A bit late with this one, both for being kind of a long build and because life got in the way of taking out the light-box for some photos.
Master Grade MSA-0011 S Gundam
The MS is the definition of excess, as its successor name, the Ex-S, clearly hints. Everything is big. Lots of things have two of them when other MS usually have only one.
The kit is kind of old. The plastic is weirdly rigid compared to modern kits and for some reason it seems easy to scratch when cleaning nubs. Maybe it's related to everything being extremely stiff. Being a kit from 2002, perhaps at the time the only way Bandai found to make this kit capable of standing was to make everything extremely stiff. And use lots of screws. To the point that when moving some articulated parts you feel like you may snap something.
Talking of screws, I managed to fuck up one of them. The manual tells you not to tighten them too much but one in the shoulder mechanism never seemed to tighten and it would just rotate so I had to glue a couple of pieces together. When in MS mode, they are fine but I fear they'l split if I try to transform the torso into its G Atacker fighter mode.
As for what I did with the build apart form panel lining: Apart from painting a few details in black that are hardly visible (like the core fighter cockpit in the crotch), I painted clear green the big sensor in the weapon and put silver spare sticker behind it to make the green more visible. I also put a bit of leftover green sticker in the weapon front mini-sensor.
When I applied the red stickers on the rear wings they looked really bad so I decided to discard them. Right now the wings are are all white but the idea is to paint the parts that are supposed to be red when time allows and since it's a slightly big flat surface Id' rather use an airbrush instead of the regular brush I used for detailing. I'll eventually do it, as of when, that's a completely different matter as I'm prone to procrastinating for this after-the-build fixes.
Lastly, I went for the 01 marking on the left shoulder instead of the "Gundam System" (that I put on the right one) because it matches certain reference pictures and the HG (to be built in the future).
All in all, an MS that commands an imposing presence in the shelf if a bit stiff whenever it has to be posed or transformed. An who doesn't love yellow grille sideburns?
