Ma.K Lunadiver Stingray Project Start!

Happy New Year from my family to you and yours, the year of The Tiger is now! Just to reassure you, no they aren’t real hats but a fun app named “Snow” and just something silly we started having fun with a couple of years ago.

Now on to my first project for 2022, a Maschinen Krieger Lunadiver “Stingray”. It’s a space borne heavily armed and armoured gunship used to spearhead assaults on Luna and target defences and pave the way for the main landing assault.

This genius design by Kow Yokoyama Sensei is a nostalgic favourite of mine as back in 2009 I had the wonderful opportunity to paint up the sample for a 1/20 scale resin kit and learned a great deal as it was so far outside of anything I had attempted thus far. I also didn’t own an airbrush yet so overcoming these challenges was the best experience. More on this soon, I have photos and the story from back then and will include them in an upcoming publication and it will be loads of fun.

For this project I will be working on the 1/35 scale plastic kit from Hasegawa models that features the “Operation Dynamo” livery in the box art.

I remember first seeing this beautiful colorway featured on a Prowler in the old publication “Ma.K Encyclopedia” and once again brought to life as the cover of the more recent WAVE released “Prowler” kit. Not having has an opportunity to do my own version of it yet, I am very excited to finally have that chance and share with you as demonstrate my steps, processes and products to achieve the traditional “Space White” and dark Mercenary Arms red albeit on a larger canvas than before.

This kit is slightly challenging to build in that the seamlines are complex and might take most of us 2 or 3 attempts to clean up nicely. Yes, me too and I’m fine with that and understand it’s worth it to have it beaituflly smoothed. I marvelled at how the master pattern maker , Sedo san planned out the joins and parts and layout on the runners to bring these complex curves to life. Yes, cleaning them up is a little work but the artistry to make this kit a reality is quite amazing!

Here are the major assemblies resplendent in primer and ready to accept their layers of color coats up next.

Modifications were kept to a minimum this time as the rest of the kit’s major parts including the rail gun, radar dish and “wings” have either poly caps or plastic pins to make them easily removable. I’ve added a 2mm brass rod here to also allow easy removal of the external tank for transport and storage. Just deep enough so that there’s enough friction with the thick plastic of the hull.

Next up, paint steps!

Here’s to a safe and healthy year for us all and more soon.

Linc

Featured