder alone, and multiple points of rotation in the waist and chest. I can make this kit do poses I've never been able to with a Gundam. Too bad it all gets held back under the awkward heft of all that armor.
Pieces I'd puttied, now primed. No visible seams. Success!
Starting the metallic parts. Vallejo Dark Steel from their mecha line. Vallejo metallics are delightful, truly.
More of the frame after getting coated.
Wash time! I used Vallejo's black wash, which works fantastically over their paints. Vallejo paints have an additive that helps them self-smooth and has almost a porcelain-like finish when its dry (it's annoying and requires much more cleaning out of an airbrush, but I like the paint enough to put up with it). This finish tends to be rather hydrophobic, whereas the wash itself is like a watercolor and lifts and moves with the addition of water. Unlike other washes, it doesn't stain the lower layers.
I also used ground black pastels and a soft brush to add additional shading once the washes were complete. I do not believe that I'd done that yet in this image, however.
A comparison of a washed and unwashed piece.
This specific piece is completely hidden in the final build.
Wash comparison of the feet.
The feet with their spats. The nibs on the white parts were particularly annoying, being placed on the sharp edge. The pegging system in the back, where the "high heel" connects, is also somewhat difficult to assemble, not for being hard to grasp but for being hard to wrangle. I did snap one of the pegs, which required drilling out via pin vice and affixing with part of a paper clip. This actually happened rather late in the build. I was livid.
A completed arm. The mechanical motion of these things is really unique and a joy to watch. But generally completely useless.
Painting the insides of the skirt panels. I kept each individual section in their own plastic bag, so one bag might contain, say, the right forearm or the right lower leg armor. When I worked on them I laid them on top of their bags. You will see this again.
Masking! So any complex shapes. I laid strips of Tamiya masking tape onto the backing of used price-tag sticker sheets and cut it into triangles and squares with my knife. If you are in the area I will gladly give you some, I always have extras.
Masked knee guards. The parts under the paper towel were painted with the rest of the frame.
A nice cool gray base coat. It... looks a lot like the primer.
First go at a pauldron, adding the pre-shades. Or just regular shades I guess. I did not use black, as I wanted absolute control over what color I ended with. I picked out my base color and what color I wanted for my darkest shadow, and worked between these two. At this stage people kept telling me it wasn't dark enough, and I had to endlessly assure them of my ultimate vision for this piece.
Going back in over the shades with the base coat.
HEADS UP HERE. I'd like to point out the embossing on this image, the part with the insingia. What I did not know going into it is that the decal provided with this kit does not, in any way, fit into that embossed area. Unless you plan to manually paint that figure I would heavily advise puttying that shape in and laying the decal over the flattened surface.
Trying my best to work out the structure of the skirts by holding everything together so I can shade them in the right way.
UGH. Look at all that snowy spattering. So, I live in Florida, which brings certain complications to airbrushing, to say the least. Now, I wrestled a LOT with these sorts of problems until I received a life-saving tip that I probably should have found out with my own research: to solve this issue, add a little bit of the Vallejo Thinner Medium into your jar before spraying. Holy bejeezus did that work wonders. If only I'd known like, a hundred hours before he told me.
Some pre-shaded pieces.
Some finished shaded pieces.
The chevrons. These pieces were actually some of the last things "finished" on the entire kit. They are attached to the underside of the head with copper wire, but the fittings that those copper wires sit into are strangely shallow. Even with glue the wire would be prone to popping out. So I took a pin vice and drilled the hole out a little deeper, in both the chevrons and the head - after the kit was 99% finished. Terrifying.
Broken again. Seriously, screw this piece.
Re-puttied, which meant re-painting.
Adding some shades to the white pieces now. No, I don't like gloves. I can't feel the clues that let me know I am ruining my pieces.
More shaded white pieces.
There are four of these. They are prone to getting lost. I used one of my favorite tools - the P-Wand, but please don't look that up you get sex toys - which will be available for purchase from many large vendors in the very near future, but maybe under a different name? The man who designed it is local and just got picked up for production!
First pass on the sword. The light was misleading, and I thought it looked more peachy than it did, and was subsequently informed it looked like a "flesh-colored kendo stick".
My original paint color next to my foundation. So... um... you know what, no comment.
Not product placement. I keep my paints in there.
After an application of Badger Ghost Tint Magenta. Love the stuff.
Parts pre-wash. Progress!
Washing the gray armor. I'd already applied a coat of Vallejo Matt Varnish at this point. I didn't want to use the black wash, and the grey wash was too light, so I made a wash using my shade color and some Madea's airbrush cleaner (I was shown this trick, don't want to take undue credit here). It was not as delightful to work with as the, you know, product designed for that explicit purpose, but it did the trick. Would recommend it for specific shade needs. This is half on, half off for comparison purposes.
Before washing.
After washing. Was as much painting as "washing", but what can you do?
Pulling detail out of the head.
Moving along. So many runes.
Pulling the mask off of the skirts. Now, I've heard people say that you can't leave masking tape on for extended periods of time. This is strictly not so. I had this tape on for literal months, had zero issues. Now, this may not be the case for all paints, but it certainly is fine for Vallejo. The ONLY piece I had issues with was one I redid and didn't allow enough time for the paint to completely cure - I ended up lifting some, and had to re-spray. So don't be impatient, let it sit before you mask, and you should have no issues.
To spray a good, clean mask make sure you spray soft and build your layers. You won't get any paint squelching under your tape.
I ended up with a superbly massive pile of tape by the end. This isn't even it's final form.
So clean. Such satin.
Originally I'd planned to matt these, but I loved the contrast so much that I made my life more difficult in an effort to keep that finish. I would go on to use Vallejo Black Wash on these inside parts.
Was trickier than anticipated to get the clean look I wanted.
Whelp. Made some mistakes. Namely, forgot those spheres were, in fact, white and not gray. Tried to strip just the spheres. Yeah, no. Had to strip the shield.
Now, for WHATEVER REASON they did not make those white spheres as separate insets. Why, I will never know. Attempt one.
So far so good.
Oh. Not so good. I tried a very long time to make this work, since I of course didn't want to go back to square one yet again. But it really was a failure to thrive from the start and I should have seen it. It ended up being a bumpy messy dingy disaster.
Attempt two. Other way around! I could have tried liquid mask as well, and might have if this route hadn't finally worked...
This took all of forever.
All masked, prayers made.
Now, this looks bad, but is actually much better! All those stray white spots are actually in the groove surrounding the dots, which means it was super easy to fill them in. Well. Easy enough anyway.
All cleaned up. Triumph.
All painting finished. The final stretch.
The start of the pastel brush journey. A comparison of the insides of the chevrons, off and on. Black pastels again. Wanted to make the darkest parts darker, add some crunch to the overall model. Still a bit messy in this iteration. It went through a few. I'd hand painted the grey bits between them by this point as well.
Finished pastel shades.
Chevrons in the light. Hard to see on the actual model, so I guess enjoy it while you can?
Assembling and gluing. It'd been along time since I'd seen him together by this point.
Decals! This was my biggest water decal project to date. Which probably doesn't say great things about me, but lets ignore that. The decals were durable and gave me no issues.
Some shine on the tiny Kubalkan sigil here. A bit more Mark Fix did the trick. A final matt coat made the whole lot look painted on.
AGAIN. My fault for not doing enough test fits, but it wasn't exactly easy before I had all the pieces glued together. I wasn't about to repaint it, not for such a tiny fracture, so I puttied the seam and called it done.
All gone. Or at least close enough.
In pieces. Mid-process of pastel blushing. Pulling out more depth, especially from the pieces below the pauldrons. The pauldrons themselves were not an easy assemble - the grooves the flaps fit into are rather shallow. Good thing those fittings aren't visible, because it's definitely the sloppiest place in the kit.
More gluing, more blushing. Half his skirts are off, but they are probably fully assembled lying somewhere else on the table. Like I said, you want the option to keep those off. Makes it so much easier to work around.
On the right side of his arm in this image you can see a random peg. The metal tube is supposed to go on that. The fitting it too shallow inside the attachment point to stay on, even with glue. It physically cannot be attached to that peg unless you were to cut and re-fashion the tube in such a way as to not create tension on that point. Even the BOX ART for this kit doesn't have it in place.
Also: paint hates sticking to those tubes, flakes off with even a little rubbing. Never found a good solution.
Every bottle of paint I used in this project, including thinners. I thinned some game color arctic white for the whites, simply because it was on hand, but I honestly preferred the coverage to the mecha line white, which took me a bajillion coats when I did my Jegan.
This didn't get used, to my great sadness. UV reactive red. They claimed it dried clear, but to be thin enough to be clear it didn't fluoresce. It only went red after it was heavy enough to be a white paste. Glomania brand. I wanted to do the sword and runes, and had in fact been super excited about it.
Thanks for reading!
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