[WIP] HGUC GM Custom

I THOUGHT THIS WAS SUPPOSED TO BE A NEW KIT


Some of these parts, and those ABS joints... Where have I seen them?
Oh right, the HGUC GM Striker.
Apparently a lot of the GM kit shares these old runner, even the upcoming HGUC GM Cannon II and GM III :(.
Fine then, to make up with the outdated build design, I'll try to put more work on the detailing!



Starting from the feet, I'm actually only followed the manual as it shows the details on the feet. I'm glad the bottom of the feet actually consist of two parts, it made painting the thruster easier.
The thrusters were supposed to be red, but I used gold as like most of the thrusters on my other kits. Some of the gray aren't spread evenly, but that'll do for now. A few hours has gone by and I only finished the feet, must've been my slowest record for a HG kit ;^^.


Put some gray on to later give an illusion of depth.
WARNING: I will do this on a lot of the parts in this kit, bear with me.

Continuing on...


Aaaand here we have a weird ankle guard build design.
The design allows the ankle guard to move, but the circular part of the ankle guard is a separate piece (and not in a MG or RG kind of way), which means that whenever the ankle guard is moved, the circular gray part will become loose as its holds on only by friction.


Jump into the leg, starting by making it's knee joint with some old school ABS joints.
Ooooohh a pipe. Go silver & gold!!


The thighs are made only of two parts and a polycap, which means:
- seamline
- no rotation by the hip
- little leg split range
hmph :(


Another unique build design (I think), but hey this actually reduces seamlines (or in this case disguises it as panel lines), so why not? Unfortunately there's still a bit of seamline on the back part :(.



Grey on visible inner parts for illusion of depth again. Also gold on the thrusters, although it's kinda hard to see at some angle because not much light gets to that secluded parts.


Even though the build design is quite old, I think the panel lines and the thrusters made this leg look pretty cool.


But I still like the bottom of the feet the most, that's where I put most of my efforts after all :3.


The rear skirt, one big block of a piece. That ain't gonna stop me with my play with illusions though!


The crotch piece, comes as one red part. The lower part on the side will show up even after putting the armor, and it was supposed to be in gray except the "C" part, so I used the grey gundam marker. A yellow sticker was given for the "V" crotch, but I always hated stickers for that part because I never managed to put them right, so I painted it with gold instead.


The front skirt. The connector aren't shaped as ball joints, but a rod shaped connector, so cutting that would risk making the front skirts loose :(.
*blahblah*grey*blahblah*illusion.


A thruster part and another part for closing the stand base connector. The stand base connector wasn't shaped as a circle like the usual modern HG, but it was shaped like a straight line.


And this gotta be one of the simplest side skirt design of all time.
*blahgreyillusionblah*


And that finishes the lower body parts. Visually it's pretty pleasing, technically it's an underwhelming build for a HGUC in the year of 2011 =/.


Moving to the body. I could've sworn I took a very similar looking picture in the WIP of HGUC GM Striker.


After that two piece body, add the yellow and red parts and the body is finished.
You might realize that the waist joint is not a ball joint but a single peg, so no up-down movement for the waist.
*sigh*





Into the backpack. painted grey and gold following the manual picture (although the manual showed that the thrusters were supposed to be red, but I didn't have a good red paint, so gold will do).


A split right in the middle of the shoulder= seamline.
Thankfully they gave the red part for the shoulder's thrusters.
Finally another gray for depth of illusion.


Perhaps my favorite GM's shoulder design, especially because shoulder armors that pointed outwards gave it a more masculine feel (I'm not sure if that's the right word I'm looking for though ;^^).


The ABS elbow joint similar to the HGUC GM Striker that allows for a 180 bend. Sadly the forearm armor are made of only two pieces and a polycap, so yes, seamlines again.
Painted grey on the forearm armor near where the hand would be inserted into.


The part showing outside in the forearm armor would be used as a place to connect the shield peg into. Unfortunately, it's a plastic-to-ABS connection, which doesn't fit very well and kinda loose. Its also the same story for the upper arm to shoulder connection.


The bonus hands that also appeared on the previous HGUC GM Type-C. Perhaps one of the few good parts of this kits, as there is very few HG kits with open hands for both hands.


The funny thing is the build design of the closed fist is similar to Kotobukiya's build, where the thumb and the rest of the fingers are separate parts from the hand itself.


"Where's my head~?"
Whoops, who pressed the on button before the kit is finished?


The head uses clear parts over a detailed part. To enhance the detail's visibility, I painted 'em with gundam marker silver and then panel lined it, but it seem that normal gundam marker silver is a bit dark and not reflective enough :(.


And that concludes the building of the HGUC GM Custom. The equipments are simple two part snapped together rifle and a shield that has been used by HGUC GM Quell and some Hazel HGUC, no difference at all.

While this is one of the best GM design out there, the build design is very outdated. Using many parts from older HGUC GM kits, this kit offer very few differences with building a HGUC GM kit from 5 years ago, and apparently Bandai is still going to use this approach on the upcoming HGUC GM Cannon II and HGUC GM III :(.
It might be easier for Bandai to release a kit that looked similar to an older kit by reusing parts from said kit, but its very sad to see a HGUC release #120 (HGUC GM Custom)'s build design as being very outdated compared to a release right before it (HGFC #119, Nobell Gundam) :(.

On another note, a funny thing about this kit:

Its surprisingly very stable O_o.


WRYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY