Finished last night, but wanted to wait til I get some sun to take pictures. Sunlight is really the best lighting. I thought I leave this a clean build bc in the anime/manga Lorenz got a completely new (or refurbished) unit.

The kit does come with their own decals. But most of the decals just say "caution" on them. So I didn't want to have caution decals plastered over everything. The kit also does not come with a guide on where decals are to be placed, so you have to do some research or just go with your imagination. Decals are also clustered very closely on the sheet so you will need an exact knife to get pieces you want.

Overall, this is a pretty ok kit. The end result looks great though.

I put it next to a RG Zaku for scale. I also put glow-in-the-dark stickers in the visor for glow effect. The jewel in the head is not part of the kit, had to buy nail art jewels sticker sheet for that one. I think it turned out ok.

It was a whole lot of fun. Excited to do another one!

Having some fun posing High Grades!

Really proud of how Red turned out.

Love the whole line, but can’t be arsed to color correct the spots I missed on the G🦆 yet.

2 big reasons

I'm a sucker for robot girl.

First time building metal frame kit, why Bandai don't use metal frame? It's pretty good.

The build itself was fine. There were some defective parts, and many parts were too tight.

You're supposed to build a giant snake thing too, but i look at the building process in the manual and went "nope"

Chilling n healing

And first painted pilot, loved every minute. I used Bandai waterslides and Gaianotes EX clear. Gunmetal and gun chrome for the grey parts. The decals went on easy enough but they don't adhere very well and didn't react much with MicroSol. In some cases I needed to go back many times with the Sol to get what I wanted. Clear coat solves the adhesion problem.

I’ve been working on this K.O.G. from The Five Star Stories, and the front is finally at a point where I’m happy to show it assembled.

I often see F.S.S. kits finished with beautifully smooth airbrushed metallics, so for this one I wanted to see what would happen if I treated the gold entirely as a brush-painted NMM surface and kept the brushwork visible.

A lot of the stroke work comes from a hatching technique I experimented with on an earlier Gelgoog. On the larger armor panels I build the highlights with directional strokes, often spreading outward from the brightest area. From a distance they merge into the metallic surface, while up close the individual marks are still very obvious. In some areas the highlight shapes are deliberately pushed a little further for composition, similar to the way metallic surfaces are sometimes treated in 2D mecha illustration.

The lighting setup is fairly simple: a strong key light coming from above and in front, plus a broad cool skylight. I think of the two lights almost as competing for territory. Most of the front is strongly controlled by the key light, so I kept those areas relatively pure gold. As the influence of the key light drops toward the sides and recessed areas, the muted blue-green skylight starts to take over.

I also gave the ground reflections different colors. The right side picks up orange-red, while the left side shifts toward green. There is another orange-red reflection between the legs, almost as if the K.O.G. were standing over a red carpet. Part of the reason for doing this was to make the color balance change as you move around the model: the left view becomes greener and calmer, while the right gives a stronger orange-red / blue-green contrast.

The back is still unfinished, so this is only the front half of the experiment for now.

I’d be interested to hear how the visible brushwork reads to other painters — does it still feel metallic from a normal viewing distance, or does it start to read more like an illustration?

https://x.com/Gp_oyaman/media?filter=photo

sharing my kits from february to now, most of them are bootlegs but my experience for building them was good

I can't paint the small gundam, too smol

Finally got a chance to build one of my grails, thanks to the recent reprint. What a timeless design this beauty is! Although, I struggled a fair bit with its many gate marks, the time spent, imo, was well wroth it!

Also, did a few custom mods to it - green led in the eyes, blue led in each sabre handle, a blue led in the rifle's side scope, and some red leds in the back thrusters. Nothing too brush :) But the kit turned into a statue because of that (running wires inside it) 🤷

oh, and the little mgsd buddy is a 3p kit from anaheim collectibles - not the best experience with that one. its a cool attempt and i appreciate the effort, but it has quite a few issues (hard plastic on joints cracks and gets loose, quite finicky to handle to begin with, etc etc) and the standard price for it is a bit ridiculous.

Cheers!

I was building in very remote place with a headlight only. Thought the lighting looks quite dramatic

I’ve seen the normal MGEX Strike Freedom with LEDs around for a while, but never felt the need to get it… until Bandai came out with a clear version that lets the LEDs really shine through. It’s now one of my favorite builds. The gold panel lining took a big chunk of time to make it look clean, but I’m very happy with the result!

Not really feeling like trying to pose this guy more so just a simple pic.

After Building the HG ground gundam I figured the HG Ez8 would be very similar and just as good. So when I found one clearanced at Michaels I figured why not.

The look of this kit is pretty nice and clean. A lot of the parts come together to produce a nice armored look.

I really like a lot of the intricacies in the armor and the head especially that really sell the kit and with minimal color correction it’s nice even out of the box.

The big thing is the parachute unit which I really want to get another unit for my ground gundam now!! It’s so cool!

Unfortunately that’s kinda where my positives end and the mehs start. That freaking head though is a hate, idk if I assembled something wrong but like the boy can’t look up to save his life.

The mobility on this suit seems quite reduced from its mass production counterpart especially the arms. Posing with the rifle was wrestling with a rhino, it just won’t budge at times.

Combine that with leg armor held on by a prayer in the back and stiff knee joints it’s just meh.

So yeah looks nice but I’m not going to pose this one much.

Edit: someone pointed out that the Ez8 is not a revive kit like the ground gundam is so that 5 years of time between the reason for the large difference in design quality.

Price: 139 RMB or $20.68 USD (likely closer to $50 when released)
Release window: September 2026

Comes with 1/144 ball seen in image

Really enjoyed the kit especially with some 3rd party decals. It poses great and overall just has fantastic aesthetics; it's easily one of my favorite MGs now.

Bought this just before the Rg got announced and I absolutely love this kit! Some obviously shotty dry decal work but this was a really nice build for the most part.

I've recently picked up a can of Vallejo varnish so I can work on my kit but even after fully drying out for 2+ hours the varnish scratches off very easily, even with fingernails.

Would you recommend another varnish or is there a way to reinforce it?

I got sent the wrong color (purple/green/orange version) and I really wanted the blue/red version. So I decided to paint large armor parts by my self , for the first time.

Everything here is with stedi markers (soft brush tip).

No primer, no coating.

My question is, what happens if I just let it sit on the shelf like this without sealing with top coat ?

So far its been a full week and the kit seems fine (it was a bit sticky first two days but now its not).

Can I just leave it like that ?

If not, and if i MUST top coat it, all I have (and probably will have) is Mr. Hobby GM501 & GM502 glossy/matt water based coat MARKER.

will I simply need to pass with the marker on the parts i painted ? Won't it scratch/deform the paint ? Any advice will be appreciated

A while ago I posted my first ever Gunpla - the HG Nu Gundam from CCA; now I present (6 High Grades later) my first ever MG! The screws were… a strange choice, but the decals were super easy, and the build came together really nicely! Panel-Lined & fully Decal’d - da Gouf Custom from 08’th MS Team!

Threading the Zaku tubes together wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be, either, but I can see why ppl dislike it so much 🥴
🗡️💙✨

EDIT: I’m just now noticing I didn’t panel-line the shoulder cones* 😩

I know the Gunmetal on the head isn’t accurate but I like how it breaks up the gold a bit. I mainly used the Gunmetal on the joints and hands though, something I plan to do as often as I can now. (its simple and looks so much better than the static grey imo)

Also that second image, the gold isn’t painted. I just turned off the lights and opened the window. It turned from yellow to gold with just a change of lighting lol