Phase 2: May-July 2001

The work resumed some time at the end of May. During the 5 months period, B-Club, perhaps realizing how horrible the original feet were, decide to release yet another upgrade parts for the 08th series. This time consisting of 1 piece foot, joint cover, and hands.


Detail-up

Some of the things done include:

  • enlarge a bit of the shoulder armor, prompted by the size of GM Blue Destiny.
  • Reshape the head here and there. Give some definition.
  • Details with usual nozzle/rivet thingie.
  • Hands with ball joint.
  • Wrist collar.
  • Cleanup putty/SSP parts.
  • Additional panel lines

Incidentally, in a few weeks after I start having time to model again, I was on a trip back home for the summer, I had stopped by Tokyo. It's well established that whenever I'm there (which is unfortunately quite often), my gunpla impulse kicked in, and logic out the window. I did grab the aforementioned add-on part. This, of course, rendered my work on the feet previously useless.

 

As with the RX-79(G) add-on part, the new 08th team hi-detail set is quite useful for numbers of other kit, so duplicating is again in place. In a couple of weeks, with hard work from the part of Metal Slime, the resident pro part copier, we got enough of these to burn.

Upper Body

Add to the structure done the last time, I decided that the neck would be better off with ball joint on both ends.

For the cosmetic side, I slapped some more thin plastic on to add definition around the cockpit.

Backpack

Use minus molds to replace the 2 round things in the back. On the in-between area, I scratch some pseudo detail that resembles ver.ka's backpack a little. As far as burner goes, I made a conscious decision to use only 1 each side, instead of 2 follow the logic that this GM type precedes all others.

Head

I found the head of this particular GM to be quite horrible beyond redemption! :D That said, what I'm attempted to do is altering the slope in the front, which at the same time change the shape of the visor opening slightly (that I hope would change the overall character quite dramatically). I also emphasized the "forehead" area and the block around sub camera for some exaggeration.

The same goes for the back sleeve around the neck. It's short and blocky. You know right away that it's Okawarian aesthetics. ;) Since the neck I'll be using is relatively long, I have the option of extending the sleeve. So in this case, 2mm is quite sufficient.

"Earphone" on the side of the head is simple mold, with a circle-shaped panel line scribe inside through template. More panel line is created around the mold to emphasize the piece as well.


Arms

The polycap cover comes in very handy here. The strange thing, however, is that it is unusally long (almost to the point of gorillalize the overall proportion!). Despite having filed off some of the thickness, the elbow pin still couldn;t quite reach the polycap! To prevent the likeliness of arm slipping off, I replaced the pin with a longer one.

Lower Body Parts

Front skirts are attach with the usualy spring technique, while the side ones use ball joint, allowing a handy 90 degree opening.

Legs

The new B-Club feet posed some new set of problems. They were not designed to be used in conjunction with the previous hi-detail kit (the RX-79(G) one).

To make room for the knee pads cut from Bandai kit, certain area of the leg has to be scraped off. It was not quite a perfect fit. I had to file both sides of the knee pad about a millimeter in order to be able to cram them in. I wanted to retain the ability to move these knee guards like the platic kit, but there wasn't much room to have even the small flip-joint concealed. Another problem is on the "heel" piece, which was to be fixed onto the top of the feet, but doing so will hinder the movement of the feet. Both problems finally solve with the simple use of springs.

One of the things I have decided early on, even before starting is that I want to replace the sabre socket on the side of each leg with cooling nozzles, just like in GM Sniper Custom II.

Upper legs got treatment of simulated joint on the side with that flat round piece.Plus,yet more panel lines. Both features, an answer to the same detail on the MG kit. ;)

Comparison

Strangely enough, even afer adding 3mm to the thigh, the overall height is still more or less the same as standard kit, thanks to the unusually large lower leg of the plastic kit.

Overall, I'm going for the blockier look compares to the original. Deemphasize some of the weird body lines like the shape of lower legs, crotch and head. At this point the proportion looks OK, apart from the fact that I felt the head was too big. That couldn't be helped though (apart from making a whole new head).

Accessories

Probably not going to be used, but I couldn't stand the original shield. Guess I'll save this for either the RX-79(G) or Blue Destiny later on.


Send comments to maestro@monoeye.org