HGUC NZ-666 Kshatriya

As I described in the About section of this blog, back when I first tried my hand at gunpla, I worked exclusively on SD kits. That all changed when I saw Good Guy Dan's amazing Kshatriya tutorial a couple years later. By that point, I had watched Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn and fallen in love with the giant green quad-winged beast, so seeing Dan's wonderful work pushed me over the edge. I told myself, "Well, maybe ONE normally proportioned model..." 

I ended up buying not only the HGUC Kshatriya, but also seven or so Master Grade kits, most of which are still sitting in my backlog. After spending about a year on those other kits, I finally came back to the Kshatriya. With its completion, I now feel like I've come full circle. 

Enough background! Here are the project specifics:

• Fully pre-shaded and painted using Gaianotes lacquers
• Alclad II products for candy coating on the orange pipes, mega particle cannons (round orange elements), and the mono-eye
• Testors enamels for the black reverse wash on the sleeves and chest, as well as some small hand-painted details
• Scribing (enhanced existing lines and added custom lines) using a Madworks 0.15mm chisel
• Tamiya Panel Line Accent Color for panel lining
• Added Metal Etch Parts using Madworks AW-024A and AW-009A
• Vallejo Model Color for hand-painting of Pilot Figure
• Decals from eBay, plus a few leftovers from my MGEX Unicorn kit
• Mr. Color top coats
  
  

Turns

I'm very pleased with the amount of detail I was able to bring out versus the vanilla kit. I think the scribing in particular was critical, as it really helps to break up some of the bigger shapes. 

I also feel that the decals added a lot, though the sheet I got from eBay was poor quality and didn't offer as much variety as I would have liked. I supplemented with some leftover MGEX Unicorn decals, which helped. 

Binder Shell Mode

You can imagine that posing this beast was a real labor of love. Trying to get each of the four massive binders - which have numerous points and axes of articulation - to rest evenly was very challenging. 

Sub-Arms Extended

The Kshatriya has many cool tricks up its...sleeves...so I wanted to be sure to capture it in a wide variety of poses. Here you can start to see some of the details on the undersides of the binders. 

Flight Pose

I think the metal etch parts look absolutely great in the rings of the binder arm joints, inside the mega particle cannons, and in the divots of the binders. It was my first time using them, but they weren't too difficult to apply. 

The candy orange elements took a few tries, as I was experimenting with Alclad Aqua Gloss Clear, which took a little while to get the hang of. I ended up stripping them and starting over, but the results were worth it. I used two different top coats, as I wanted the mega particle cannons to be glossy and the pipes and vents to have an anodized metal finish. 

Inside the binders, you can see that I hand painted a lot of little details, including a blue dot on the tip of each funnel. I also put a tiny Neo Zeon decal on each funnel. Yes, all 24 of them!

I did some masking inside the thruster bells to get the dual chrome and purple metallic colors. 

Beam Saber Pose

As always, I used clear white and regular white sprayed in layers on the beam sabers to give them a gradient glow effect. 

I pre-shaded and painted this Action Base 1 thinking I would use it to display the completed kit, only to discover that it wouldn't fit in my display case. Oh well, it still worked well for photography and the Kshatriya stands perfectly well without a base. 

Binder Fan Pose

I got the idea for this pose from an image of the Metal Club Kshatriya. Pretty cool how many variations you can come up with in a kit like this. 

Pilot Figure

This kit doesn't come with a pilot figure, so I reused Marida Cruz from the MGEX Unicorn, even though the scale is a bit off. I feel she's more at home here than on the Unicorn's base anyway, since she was the Kshatriya's pilot. 

What a fun project! It was a lot more involved than I anticipated, which led to some frustration, but it was hard not to enjoy the process, seeing as I was working on (probably) my favorite mobile suit. Completion was especially satisfying here, since I finally finished the model that got me into non-SD kits over a year ago.