Introduction by Metal Slime

RX-78GP01 Zephyranthes

After the One-year war, the humanoid-form Mobile Suits was no longer a mystery weapon, and numerous projects/bases were officially established. Many of which were diversified to private subcontractor, like this Gundam Development Project, which was commissioned by UNT’s Gen. John Kowen to Anaheim Electronics (AE) in October 0081. AE which started their business as an UNT's major supplier has in turn, become a giant conglomerate through both official and the not-so official deals with top brasses in UNT. They also acquired MS technology from the (formerly) Zeonic Corp. which yielded them a big leap in MS/MA development.

The GP01 development was intended to be a general purpose, top up RX-78 with better balances, sensors, human-like reflexes, and ease of maintenance (which later becomes Movable Frame). The Core-block system is still intact, but upgraded the cockpit positioning while in-the-body position (vertical/horizontal) to support the operation on earth’s gravity. This FF-X II Corefighter would swivel the cockpit drum module according to the down force. 2 years after the project began, the test unit was completed and transferred from AE moon base facility by UNT’s Pegasus class space ship “Albion” along with the test unit No. 2 “Physalis” to Torrington Base, located near the south west of Brisbane, Australia on October 13, 0083. However, on the evening of its arrival, before any test could be conducted…

<Continue on the CG page.>

Garage kit

Bandai's original 1/144 kit of GP01 is, without a doubt, one of the best example of how screwed-up transfering design on 2D into 3D can become, in recent time. This JAF-CON only kit by a group called Kakushitoride no san-akunin (which means fort of the 3 bad guys), is a combination of 2 kits together in 1 box, which includes both GP01 and the GP01Fb. The styling is an adaptation of Katoki's version of GP01 (at the time, MG Gp01 isn't planned yet). While my other garage kit of GP01 by Optima OTOH, stays faithful to Shoji Kawamori's original design.

My personal take

The concept is simple enough: I just want a decent looking GP01 in 1/144. At the same time, it must looks like the MS belongs in the same story as my other MS. The second part, proved to be a bit problematic since it turned out that many of the parts here are way oversize for its 1/144 label. These include hands, feet, legs, and backpack.

So my solution was to replace each end of its body (hands/feet/head, etc.) with a new smaller (and supposedly better looking) part, which would lend an overall impression of a smaller model that is in-scale with a typical 1/144 kits.

Followed are some highlight of roughly what's being done to each parts. I have already cover the structural change to some length on the progress page, so here the focus will be more on detailing.

Head

I took this head from a 1/144 Gundam head collection set resin kit. In the finishing stage, I experiment with using the Wave's eye-shaped clear part to simulate camera looks. It doesn't look too bad, I guess, but I probably won't be doing it anymore in other kits. It's just not very expressive.

Head antennae is constructed from scratch with a couple of junk parts, and a brass rod. The old vulcan details came pretty poor due to the casting, so I cut them off and use plastic nozzle piece in their place.

Body

Some details to sprucing up things here includes a mesh inside both intakes, and a minus mold for the chest sub sensor. The triangle-shaped hole is carved with chisel.

The ball joint is connected at the bottom of the neck (as opposed to the top, normally), and is being hidden inside the sleeve.

The mechanism provided for attaching skirts are just too fragile and inflexible. I therefore wrecked them all, and replaced with a much simpler springs, with some helps from newly made plastic platforms.

Legs/feet

Clearly these parts brought me the most headache. As far as the structural changes go, upper legs are extended 4mm to attain proportion more or less similar to that of the MG kit. The resin gigantic/out of scale feet are replaced by the ones from GP03S plastic kit, which is much smaller, yet still considerably large by 1/144 standard. The preparation for these parts, plus adding sole details took quite a long time. However, the most complicate thing is the ankle guard.

The design of GP03S ankle basically differ from GP01 in that it has no rear-end cover. Therefore, I had to put layers of plastic plate on the back which would render it no longer removable. That means I had to paint everything inside first, before I actually go back to building the rear guard (gluing and sanding et al) , which is pretty risky as the paint could be damaged and I would have to start over. After masking everything I have to paint the white part, which by now are long finished, elsewhere on the model (that is to say I can't do it all in one batch, which I very much preferred over).