In our How to Paint Everything Series we cover how to paint well, everything, with a look at different methods and techniques from different painters and with an eye for different skill levels. In this article, we’re covering how to paint a Zaku II from Mobile Suit Gundam, in Char Aznable’s custom colors.
The pilot known as Char Aznable is one of anime’s greatest and most versatile dickheads. Also known as Casval Deikun or Quattro Bageena (I know), he spends about 15 years betraying people and switching sides, and pilots probably a dozen different mechs. As an ace Zeon pilot and later a freelancer, he has the right (often exercised) to paint his units in the signature red color scheme that gave him his nickname, The Red Comet. We’re using the first and arguably most famous of his appearances, because it’s the one that has a model, the Zaku II Commander type.
The actual colors in the anime are more of a salmon pink on the limbs and a sort of medium brown red on the body, but I prefer the colors from Gundam The Origin, which replaces those colors with more of a true red and a crimson, respectively. It doesn’t hurt that I don’t have good pinks in my collection, either.
First, prime black. Then, block in your base colors. For figuring out what to put where, I referred to the best source I had, the Real Grade Char’s Zaku sitting on a shelf over my painting desk. If you don’t have that, google some images of robots or just wing it.
This took a few coats. The VGC Bloody Red I have – this might be common to all of them or just be a problem with my particular bottle – has god-awful coverage. It took four coats over black primer to get it smooth. The Scarlet Red did better, which is great because the bad paint covers something like 70% of the model and the good paint only goes in a few spots. I put a generous amount of Cold Grey on the black parts, and a single dot of Squid Pink in both the monoeye and the scope on the gun. That was pretty much it for color separation. In all cases, try not to get too much paint in the recesses, but we’ll handle that in the next step anyway so don’t sweat it if you do.
Next, we apply an all-over black wash (I actually used Black Templar Contrast paint for this) to the black parts, and a targeted pin wash of Agrax Earthshade to the reds. This is where you can cover any parts where the red seeped into the panel lines, but do try to be careful when applying the wash. Again, you don’t have to worry too much, because we’re gonna fix it, but it’ll make the next step easier.
Then a bit of clean up, layering on the base colors over the washes, to clean that up. I wanted the black to stay black, so I didn’t change those areas, but bringing the reds back up does a lot to make the colors pop, since they look a little muddy after just base coat and Agrax. Leave some of the darker color in the corners or recesses, but this is a good opportunity to build contrast and visual interest. Gundams are from a cartoon, and there’s nothing wrong with painting them to look overly bright and saturated. These models would probably look great in a cel-shaded paint job, but I don’t have the chops to do it.
You could probably stop here, and have a perfectly tabletop-ready model, but a few more steps will be quick and worth it, if you feel comfortable with a bit of highlighting. The shape of these models make them take highlights well – they just aren’t as detailed with greebles as a Warhammer model would be. Owing to the subject matter, these are largely made of big chunky shapes built to take thinned layers as volumetric highlights, and have edges that are crying out for the side of a brush.
So, highlight the Scarlet with Bloody, and the Bloody with Hot Orange (this is more or less how I paint the guns on my Dark Angels, oddly enough), building up the color slowly and carefully. A little edge highlight of Cold Grey on the blacks, and we’re done. That’s it. Five paints, two washes, and just look at it. Get a load of this guy. He rules.
What I like about this approach is that it can also – and will be on the next one – be used on other Zakus to provide a cohesive but interesting scheme. The triad of a dark, medium, and bright paint, where one part of the model is the dark highlighted with the medium and the other is the medium highlighted by the bright, seemed to work out well and didn’t require a lot of paints or thought. If you replace the various reds with blues, that’s basically Ramba Ral’s custom colors, and if you use greens, that’s the mass-production Zaku sorted. Once you get into Black Tri-Stars or Anavel Gato type designs, you’re on your own, but this will get you most of the way there.
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