Haven't reported my progress in a while. That's because the model is actually completed and I've been occupying my time playing a free mmorpg recently :) Nonetheless, I'm determined to document each day of progress, so there will be quite a few post to go before you can see the finished product.
In today's picture, the backpack and wing stubs are finished. With painting, I always found darker parts are easier to paint; somehow the dark paint adheres and coats the parts more uniformly. With sanding, it is the opposite; sanding the darker parts is harder because if you over sand it or sand in random directions, it is easy to see the white scratch marks of the plastic. The reason I'm mentioning this is because I actually over sanded the wing stubs. However, you won't be able to see that in this picture because luckily, I had a pack of gundam markers which I used to cover up the unsightly scratch marks.
I never quite grasped how to use gundam markers, which is why all my kits so far do not have panel lining, or have attempts at panel lining that didn't quite turn out very well. So I was pleasantly surprised by how well using markers to cover up the scratch marks worked. Here is the procedure I used:
- Apply the blue marker onto the surface with the scratches
- Apply the clear marker onto the same surface (I think the clear marker is used to dissolve or thin out the ink--this is the part I never quite understood)
- Take a q-tip and spread the ink evenly over the entire surface
It felt like I was applying polish onto a pair of leather shoes. The marker actually gave the surface back a bit of shine, but no where near the glossy finish that the unsanded plastic had.
More of the wings completed. I'm quite amazed at the inner mechanics of the wing assembly. When you rotate the rear assembly it causes the 4 "spokes" of the wing to spread apart slightly. And when you rotate in the opposite direction, the spokes will return to their original positions. 
