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Yeah I don’t like this style of weathering, it’s all that you ever see though. When you weather every edge/corner on the thing, it ruins the sense of scale and makes it look like a toy that’s been played with. A towering mecha would get the most weathering at ground level from scraping past trees and buildings, and maybe get some weathering up top and on the arms if it’s ducking through tunnels/ruins/derelict ships.
The best excuse for this kind of weathering is that the mech has been sitting in a humid hangar collecting dust, but considering WHY the mech is weathered, and HOW a mech of its specific use in battle is taking damage from enemy fire is how you get really beautiful weathering that tells a story at a glance.
The edge weathering for me is more about bringing out the raised edges and details, the same way panel liner/washes brings out the recessed details. Like, the panel lines are easy, but there's so much complex geometry that gets lost if you don't also do something with the major raised edges.
It emulates the "animated outline" look you get in the actual show without outright outlining the whole thing, bringing the show aesthetic into play but maintaining a diagetic reason for those markings to be there. A nice middle between "cell shaded" and "realistically weathered."
For smudge weathering/dirt and stuff, I'll usually only do a quick pass on the feet and up the calves, then maybe a bit of oil stains or soot near major joints.
I was thinking about how not every edge would be scuffed, because there'd have to be something doing the scuffing for there to be scuffs in the first place. It would make the most sense if they were located around bits that can collide, or as you said, around where it'd rub against trees and stuff. But even then, it'd be more than just the edges. It'd mostly be scuffed along the "flat" panels around the sides. Many of the edges would be inherently protected by the shape.
Now, for weathering, you could do moss and dust, rust, and often neglected on vehicles, fluid leaks. These would all accumulate naturally just from being out and about. Fluid leaks could come from just about anywhere you wanted too, and they would wrap around downward and in the motion of travel. You can just look at plane wings to see this. You could also add temporary patches or mismatched paint, things that imply "we just did this because we didn't have time to do it properly".
For powder smudges, a topcoat will also take off some of the intensity depending on how heavy you coat it. Like, if you do one blast of a wet coat, it’ll mix with the powder and make it subtler, so you gotta do test runs to know what you’re doing at the end stage to know how heavy to apply it. Multiple super thin coats with an airbrush will have different results.
Same goes for the pencil markings. You gotta lock it in in the last step, and the final texture coat will homogenize everything. Like if you’re using an aluminum colored pencil, it will lose a lot of the shine when you put matte topcoat over it, and you can’t mask off this kind of weathering. So you gotta know what you’re losing in the last coat and adjust appropriately with the pre-top coat weathering.
Initial texture is also super important for powders. Like, it just won’t stick on bare plastic, smooth paint or gloss. You usually need to do a matte coat, then powders/pencils, then another matte coat to seal it. Think of it like a “weathering primer” the same way you prime for painting, only it’s clear and keeps the lower layers’ colors visible while still prepping the surface for more work.
I'm not into gunpla, so I really don't have a dog in this fight, but the purpose of this is to make it look more realistic. Damaged/scuffed/scratched plastic still looks like plastic, but this kind of weathering is meant to mimic damaged paint/metal.
After doing this kind of weathering, you apply another later of top coat (clear, thin, protective paint) so that nothing underneath like the markings or the very delicate decals on the model will be damaged.
Agreed, but you do also handle the figure while working on it. But I was more curious if a similar effect could be achieved on something that needed to be more robust.
If the person is serious about modelling the will use finishing spray to protect it.
This technique is called pencil chipping. Its one way of getting the effect of tiny chips on paintwork to give more of a realistic effect. You can use brushes too. You can also put a tiny bit of paint underneath o it gives the impression of layered paint...It gives depth to the model.
This is my first attempt at painting and modelling and have been watching so much stuff on YT and lurking in some of the modelling subs...So much to learn but I am loving my current mecha-xenomorph project.
You could easily spray a thin matte coat over the model. I do that all the time when I rub in rust marks and water stain streaks when I work on my model.
You could probably make it permanent with a fine airbrushing of matt clear coat. Would have to be careful not to lock the joints. Or alternatively use something more permanent for the initial work if you're good enough to get it right first try.
There's plenty of model painting channels that cover this stuff on YouTube. Adam Savages channel "Tested" also has some good guides on weathering models and movie props if you specifically want to make something look like it's been in daily use for the last decade.
Well that’s why you put a clear coat on the model to make sure it stays in place, not to mention that this isn’t going to get moved around much like with Warhammer models, and unlike SOME have suggested putting it in a backpack, you run the risk of damaging the model like that and Gunpla is NOT cheap
Frequently, once finished, you'll apply a clear coat (similar to what people use with nail polish) over the whole model to increase the durability of the decoration.
I personally do this effect with paint (using a technique known as "dry brushing"), but this technique works and is a lot quickier/easier and probably just as durable once the clear coat is applied
Prime and basecoat paint (full cure) > Gloss topcoat > Panel lines/washes, cleanup, and waterslide decals (+ full cure) > Matte Topcoat > Additional "rough" weathering like these pencils and powders > second final matte topcoat.
If you want a gloss final finish, this kind of thing won't really work as you need the matte texture for the pencils/powders to latch onto. A glossy finish would typically indicate "factory new" anyway, so this kind of weathering wouldn't really gel with that aesthetic.
You also tend to want to layer paint/finish types in a certain order. Lacquer paints and topcoats are much more resilient, and won't be stripped by enamel/alcohol thinners, so you use lacquer gloss for the first topcoat, then enamel/alcohol panel liner for safer cleanup. As long as you let it fully cure, you can use lacquer matte topcoat after that, but anything uncured (or if you just absolutely saturate the thing in lacquer thinner) will get stripped by putting lacquers on top of it.
The rule of thumb is Lacquer below Enamel below Alcohol/Water. Lacquers are the most resilient but also the most caustic to non-lacquers, and the most toxic to breathe. I typically use lacquer final topcoats in spite of that, but you have to be very careful to let everything cure first (at least a day, more preferably) and then apply the lacquers in multiple thin coats, letting it off-gas in multiple rounds rather than a single wet-coat that risks reactivating the paints below it. The longer the thinner stays "wet," the more chance it has to "eat" at the things below it, so you want it to dry quickly to reduce risks when you're putting it on top of many layers.
Idk I'm no pro but I once heated up a nail and melted my gundams shield to make it look like laser damage and it looked pretty cool, probably shouldn't have done it indoors though 😂
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paint chipping is just one aspect of weathering; like in the video, we saw the modeler do some dust and grimes on the feet to simulate real world dirt weathering when the giant robot walks on the ground
Looks cool, but genuinely asking, how do you clean it later without messing it up? He uses pancils and soft brushes and doesn't seem to put anything over it to hold it.
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I'll give them credit for having the weathering being appropriately sized for the model kit. For anyone not familiar with the Gundam series, this is a scale model of an 18 meter tall piloted mech. Those little taps of pencil are creating the scale equivalent of an inch wide paint chip. A lot of people use techniques and effects that end up way out of scale for what the model is supposed to be of.
However, like many weathering jobs on these kits, they have gone with ye olde "every edge is worn!" look, which is overkill and not how weathering works in the real world. The problem is this style has saturated the hobby to the point that it's what people expect, and then when they see a more realistic paint job with accurate rust and chipping they'll say it's inconsistent.
The gundam market is worth over a billion dollars, and it's not kids buying most of them. People are allowed to have hobbies. You should try it some time.
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