Let’s Raise our Flag and get started on the High Grade Barbatos.
First off, the box. I like the clean look of the High Grade IBO boxes. There is minimal ornamentation and text, which leaves plenty of space to show off the mobile suit in question:
Inside we get seven runners. Most of them are fairly small, and among the three large ones, two of them don’t have all that many pieces. The B plate (AKA the white one) is by far the largest, both in terms of size and piece count. I guess that makes sense considering how much of the armor is white:
The instruction booklet is one of the small, pamphlet-sized deals made out of one sheet of folded paper. Makes sense considering this is a fairly simple build.
I decided to start the build with the feet. Structurally (though not visually) speaking, I can tell from glancing at the instructions that they are identical to the Gundam Astaroth’s. You have a toe section and a heel section that are connected to each end of an inner frame, with the frame ultimately sandwiched between them:
For reference, here is how this looks on Astaroth:
It is a weird design, one that makes the foot appear unfinished. That makes sense for Astaroth, which is a junker that was once stripped for parts, but Barbatos isn’t supposed to look incomplete in its fourth form. It makes me wonder whether this style is in fact common among other IBO mobile suit designs. I honestly haven’t paid attention enough to say for sure.
Here is one of the feet very roughly assembled, to show you what it would look like to put the pieces together with nothing more than some very light panel lining:
It’s not bad, but it looks kind of plain. More importantly, this isn’t color accurate. Let’s take a look at the instructions to see how it is supposed to look: (I’ve circled some sections in blue to draw your attention to):
As you can see, the claws on the front are not one, but two shades of grey, and there is a thin stripe of red along the bottom of the heel.
That looks better, but I honestly think it could do with even more color. Here, ultimately, is what I came up with:
There are two diamond shaped sections right above the claws, which I painted the same color to make it look like they’re part of the claw. Without doing this, I think the claws kind of look like this (warning: Bad photoshop incoming):
But now they look more like this:
I think that looks much more menacing.
Another thing I did was paint the claws with glossy clear coat. I wanted to differentiate them from the standard matte look of the armor, and also make them appear sharp and lethal.
From the side, you can see the stripe on the heel, which I didn’t paint perfectly, but looks fine from a distance. Beyond that, this shot does a slightly better job of showing off the gloss coat on the claws. It also shows off what I did with the inner frame. I painted all the frame pieces with glossy black, and then used an additional layer of gloss clearcoat. It’s even more obvious in person, when you can see the light gleaming off of it.
There is a whole lot going on underneath. There are three “lanes” on the bottom of the foot, which I painted the same color as the corresponding claw. Weirdly, the grey paint looks a lot messier in this shot than it does in person (I seem to have that problem a lot with higher quality digital camera photos). The other thing I did was use some weathering compound near the back of the foot to add some additional color.
Comparison to Astaroth
Let’s compare feet. No, not yours and my feet, but the Barbatos and the Astaroth.
As you can see in the second photo, we have definitive proof that both models use the same inner frame parts for the feet. Beyond that, they are surprisingly different in both size and shape. The Astaroth’s armor is bigger all around, but it is also made of fewer pieces. Perhaps this is also why the Astaroth uses stickers to achieve a sense of color separation. Without them, its foot would only be a single color, whereas even without painting, the Barbatos gets at least two colors due to its slightly higher piece count.
So there you have it folks. The Gundam Barbatos’ feet - and only its feet. Just this little bit of the model took me four nights to complete, largely due to the need to let either paint or clear coat dry overnight. To be clear, that isn’t a complaint. In fact, I’m proud of the fact that I’ve been so patient, as the results speak for themselves. This is one of my most intricate detailing jobs, what with the multiple colors and gloss coats and all. It may not lead to a quick build, but the end results should be worth it.