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.