1/12 ED-209 

(from the movie Robocop) 

by Andrew Lang

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This is my first submission to ARC, though I have been modelling on and off since I was about 11 – so about 15 years.  I have been visiting ARC almost daily for the last two years or more …  

At the moment I am spending three years away from home (home being Sydney, Australia) doing some study overseas.  Away from home also means away from my workshop, so you can imagine that I am suffering some withdrawal symptoms .  I got a chance to go home last Christmas for five weeks, and I was determined to get in some solid modelling time in between seeing family and friends.  I set two objectives for this model – the first was that it had to be completed by the time I left home to come back to the UK; the second was that I wanted to use it to learn a new technique.  The new technique I chose was pre-shading (yes, I know, I should have learnt this earlier, but remember I have hardly been able to model at all in the last 3 years, and only discovered the technique through ARC).   

Although I model 1/48 jet aircraft 95% of the time, I chose Horizon’s 1/12 scale vinyl ED-209 kit, from the movie Robocop.  It was perfect for my purposes for two reasons.  Firstly, because I had already put together the basic subassemblies about 5 years ago, so pretty much all that was needed was paint, making it possible to finish in the time frame I had set myself.  Secondly, it was a sci-fi figure, so I could go overboard with the pre-shading without worrying too much about accuracy. 

To start with, I needed to strip off a partially completed coat of paint which I had started, and never finished due to some frustration with my airbrush at the time (since fixed, and no problems since ).  Some liberal applications of PollyScale’s ‘Easy Lift-Off’, with some scrubbing with an old toothbrush took care of that pretty easily.  

The painting started with pre-shading the black.  I used Tamiya Black thinned about 50:50 with lacquer thinner. No problems there.  The photos below show the results of that stage with one of the beast’s legs... 

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Then I sprayed a very light coat of the main grey colour.  I think I used Gunze’s H307.  I wasn’t sure how much to thin it, but I decided to err on the safe side, and thinned very heavily with a combination of lacquer thinner and Tamiya thinner (maybe 4:1 thinner to paint?), with a couple of drops of flow enhancer.  I sprayed on a couple of very light coats, still leaving more black showing through than I liked, because I knew it would become less and less visible as the process went on.  One interesting thing I noted at this stage was the drying time of the paint.  I was expecting, from what I had read here, that the lacquer thinner would make it dry very quickly.  But because of the size of the model, I had to mix up some more thinned paint about 3 times, and I noticed that while some of them dried very quickly, some didn’t really dry at all.  This was a recurring (minor) problem throughout painting, and I would be interested to hear anyone’s ideas on why. 

Next step was the highlight colour.  I basically added a couple of drops of grey to a paint cup of white, then thinned to the same ratio as before.  I sprayed in the centre of all the panels.  The next photos are taken at this stage.  The contrast between the lines and the centres of the panels is very strong at this stage.

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In order to tone it all down to a level of subtlety that I liked, I filled my airbrush with my ultra-thinned H307 again, and sprayed quite a heavy coat on top.  I kept spraying until I got more or less what I wanted.  I left it at a far greater level of contrast than I would with an aircraft model, partly because I wanted to see what it looked like (it being my first time), and partly because I thought it suited the Robocop better.  At this stage I was still having the problem of a paint coat which in some places wouldn’t dry very well.  In a sandy environment (near the beach), where I was having to transport my model from place to place, this took its toll on the quality of the ultimate finish. 

At this stage, it was still all in pieces, but looked close to finished.  I spent a long time masking what I had done in preparation for the other colours on the model.  I had to spray various different areas black, tire black, dark gray, silver and gunmetal.  Those areas got the same pre-shading treatment I had done before.  Masking came off, and then some touch-ups and detail painting by hand, and the basic painting was done.

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 Now for weathering.  At this stage, my holiday was fast coming to an end, and it was going to be close to see whether or not I got it finished.  I had heard the Future in Australia is called Johnson’s Klear (am I right?) and I looked high and low, with no luck.  Finally, I bought the only brand of clear floor polish in Coles (I think it was ‘Long Life’).  I tried it on a scrap of painted vinyl, it looked OK, so I sprayed it on.  I started putting a black oil wash over the whole model, but in my haste (I was leaving the day after tomorrow!) I didn’t leave enough time for the ‘Future’ to cure, and I wiped some of the paint off with the excess wash.  Bummer.  But, time was of the essence, so I just ploughed on. 

I put the thing together pretty easily – with vinyl models, it is just a matter of softening the vinyl with a hairdryer, sticking it together, and waiting for it to cool.  I had one problem with the joint between the main body and the leg connectors – it was not as tight as it should have been.  I have temporarily fixed the problem with a rubber band, and I will properly fix it later, but this was all I could do at the time …  

So, what did I learn from my first pre-shading experience?  Two major things.  The first was that the top coat of paint is pretty thin (so as not to erase the shading), and therefore pretty vulnerable to damage before you put some Future on it.  It also means the colour is not so dense and can vary a little.  In order to rectify both of those problems, I think in the future I am going to do a full coat of the main colour, then pre-shade, then a thin overcoat of the top colour and highlight colour etc.  Please tell me if you have a better idea.  The second was: stuff always takes longer than you think.  I knew this already, but it is worth having it reinforced.  The imperfections in the final paint coat etc., are entirely due to haste at certain key stages of the process – not allowing enough time for paint to dry, or for the gloss coat to clear, masking too early etc.  You live and learn.

Hope you enjoy the ED-209

Andrew 

Photos and text © by Andrew Lang