Howdy! Today we’re working on an oldie but a goodie: The one and only Unicorn Gundam! This kit is my project for Goodguydan’s “Shelf Queen” group build. The goal of the GB is to get the oldest kit in our backlogs built and painted. This one has been sitting around half finished since 2013, making it by far the oldest kit I started and haven’t finished. I haven’t built a master grade Unicorn since returning to the hobby in 2020 and if I want to be ready for when I eventually buy an MGEX Unicorn, I need to finally put this one to rest.
The Unicorn Gundam is a special mobile suit to me. When I was first getting back in to gunpla in 2009, Z’s Unicorn Gundam was one of the builds I saw that utterly captivated me. It looked so cool that I knew had to build it! So I did- more than a few times too!
This isn’t every model I’ve built of this particular mobile suit. I’ve built and painted a Full Armor Unicorn Gundam and a Banshee Norn too, but the FA Unicorn was lost in a move before pictures were taken and the Banshee Norn needs some repair work before that can be shown off to everyone. This post isn’t about those kits though, this post is about this kit.
A brief review of how far I got on this in 2013 tells me that I managed to get the frame cut out and assembled, but ran out of my old frame color partway through painting it and I just sort of….stopped working on this. If I remember, I had just finished working on the FB Banshee and FA Unicorn and was decidedly burnt out on working on Unicorns. Most of the parts were here but a couple of bits for the backpack and torso were missing. Thankfully, mechapartsguy had replacements available for everything I was missing and the build could continue without any issues.
When I prepared these parts in 2013, I used a hobby knife to trim most of the gates off and as a result there were a few pieces that had substantial divots in them. I went through and fixed them as best I could while getting the other parts ready too. Working with something I built and partially painted such a long time ago has been interesting, almost like a collaboration with my past self. In addition to the somewhat flawed part preparation, the painted parts have some imperfections due to the primer I was using at the time. Most of it was an easy fix that just required a little sanding to smooth the surface out, but I can’t fix some of the areas without completely stripping the parts and you know what?
a) That’s too much work. I’m trying to get this done before the end of February.
b) I want to acknowledge how far I’ve come as a builder since I last worked on this kit and leaving those flaws feels like a fitting way to embrace that.
No, I’m not telling you where the imperfections are. Find them yourselves. ;)
For a little added visual flair, I decided to give this Unicorn the Armed Armor BS and VN parts from my MG Banshee (OVA) and decided that for the first time since my second MG Unicorn, I’d try my hand at painting the psychoframe instead of leaving it it’s usual clear-colored self. I’ll lose it being UV reactive but I’m hoping the colors look striking enough that it doesn’t really matter.
I decided to go with my favorite colors for this build again and I’m just as pleased with them here as I was on my RX-78-2. The backpack made for a nice ‘proof of concept’ starting point, after which I got to work on the rest of the frame and interior parts. The colors used here are GaiaNotes’ Purple and Mr. Color’s Sky Blue. The shading for the purple parts was done by adding some drops of black to the base purple color to prevent the contrast from being too overpowering. For color separation, I added a few drops of white to the main purple color and did a few parts with that to create some depth in the backpack and feet.
The majority of the frame is painted with GaiaNotes’ NAZCA mechanical surfacer Super Heavy.
To give the model some depth I did some of the other frame parts in GaiaNotes’ NAZCA “Heavy” mechanical surfacer and masked+painted some smaller details on the Super Heavy parts in that color too. This kit has it’s share of details to bring out thanks to the grade and scale it’s in and I think it’d be a waste to leave that on the table. There’s still some fine tuning to do on the waist and shield parts, but for now I’m liking where the frame is at. It still needs to be panel lined but I’m choosing to wait until the rest of the parts are painted before diving in to that step.
Detail work and flat coat aside, the interior of the mobile suit is finished. The armor parts have been grouped in to three sets based on what color they’re getting painted: Steel white, Neutral Grey III, and parts with both colors. There’s way more parts for the armor than my memory could recall so if I plan on getting this finished by the February deadline, I’m really going to have to focus on working through all these parts for the next couple of days. How about I stop typing, and start painting so I can update everyone when everything is painted?
‘Til next time!