Just finished my kit with some paint and wanted to share it before heading to bed. The kit is probably the best build yet... But it still has a couple of things to complain about. The joints are plain purple instead of the color shift, so I ended up painting those to blend in a little better. The other thing is that the arms connect weird at the elbows. It's a peg so it ended up popping out a couple of times while hitting some quick poses.

As far as painting besides the joints, I changed the whitish gray parts to silver, darkened the red, colored brown in the wrists and ankles used a better gold on the yellow/gold parts, and filled in details.

Haven't played around with it much after completing it other than snapping a couple quick pics, but I'll try to answer any questions anyone has as well.

Dang, that looks great! Good work!

What did you use to paint the joints?

I used that Testors Color Shift I posted about on the last page. You can see there's still a difference in color between the included sprues and Testors in my post with the completed figure. Here's a repost of a couple of those pictures for reference.

I think the best view you can get of a joint is in the picture of the side view of Hibiki's leg that I posted. It's tough to get an accurate picture with the shift.

I just finished FRS Hibiki. My initial thoughts of the build is that it is painful! But not like difficult, like literally hurts. He has a lot of spiky and sharp points and the molding is very clean.

https://i.imgur.com/zpsPLpK.jpg

The specially treated plastic that composes his main body is stiffer and more brittle than your average model kit. If you use a hobby knife to clean up nubs, I recommend using this opportunity to swap in a brand new blade.

I go over more details of the process in my build thread http://www.tokunation.com/showpost.p...5&postcount=71

Obligatory all rider shot:

https://i.imgur.com/JwqDrER.jpg

Hibiki is a fantastic kit, but the heavy organic elements may make him more challenging than you're used to. The level of precise detail painting is far above average if you're trying to minimize stickers. Den-O is perhaps still the best kit overall. From some angles, Hibiki feels a little disproportionate (namely his chest and thighs). But the finished product is absolutely gorgeous and he stands out from his peers in a big way due to his unique coating.

Nice paint job! The belt buckle looks so clean and you did an awesome job with the gradient. Those are two places I'm still trying to clean up a little bit. Using marker on the individual chest pieces sounds like a huge pain in the butt, but it must have been nice for cleaning up the teeth when painting the in-between parts. Thanks for the rundown on how you did it. I'll be trading in my brown fine tip sharpie for a brown Gundam panel liner for fixing things up. Good work!

hmm, I have an interesting idea if Bandai wanted to rob series completionists of their money. What if they released the level suit from Ex-aid with interchangeable faceplates and chestplates for Ex-Aid, Brave, Snipe, Lazer and Genm?

https://www.gundammad.co.uk/product.php?productid=19424
These guys have Amazing Mighty Kuuga for sale in the UK.

That's a very good price considering what their others are at.

Yeah, but Genm also isn't much more expensive than the others, and he doesn't come with extra parts.