HGUC 1/144 Nu Gundam HWS - Complete

Oh man, it's been a looooong month already! My compressor broke so I had to wait about 2 weeks to finish this guy up for Dans contest. Honestly now that I think about it I don't believe my compressor was broke, I think my airbrush had a clog in it but it just never crossed my mind. Man do I feel dumb. Well lesson learned, always check your air brush!

Well onto the kit. I had my own little take on the matter, first I converted all the dark blue pieces to black and the white pieces to a pearl white and honestly, I like the finish on em, they work well together. This kit was my first time actually using masking tape, I failed hard in some areas and succeed in others, you can easily notice where I messed up and where I was pro level (lol jk). I started using Tamiya copper for some of the small metal pieces like the thrusters (outsides) and the connectors for the funnels, really like how they came out, very nice look  to them. Gotta admit this yellow on black where the funnels are came out much better then I anticipated, happy about that. I did do some hand painting, like the missile pods on the shoulders, I painted those red to get a nice color split. I also hand painted the chin. I did kinda mess up on the panel lining, I dont know what it was but for some reason I kept getting smearing effects even after leaving it to dry for quite some time. Maybe it wasn't long enough. Well this ended up making the kit look kinda dirty, not what I was going for, kinda disappointed with that. The funnels also have no panel lining or decals simply because I don't think I would have made the deadline for the contest if I applied a coat of future (takes 48 hours to cure).

Lessons learned:
- Use masking tape for flat surfaces and do not try and cover up the area and cut it out if you can place it   around.
- Let your wash dry completely, especially if it's a "heavy" wash in deep areas (like the gun and shield)
- Be more careful when hand painting

Overall experience:
- Being my second fully painted kit, I would rate this an 8 on a 10 point scale. Compared to my sazabi, while the finish wasn't as good, the overall process of painting was muuuuch smoother.

Paint used (all acrylic unless otherwise noted):
- Tamiya Clear Red (for Eyes)
- Tamiya Red (Chin)
- Testors Enamel G.I Red (for missile pods)
- Tamiya Gun Metal
- Testors Pearl White
- Model Masters Florescent Red
- Tamiya Flat Yellow
- Tamiya Flat White
- Tamiya Copper
- Tamiya Flat Black
- Model Masters Flat Clear Coat
- Vallejo Gray Surface Primer