After some thought, I’ve managed to do a temporary photography set-up and grabbed some nice shots of the newly complete RX-78-2. With this kit I used Alclad flat top coat after I added the water-slide decals. I’m very happy with how this top coat looks. This is the classic mobile suit, and it’s looking vastly better than ever. This is a superb looking mech design, well implemented in the design of the kit, and looks vastly superior to the V1.5 that I built over 10 years ago. I’m also liking this new lighting set-up. I like the level of detail, and I like the colour differentiation on the parts. I didn’t have to do much masking because of that very separation. I left the red and blue metallic sections gloss top coated, reserving the flat coat for the rest of the armour sections.

I flat coated the shield though, and I do like how the metallic sheen appears, but I thought that doing all the kit flat might be too much, and we’d loose the effect of the flat in contrast with the glossy.The flat coat worked great on gunmetal of the gun. I like the Alclad gunmetal because it comes out very nice and very flat right out of the bottle, but I love the Tamiya gunmetal because it’s vastly cheaper and has a bit more of a metallic look to it – but it comes out glossy. The flat coat corrects that, and works superbly well.  For a mobile suit, this kit is mobile. There’s great articulation, and he holds the weapons and shield well.  I chose the filled-in joint covers because of their more detailed appearance. I used some Gold Gundam Marker on the detail on the diameter. This is subtle, but it works really well. I’m also happy with how the metallic orange/yellow sections came out. I thought they might be a bit over-the-top, but they’re blending in great.  The water-slides on the round joint covers were painful to put on. But they do look good! The backpack was my experiment with Tamiya smoke over Tamiya gunmetal, and it worked well, but it works even better with the flat coat. The stickers worked well on the verniers too. If one bazooka is cool…. …..then two bazookas are very cool. And the bazooka detail came out great. I’m pleased I went for metallic red on the shells, and that I left them glossy. The water-slides were tricky to accurately get onto the curve surface of the barrels. I tried out the LED lighting for these shots. The LED unit slots in under the head, and nicely if you remove the backpack (which sits on a polycap so it’s quick, easy and safe to remove and replace) there’s access to the switch of the unit and you can use a small screwdriver to flip it.