Geara Doga arrived in the post from HLJ along with RX-78-2 V3.0 and the two new Real Grades. I thought it was going to be a tough decision on what to build, but it was easy! After reading Syd’s review at Gaijin Gunpla and reading that this was a large kit, and opening the box and seeing the size of the pieces, this had to be the one! I’d very much enjoyed the PG Zaku II I decided it was going to get a similar treatment, with a full painting of the inner frame and the armour painted with a very small amount of shading / weathering along the edges.   I started with the wonderfully orange thrusters, going for Alclad chrome followed by Tamiya clear orange on top.I undercoated all the main armour pieces with Alclad grey primer, and then went for the chroma and orange treatment for the thrusters  on the soles of the feet.Masking was pretty easy – just tape over the part and cut around with the scalpel.  I noticed these pieces joined onto the thrusters, so they got the same treatment and masking as the thrusters. All the inner pieces were undercoated with the Alclad primer.Next came Createx black, which goes on nicely without thinning, and although only the feet were  remain black, the rest of the parts will benefit from the black in the recesses when the dark grey goes on top.  Dark grey went on top (mixed from Createx black and Createx white), with the airbrush used from a greater distance than normal so not too much paint went into the recesses, leaving the black to add some depth to the parts. I added some dry-brushing with the Tamiya Weathering Master set to the feet vents, removed the masking tape and added some pen work to the thrusters and drops of Tamiya Clear red in the centres. For the flexible piping I painted them with thinned Tamiya black, then when sort-of-dry rubbed most of it back off with my fingers so as to leave the black only in the recessed areas. Once the black was properly dry, I used the Tamiya Weathering Master light gun metal to tidy up the raised sections, then airbrused the Tamiya clear orange on top. Now the colouring matches the thrusters and the orange will stand out great against the green of the armour. Armour pieces have been primed, cut out, sanded and pre-shaded with Createx black which I thinned a little to give me more control. I used these paints from Createx to mix up the green I wanted for the lighter green armour pieces. Because I added plain white also, and one of the greens was their transparent green, the pearly effect is subtle. It’s perhaps a tad lighter than I wanted, but when thinned it worked great over the pre-shading.Here’s the first set of armour pieces with their green paint. I think the lighter colour will work well when I go in and use the Tamiya Weathering Master on their edges. Here’s a close-up of one of the leg sections and you can see the pre-shading has come out great and the pearlescent effect is subtle.