Where Do I Go From There?
The sky’s your limit! Or your shelf space, more likely. Gunpla is a pretty chill hobby—you don’t have to constantly keep upping the complexity of the kits you build or the amount of extra work you do to them if you don’t want to. You’re not any lesser a hobbyist if you only straight-build HG kits than if you custom-paint MGs like they’re going out of fashion. But if you do want to start learning more techniques, there’s plenty of paths to take.
Panel lining is the first, obvious step, but from there you can get into using decals—fine detail stickers that recreate emblems and technical markings to give kits a more realistic aesthetic, commonly included in RG kits and up—and top coating to preserve those stickers as they age on your displays. You can go into further painting techniques and either weather your kits with battle damage and grime, or repaint them to give a metallic effect or an entirely different color scheme.
It doesn’t even have to be anything you do to the models themselves to take your kits to the next level—grab a lightbox and get into posing and photographing your kits, build scenery for display or take them outside for a more realistic photoshoot. Or just figure out how you’re going to end up displaying the inevitable small army of plastic robots you’ll inevitably get—because honestly, you’re not going to stop at just one. Have fun!
