Defender Z... I mean X

Holy crap, this guy was far more trouble than he should have been. Mostly my fault, you understand: the model itself is pretty nice and the cast was pretty good. But I do have a tendency to make things harder for myself than they need to be, for that and other reasons I ran into a LOT of trouble with this one.

First of all I decided that I really like the "rocket fist" from the official PP artwork:

While admittedly wildly impractical, it was a bit of a staple of the giant robot anime I grew up on, and I decided I wanted to try to convert the model to represent this aspect of the artwork better. Trying to modify the model itself would be tricky, so I figured I could try to put my new (at the time) Anycubic Photon to work.

So I took some photos of the arms from various angles (once PP sent them to me... they were not included in the box originally... like I said, lots of issues with this one) and spent a good chunk of time trying to duplicate them in Blender. Now I'm not much of a 3D artist, but I'm not a complete newbie either, so eventually I ended up with something passable that looked good enough when printed out:

My printed arm above, original below.

The actual flames were another issue. After some fiddling around with meshes I eventually ended up with something that I was reasonably happy with:

The next issue was the colour scheme. I definitely wanted to base the colours on one of the robot anime from my youth. I don't know if it's a coincidence, but the major parts of Defender X map surprisingly closely to one of the incarnations of Mazinger Z; based on the name I suspect perhaps not. Even small details on the head map quite well: just look at Mazinger's red pilot module in between the silver protective wings and compare it to the structure of Defender's head.

Initially I used a black gloss primer to help hide the print lines. I decided this was a good opportunity to try to zenithal highlighting for the first time with my new airbrush, so I layered on some lighter greys from progressively higher angles. Which amounted to nothing really as my basecoats were far too thick and solid for those gradients to have any effect.

I started painting the model using normal paints, but after applying several of the basecoats I decided to switch to the new coloured metallic paints I had recently received from Green Stuff World. These paints were lighter and had less saturated colour than I would have liked however, so I ran some tests on some test models and decided that I could add saturation using my Badger Minitaire Ghost Paints.

Unfortunately things didn't work as smoothly as I had hoped: the Badger Minitaire tints did not sit evenly across the surfaces and created some very ugly effects. Eventually I resigned myself to reapplying the metal basecoats, and living with the fact that the colours weren't quite what I wanted.

The next issue was the flames. After a test run on a spare printed arm, I settled on my colours. I was trying to get a smooth blend, and ended up using a LOT of shades: I think I spent around seven or eight hours painting the flames and glowing areas of the model. Even with all that, the flames aren't as good as I had hoped. I think this is because I didn't have the courage to try to paint cast glows onto the surrounding metals, and also because the model as a whole is quite bright (unavoidably so as mentioned above).

Once that was done it was time for shading and highlighting. Which took absolutely AGES. Seriously, look at those legs: look how many recesses and edges there are. I'm pretty sure I spent at least four hours highlighting just the blue parts of the legs.

Seriously, this model was EXHAUSTING. Thankfully it looks pretty decent now that it's done. Still, seeing as my plan is to get two minimum armies painted before I actually start playing the game, I really need to try to work faster.


Colours:
Primer: Vallejo 73.660 Surface Primer Gloss Black

Blue:
Basecoat: Green Stuff World 1872 Metal Color Neptunus Blue
Shade: Citadel Glaze Guilliman Blue
Highlight: Neptunus Blue + Scalecolor SC-66 Speedd Metal

Red:
Basecoat: Green Stuff World 1874 Metal Color Caesar Red
Shade: The Army Painter Quickshade Washes Strong Tone
Highlight: Caesar Red + Scalecolor SC-66 Speedd Metal

Brass:
Basecoat: Citadel Layer Doombull Brown
Shade: The Army Painter Quickshade Washes Strong Tone
Highlight: Citadel Layer Gehenna's Gold

Steel:
Basecoat: The Army Painter Warpaints Gun Metal
Shade: The Army Painter Quickshade Washes Dark Tone
Highlight: Vallejo 72.052 Game Color Silver

Black:
Basecoat: Vallejo 71.073 Model Air Metallic Black
Shade: Vallejo 70.950 Model Color Black
Highlight: The Army Painter Warpaints Gun Metal

Flames & glows:
Vallejo 70.960 Model Color Violet
1:1 Model Color Violet : Game Air Gory Red
Vallejo 72.711 Game Air Gory Red
Vallejo 72.710 Game Air Bloody Red
Vallejo 72.709 Game Air Hot Orange
Vallejo 72.708 Game Air Orange Fire
Vallejo 72.706 Game Air Sun Yellow
Vallejo 72.707 Game Air Gold Yellow
Vallejo 72.705 Game Air Moon Yellow
Formula P3 Morrow White glazed with Badger Minitaire D6-170 Ghost Tint Yellow