GM III

From B-Club 1/144 GMIII + GM Custom + GM Kai + Gundam Mk.II + Alex
+ Bandai HGUC GP01 + HGUC GM + HGUC Gundam

If you have been visiting the church since its beginning, you'd notice that the GMIII is one of the earliest entries in the in-progress page. In fact, I think I started it as far back as 96 or so. This has always been kind of a "hobby" project where I'd only work a little bit on when I got tired of other things I was working on (speaking strictly of models, that is).

Over the years, what has started out as a straight forward garage kit construction has transform into something almost completely different, owning to the changes in technology and my personal taste. Currently barely 40% of the vintage B-Club GM III kit is still intact. The rest slowly got replaced with parts from other kits one bit at a time during the 5 years period, forming into this frankenstein GM.

Parts Breakdown:

  1. B-Club GM III
  2. B-Club GM Custom (Studio Reckless)
  3. B-Club Gundam Mk.II Ver.ka (Studio Reckless)
  4. B-Club GM Kai
  5. B-Club Alex Ver. Integral (Studio Reckless)
  6. Bandai HGUC GP01
  7. Bandai HGUC GM
  8. Bandai HGUC Gundam
  9. B-Club GM Custom
  10. ???

 

Chest

Substituting the tiny body of GM III with the bulky GM Custom's is the first of the many changes that follows. The idea stems from the simple fact that B-Club GM III's body looks somewhat more primitive than of GM Custom. To retain a nice continuity, this is more or less a logical step.

Parts from Gundam Mk.II

This runner of accessory pieces from Gundam Mk.II ver.ka was cast as part of the process of making another Mk.II for alternate color (the garage kit was pretty hard to find, I was won one from an auction). Again, with the backpack design identical, using the same part helps smoothen out the continuity issue nicely.

Lower Parts

The structure of full-action garage kits have never been known for their great articulation to begin with. And in this case, a very old design (released around 92), it's especially shows its age. I picked a replacement using waist from HGUC GP01 that I wasn't going to build anyway (bought especially for spare parts). With almost all HGUC kit quite standardized in structure, it will fit the legs of just about any other GM/Gundam type.

Customary extension of the upper legs was a bit excessive here, because of the popping out bit from the knees. It'd throw the proportion off with those thingie extend all the way into skirt armor area (when viewed from front).

I think my simple solution for the side missile pod is pretty clever. :) Here the small ball joint that is buried in the pod (2mm) slides into a 3mm pipe (2mm inside) that is attached to the side skirt. The pipe also serve to connect to 3mm polycap of the waist.

Legs

For the life of me, I can't remember where these feet originally came from. It has a nice socket that pretty much fit with medium size ball joint. The problem is that the placement is too low causing overall look to be quite off (no ankle/feet coming out of the leg). I solved this using the piece from HGUC Gundam that Metal Slime happens to have made a copy of.

I think at this point I'm pretty much set with the majority of the parts here. The only place needs modifying might be the crotch, which right now looks a bit too high. Other than that it's just cleanup and paint now.


Send comments to maestro@monoeye.org