Showing more Armored Core kits because I can :3

Weapon set 2.

Second kit of weapons, this time featuring all weapons seen in NIGHTFALL kit, just with some options for making weapons mirrored. I only painted Songbirds and Pile Bunker, former to test the waters and latter for a future AC I want to build. DSPIAE doesn't have a teal marker, so I used one by Hobby Mio.

(Click on images for a better look)

During this I found out that matte coating doesn't actually affect metallic and fluorescent paints. And that Hobby Mio paints seem to be made in a different way compared to DSPIAE:

Oh well, this texture really isn't a big deal.

STEEL HAZE.

This one is full of complex, yet amazing builds... and a bunch of issues.

So just like NIGHTFALL, this kit looks amazing even as is, but panel lining and a bit of painting elevate it even more! This time I also had a good reference to go by (booting up AC6 and taking screenshots of the AC), so I found out that it's best to go easy on paints. So just a bit of silver every here and there.

TMost of the problems with this kit come from the parts that are colored in metallic colors. Since getting done with this one, I've discovered about how fragile brass-colored plastic is. Also, the shoulders parts were a bit too stiff, so I decided to polish them, and also reinforce them at the same time:

Turns out I almost did it too late. So, if you want a good NACHTREIHER frame, not STEEL HAZE in particular, maybe wait for a kit without brass colored joints.

INTERMISSION: A quick tangent on painting markers.

DSPIAE markers work AMAZINGLY... when they work, that is. See, I've got a whole bunch of their markers now. And every time I get a bunch there's always one that won't work. Seems like it’s always something with the tip of the marker, as they’re clearly not dry. They can be used, but good luck getting anything major done with those.

The one Hobby Mio marker I have has not let me down like that so far, but... The overall selection of Hobby Mio markers is a bit lacking. So yeah, IDK what to do here.

ORBITER.

This one is basically the first kit in the "Stock frame and that's about it" subtheme. Not an official theme, but I do suspect there will be more than this and upcoming MELANDER. And that's great! Plain AC's are nice to work with if you want to make something unique.

...Which is why I’m making LOADER 4, the starter AC. Which already looks like this... The only things missing are the weapons, but they're gonna appear in 2 upcoming weapon sets.

This one is good! The only different part from NIGHTFALL is the head, and FINDER EYE, one of my favorites, was done justice here. One bummer is the slightly loose left leg, which is not the case with my NIGHTFALL, so, bad luck I guess.

Speaking of NIGHTFALL, I think I did chipped paint effect rather poorly, so I wanted to make up for that here, I did pretty well this time, but it is barely visible on photos due to all the muck I've painted over it. Here's comparisons between 2 ORBITERS:

This painting technique is so fun to do, that I may have went a little far, and made the kit look really dirty. I mean it kinda works, but next time I'll be more sparring with whatever kit it'll be.

Here’s how you can do this:

• Take a kitchen sponge and pluck out a small chunk of it.
• Dip this chunk into a tiny bit of acrylic paint.
• Get rid of most of paint (a paper towel will work well here).
• Gently tap the chunk of the sponge on the model.

If you tap sparingly, there will be a more "balanced" amount of muck (or whatever else) on the model. What I did here is just a bit more excessive though.

Plans.

There's quite a bit of time between releases of the kits. Which means, if I want my own ACs, I'll have to wait quite a while. And there's 3 ACs that I wanna kitbash ATM.

There's also LIGER TAIL, the only kit I don't have yet. Mostly because I cannot think of a spot for it.

In the meantime I’ll pose what I do have in funny poses:

[Referencing this] [Which is based on this]