Model kit project: 1/144 HGUC GM Cannon - 11

Update 11: Finished photos

Model kit project: 1/144 HGUC GM Cannon - 10

Update #10 - Seal it all away

I finished up painting the last major details (wrist plates, knees, chest vent) with my airbrush and proceeded to touch-ups using a traditional brush, for tiny flaws in masking and hard-to-reach spots.

Not pictured: tiny flaws and hard-to-reach spots.

Unfortunately, a minor disaster struck while painting the interior of the visor: one of the stupid antennas snapped off!

NOTAFINGA!

It tried to sabotage me on purpose. I didn't even see where the antenna landed, so reattachment wasn't an option. I moved on to finishing the remaining paint details and waited to obtain replacement antenna.

Six of these components are being good little model kit parts and behaving themselves by not breaking. One of them is intentionally trying to screw me.

My go-to for scale model antenna? Framing nails. I absconded with a couple from my supplier and, after removing the existing 1 and 1/2 antenna, used my pin drill to set holes into the antenna mounts on the back of the head. I ended up breaking my drill bit, mangling the antenna bases and having to resculpt them, and nearly supergluing my fingertips together. But I think they'll work as replacements.

I hope you're happy, GM.

Once in place, I masked and blasted them with a coat of primer and proceeded with clear-coat sealing the remaining components. I settled on a satin finish to better replicate the semi-glossy look of bare plastic and avoid looking too glossy (and too much like car paint for me) or too flat (like it's been left as unsealed hobby paint and reminds me too much of miniature figurine).

Also I've seen the full-scale Gundam statue in Toyko and it was semi-gloss, so there.

Clear coating is pretty much the same process as priming; secure parts to a board and spray outside. I went back later to the head after painting the new antenna to clear coat it as well. This involved cutting recommended dry times short but I figured in the worst case I'd simply have to strip and repaint a pair of nails white.

You're holding up the whole process. I could have reassembled the whole model by now.

It was well worth the rush. The GM Cannon is finally finished and more poseable than many other 1/144-scale High Grade kits of the last decade, let alone the old GM Cannon kit. I added some decals from both kits before clear coating as a last layer of detail.

Ta-da! Ta-da forever!

It's far from perfect but I know most of the flaws are hard to notice. More importantly I accomplished all the main features I wanted this conversion to include and pulled off a decent paint job, and with a project that was probably bigger than I should have tackled as my first 'major' project. So it'll be a centerpiece for my connection and the will be more to come in a similar vein.  I will take some more photos and upload a gallery as a final update.

Model kit project: 1/144 HGUC GM Cannon - 09

Update 09:Airbrushing!

I took my airbrush out for a spin this weekend, after waiting a week to both find and receive the right air compressor hose coupler (see, the first one I found was a 1/4" coupler but wasn't in stock locally to compare and confirm so I ordered it anyway off Amazon, which turned out to be the wrong size so I ordered and finally received the correct 1/8" coupler). I separated some of the parts that needed to be all-black and all-white and gave them a solid coat.

By the power of greyscale!

The airbrush is a G233 Master Airbrush, dual-action with a gravity-feed paint pot. It's pretty no-name as far as manufacturers go but for $30 I'm very impressed with it so far, especially since I swear I spent more than that on a plastic single-action airbrush 15 years ago (and hardly used it). This one is easier to maintain and clean than my past experiences, which let me switch colors without hassle.

I'm never going back to brushes again.

As usual, red acrylics take more layers to build up a decent saturation level, but the airbrush atomizes the paint so thinly it's ready for more coats in moments. I'm used to projects requiring several times longer to get to this stage, so I'm happy with the progress.

Close to completion.

 But enough gushing, I still need to give most parts another layer to touch up, paint the knees and wrist plates black, the left chest vent needs to be painted yellow, and quite a few parts of the torso need to be masked so it can be painted black and white where needed.

As requested, a shot of the robot's hinder.

Another evening of painting should take care of the remainder, so stay tuned.

Model kit project: 1/144 HGUC GM Cannon - 08

Update 08 - Ready to paint.


With the purchase of an airbrush it's time to add the few remaining parts and give the GM Cannon kit one last layer of sanding and priming. I cut out the parts for the hands and finally glued on those antennas.

Hopefully the 'rabbit-ear' look doesn't suddenly ruin the kit for anybody following this.

I added the remaining Greenstuff to bulk out the pistol grip. It's not well detailed but the hands will cover it most of the time. I end up carving out the barrel vents later and sanding/priming it again.

That scene in Star Wars where Obi-Wan cuts off Pondo Baba's arm in the Mos Eisley Cantina.

Next time I do this amount of resculpting I should add more putty than I think is needed and go heavier on the sanding, but I may need petty better suited to that amount of sanding and some more specialized sanding bits for my Dremel.

"Action" pose.

 The last parts needing prep work are sanded and taken outside to spray with another layer of primer.

These fossilized remains found in North America date back c. late December UC 0079.

I'm happy with the results, enough to re-assemble the kit simply to marvel at the results of all my kit-bashing and conversion and resculpting. I've done little sculpting changes on 28mm miniatures before and built/painted basic prop items but this is an extensive craft and painting project in my book.

"All I know is: I gots a statue!"

I'll update again this evening to bring the project to its real-time status, now that my airbrush setup is well underway.

Model kit project: 1/144 HGUC GM Cannon - 07

Update 07 - A healthy layer of spray primer.


With all the parts finished it's finally time to prime them all for painting.

Except those antennas. And the hands.

My primer of choice is Krylon's flat grey spray primer. It's easy to find at most hobby or hardware stores and dries enough to handle in about 10-15 minutes.

Don't spray prime on or next to anything you want to keep, such as the hood of your car.

The primer provides a surface for acrylic paint to adhere to strongly and consistently, as it easily chips off otherwise. I use grey as a compromise between white (which enhances bright colors) and black (which provides a well-shaded undercoat).

And there you have it! It's done!

Behold its flat grey majesty.

Actually it's not done, still a few places that are too rough or uneven that need to be sanded and given another coat of primer.

Or maybe I could pass it off as a White Dingo Squadron GM and call it a day.

I'll have another pass at priming shortly. After that and I'll need to take a break to practice with my new airbrush before tackling the GM Cannon.

No it's still not done yet. I'll tell you when it is done.

Model kit project: 1/144 HGUC GM Cannon - 06

Update 06 - Finishing touches.

The last major change I made before priming was removing the shoulder vents and the chest sensor. These details were the last features exclusive to the post-war "GM II" variation of the GM that were still on my model, and after making all the other modifications I decided these would be easy.

I'm out of pithy captions at this point so I'm just going to bask in awe instead.

I puttied over the hole left by the chest sensor and glued some styrene on top of the shoulders to flatten them out.

Finally, I turned my attention back to the right shoulder joint. The left shoulder has a saddle joint to allow a forward & back hinge, but the cannon mount takes up that space. Luckily there's enough room directly behind it for the joint itself to sit in its normal position. The joint is a soft polyethelene plastic so I had to superglue it in place.  

This whole project hinged upon this pair of joints. 'Hinged', get it?

While this covers all of the model kit (except the antenna. Why again did I wait to attach those until later?), there was still the matter of the GM Cannon's sidearm: the GM beam pistol. The GM II kit included a gun but it's a post-war model so I didn't want to use it (not for this project anyway).

The old GM Cannon kit's pistol is hindered by the lack of a pistol grip: it lacks a grip because it has a hand sculpted on it.

What.

So I cut it off and sculpted my own grip.

No I can't take this pistol for the GM Cannon, what would the standard GM use then?

Luckily, since I own like six other GM kits I already have an example of One Year War-era GM beam pistol to use as a reference. I literally traced the grip onto a piece of sheet styrene and cut it out.

After repeating the process again I sandwiched the two grip cutouts together. A thin layer of Green Stuff on each side with some details sculpted on will finish it out.

Next step: priming. 

Model kit project: 1/144 HGUC GM Cannon - 05

Update 05 - Leg extensions.

As I didn't take a ton of photos of this process I realize some might be out of order, so bear with me here. I believe one of the legs had yet to be fitted into the shin armor when I cut off the cuffs to extend it. On
 the inside of the armor I glued strips of polystyrene to create an equidistant gap.

I wish my dress slacks were this easy to patch.

For the first armor piece I had made the cut flush with the cuff itself, thinking that would make puttying easier to blend and hide the gap. It ended up making the sytrene strips and the cuffs more difficult to glue together, as there was less of a lip to adhere to. So I cut the other three a quarter-inch higher as seen above.   

Figrue 5b - cross section of the bone, muscles, ligments - no wait.

The putty I used is a two-part epoxy known literally as Green Stuff. It comes with a blue half and a yellow half in a taffy-like strip, and once you knead them together it solidifies within a few hours. It holds detail well and can be sanded, so I smush the stuff into the gap on the shin armor and smooth its surface flat with some basic sculpting tools.  

Oh great, did I just gave my GM Christmas stockings?

It manages to cover up the ankles so mission accomplished. There are some high spots and low spots I can putty and sand later.

Well, the stripe isn't as dorky as the high-waters, but what about those bright-red slippers these Federation Mobile suits are always wearing?

I remembered the back skirt plate had these hooks for holding the cannon's spare 240mm ammunition packs. While waiting for Green Stuff to cure I cut these pieces out, traced the backs of them onto the new armor plate, and Dremel'd those spaces out so they could be glued in place.

I miss video game rentals at movie rental stores. This has nothing to do with my project, I just didn't know where else to say it.

More gaps are left behind to putty later.

It's a butt-plate. There, I said it.

The mostly-assembled model with the ammo packs in place.

No idea how the rockets in the backpack are supposed to work with all the stuff in the way, but I didn't design this mobile suit I'm just replicating it.

I assemble the arms and give every modification at this point an assessment before I begin the task of filling in most of the gaps (especially in the legs).

Oh, it's a robot? I thought I was building an army tank or something.

I've still left off the antennas, visor, chest vents and hands for various reasons but they can be easily attached after sanding and an initial later of primer. Finally, after all that, will be a brief pass at sanding and priming again to remove any remaining flaws before I can start painting. More updates to follow in the meantime.

Model kit project: 1/144 HGUC GM Cannon - 04

Update 04 - Legs for days.

I got to know these legs very well over the course of a week, while I worked out how much plastic needed to be cut away and which sections needed to be left intact.

It looks so simple if you look at it from far away and only from this angle 

Since both the shin armor and the GM leg structure on each leg consist of a left and right half, I approached this by fitting and gluing each side to their adjoining armor piece. Gluing the resulting halves together will be saved until final assembly. The inner legs would still be able to hold it all together while slight adjustments would be handled through putty and sanding.

The anatomy of the Bell Bottoms.

The lower shin and ankle sections were thin and narrow, so they fit inside the shin armor without much interference. The calves on the other hand needed to be cut down to the edges of the knee joint and support structures.

Didn't the original Cinderella feature the step-sisters shaving their calves to fit into some clothes? I might be recalling that wrong.

Even then, the width of the shins was the bigger issue, as the leg armor isn't much wider than the standard GM.

"I'm done buying this mobile suit pants, he keeps shredding the cuffs like this every dang week. Fine, I'll just have to drop him off at the North American front with ruined pants, then! You can deal with it this weekend!" -The point in the project I realized I needed to take a break and get a drink.

The plastic holding the knee joint onto the calves was hardly more than an index card in thickness after all the material I took off the legs.

Probably for the best I didn't become a dentist; I'm a little too haphazard with the Dermel.

To help hold the legs together and bond them to the armor, I prepared a cheap alternative to modeling putty which is simply polystyrene shavings (from the model kit itself) and plastic cement (which melts plastic on contact). The red and white shavings are small enough to simply break down into a pink paste once coated in cement and stirred.  It won't be seen from the outside so I applied it zealously to fuse the inner frame into a solid lump.

No it is not chewing gum, I already tried that.

As I proceeded to the other leg I also took care of transplanting the GM's ankles onto the GM Cannon's shins, replacing the old, simple design with the modern 'divided circle' joint seen in most Federation mobile suits.

When you're relieved to finally finish an item only to realize you have to do it all again on a second item.

The results ended up with some small gaps and minor alignment issues but nothing I wasn't expecting.

A leg, or a major award?

 That still leaves the matter of extending those cuffs down by at least a quarter of an inch. They will have to be cut off and extensions crafted using extra styrene, but I'll detail that next time.

"These JNCOs are the best-fitting jeans I've worn since my first growth spurt!" 

Stay tuned.