Yet another project that has been in progress for far too long; my custom Lightning Saix. This is only my second attempt at a custom, and the first one where I will be trying an airbrush finish.

I accidentally stumbled across colourshift paints last year, and as soon as I saw them I knew that they were what I wanted to paint my Zoids kits with. At the time I only had my Liger Zero Empire, and had just picked this kit up at a discounted price because of box damage. I really liked the colour scheme of the Empire Zero, but wanted something a bit more racey for my new Saix, so I embarked on this journey.

The first thing that I did, which I will not do again, is that I built the kit in its entirety, and when I went to disassemble it I actually broke a couple of pins in parts. This led to super-gluing them back together and they don’t quite fit the same. Not a great start but hey, I was learning as I went. I want to paint the armour first so I washed it all, clipped or blu-tacked the parts onto skewers and applied the base coat.

I used spraycans of Tamiya Gloss Black, and only after I had done it did I realize that its probably not a basecoat (but the guy at the local hobby store said it would be fine). There were a couple of pieces where I applied too thick of a coat so that it started pooling which I sanded down and had to repaint.

Next I wanted to try something different. The colourshift metallic paint I intend to use is called ‘Red Goblin’ by Greenstuff World which appears a bright green colour from the front and a magenta red at the sides. They say that the colourshift effect is best over a black gloss coat, but the solvent which holds the pigment is tinted slightly, so it will lay down a little bit of red colour and pearlescence over a white coat. So what I have done is that I have panel-lined in white prior to airbrushing on the top-coat. The effect is quite striking already, but I damaged the gloss black in parts during the panel-lining so I think that my Saix will also be my first attempt at weathering to hide some of that damage.

The panel-lined armour has all been rewashed so that the finger-oils from my handling has been removed so that the airbrushed layers will adhere better. Now I just need to hope for a day where there is low wind (so my setup doesn’t get blown away by the Wellington wind), lower humidity and a high enough temperature that I can bite the bullet and airbrush before winter sets in properly. The ultimate finish I want for this kit is the green/red colourshift on the armour and a bright orange on the heat-radiating fins on this kit. The caps may get painted a forest green, and I’d also use that green to go over the panel-lining again if the white that I have already used doesn’t have the effect I am going for. This colour scheme was somewhat inspired by the colour pallet of Asuka Langley Sohryu and Eva 2 from Evangelion.

The body is going to keep the silver and black original colours. I have used black and silver paint to panel line those parts in their alternative colour and gold has been used sparingly for some accents too. When the Saix is done I intend to use a clear gloss basecoat on the armour of my Empire Zero and then paint it with similar colours of colourshift paints so that it also has a metallic finish. I know that the colourshift effect will be muted due thanks to the non-black basecoat, but it will also be an experiment in how these colourshift paints can pick up the colours of the layers underneath. This will help me decide on the course of action that I’ll take when I’m doing the Jager, Schneider and Panzer, as I want to keep to their original colourscheme too. Will I go for the black gloss base or the clear gloss?