By Loran
Holy crap I actually finished it!
Yes, after lying for about six months, I finally got around to finishing my GM Cannon kitbash. As you can see, I decided to take a bit of a different approach with the color scheme for the finished project. Originally, I was going to paint the suit in the White Dingo colors from the “Rise from the Ashes” game, but for some reason, I just couldn’t get excited about painting a two-tone gray kit. Searching for the decal sheet and going for something I haven’t done on a Federation kit in the past few years was just the inspiration I needed to get this cannon-toting SOB finished at long last.
Since the old build progress was spread across so many articles, I’m gonna go for a recap.
I started with the head of this suit. The hardest part was taking the antennae from the GM Cannon’s head and grafting them onto HGUC’s. It took a lot of cutting, sanding, and puttying to get it into place. I’d be willing to bet there’s more putty on the back of the head than there is plastic. It’ll take a lot of trial and error.
Getting the vents onto the sides of the head is easy-just sand down the existing ones and slap them on.
And yes, I did commit sacrilege and paint the visor. The basic green just didn’t work with the color scheme.
The waist was rather easy, but once again it required a lot of sanding and puttying. Just make sure to get it all as even as possible and sand it about 50 times until it’s nice and smooth.
The legs were actually my favorite part, since I was just able to reuse what I did for the GM Sniper Custom. The joint system was transplanted by chopping up the existing GM legs, reducing the “minus mold” knee joints to just the circles, and cutting enough of the ankles off so they can fit inside the legs. I sacrificed a LOT of posability in the knees, but the ankles came out MUCH better than the Sniper Custom. They aren’t too far forward or backwards, and I’d dare say removing the GM’s ankle armor gives this more stability and articulation…
The biggest headache was, of course, the cannon. UGH, this alone makes me never want to do another GM Cannon again. I had to take off a huge portion of the existing HGUC GM’s torso to get the cannon to fit in. Once again, lots and lots of putty, and even some scrap plastic. It took a bit of padding to get it in properly aligned. There are still a few things I could’ve covered up. I’ll make sure to correct all these problems with the next one I make.
If you’re wondering about the color scheme/decals I chose, these are the “North African Campaign” colors. Basically, they’re just desert colors. I went for these because the Federation doesn’t have as any desert suits as the Zeon does, and I kinda wanted to even the odds in my collection. The decals on the kneecaps come with the kit, but unfortunately, that’s all you get for this color scheme. These colors aren’t 100% accurate to the lineart, mostly because of how hard it is to interpret the colors in a lot of the MSV manuals…
Overall, I’d say I’m not as happy with this project as I was the Sniper Custom, but I do plan on improving the process with further GM Cannon kitbashes. I might give this guy a heavy desert weathering or something. This was originally intended to be a BAKUC entry, but when it wasn’t coming out as hoped, I shelved it in favor of entering the Sniper Custom. He won’t be coming with me to the BAKUC prelims this year, but I’ve got another kitbash lined up for that… stay tuned!
