Here’s my Age-1 Normal from the Gundam Base limited edition clear color set that includes all three variations of the Age-1 Gundam. This is my first time building a clear color kit.

I wanted to show off the inner frame since more of it is visible through the clear armor, so I spent some extra time painting those inner frame parts. They’re base coated with Gaia Star Bright Iron followed by some hand painted detailing using enamel gold, copper, aluminum, metallic red, and metallic blue. After the detail work I dry brushed some enamel silver to tie everything together and give a subtle worn texture, then top coated everything with a clear gloss.

The outer armor parts were already clear and shiny out of the box, but I went ahead and hit them with a clear gloss topcoat as well. I think it did make a difference, especially on the white parts that started out looking a bit too milky for my taste but got a bit more transparent with the topcoat applied. I chose not to include any of the decal markings, as I thought they’d distract from the clean look of the clear outer armor.

I’ll be adding galleries for the Age-1 Spallow and Age-1 Titus as soon as they’re completed.

Besides being the first clear color kit I’ve built, this project was also a first for me as far as build process goes. I typically snap build every kit before doing any detail work, then disassemble and work on individual sections. This time I decided to clip all the parts off the runners, sand, clean, paint, detail and topcoat them all individually, and then assemble everything for the first time after all the paint work was done. This worked out okay with this kit, but I think that it wouldn’t work as well for a project where I’m planning to do the bigger customizations (scribing, part modification, custom 3d designed parts, etc) that I typically do for my custom builds.

The final build took about 2 hours once all the parts were painted and ready to go. I streamed that build process and I’ll link it here in case you’re interested.