Gundam Diorama Making: Close Encounters

It almost 5 am, but can`t sleep yet, kinda sad actually, my favorite football team Italy, couldn`t get the european trophy, really dissapointed with the game, an anticlimax from Italy, hoping so much to them, but Football is a game, there`s a winner and a loser, this time Italy was really a loser with 4 goal by Spain

I can`t get sleep, hoping will get sleepy, I write this tutorial for all of you
this tutorial is based on Gundam The 08th MS team, again?
yup, I love the series so much and got one of a rare plastic kit, I`ll write it on next review, really a good kit, 2 hg model in one box set, the RX 79 (G) and Zaku II comes with a good price

Gundam vs Zaku HG kit set

for making my diorama looks beautiful, this time I used a wooden frame with a triplex board as a base

snap fitting done, love the Zaku color, with engraving line in several part of the body

enough with kit, let`s roll to the diorama

first step is making a base as a landscape for the dio, I`m using a styrofoam and plaster for making the landscape, you can check the step in my last dio tutorial, the final result is like this, to get a nice texture, just randomly brush the plaster with the paint brush

after it dry, let`s go to painting phase, I used a water based paint, to get a realistic ground color I`m usually do it in this step; grey base coat-brown-yellow-white(dry brush). Do it several times in every layer to get a good color, cause the plaster usually will absorb the paint onto it

next step is adding some ground cover to make the base more realistic, I used a cologne bottle to spraying the with glue so the ground cover (I`m used fine turf ) stick to the base

after spraying the glue, when the base is still wet, sow some turf into it, do it gentle, I`m usually combine the color of the turf, this time I`m using a weeds (green turf) with yellow

and to keep the turf stick to the base, spray over again all of the surface with our lovely cologne bottle

you can see, how I randomly putting the turf, It`ll making a realistic look of terrain

this is the final result of our base, nice isn`t it? wait untill it fully dry

our next step is adding some trees on the ground, this time I used a foliage cluster, put some glue on the base using a paint brush, when it still wet add some foliage, press it till the foliage  stick to the base, seal it with liquid glue from sprayer

this is the look after I`m putting some foliage on it, i`m using a 3 diffrent foliage color to making a more dynamic look of the tree

to make the base more realistic I`m putting a real pebbles to the base, paint it first to make it blended with base terrain

put some glue and add the pebbles, let it dry

now our base is done, fiuuuuh

now for the kit, at the first time I want to recapturing a scene in the series, at that scene, Shiro`s gundam shoot the zaku, one of the hand is busted and loose from the body, but rather to stop, this zaku take his legendary weapon, A heat hawk axe, raised it to the air trying to reach the gundam with his remaining power, but this perfect kit comes with a surprise, it didn`t have any heat hawk, how can it be???
so I hardly change my idea

I came with this one, zaku get punched by gundam right in his face, at the first time I`m trying to levitate the gundam like this

but it looks too childish, hey! so how did the gundam levitate with using no armature? I`ll tell you how to do it, in my next tutoarial ^^v

and finally our diorama is done, adding some cotton to make the smokes effects, hey, look at the bazooka!

ok, mate, see you in my next tutorial, before that, enjoy my latest works

I`m painting my kit with enamel based paint and usually do the weathering with pastel chalk, kinda more natural than AB to me, and as you can see, I`m trying not to remove the seamline at the body, I prefer do it that way, a seamline gives a more robotic looks to the kit, and also give us the impression that there are another part underneath the outer frame

if you need any material in my dio, you can just check it in here