I feel like a bad Gundam fan. When I opened the box and looked at these runners, my first thought was, “Is the GM really colored minty blue?”
Let’s investigate.
According to fans Reddit, the GM is, in fact, supposed to be this color. But that doesn’t tell us all that much. After all, anyone can make such a claim. Let’s dig a little deeper.
I used the GIMP color picker tool on this illustration of the GM:
This is as close to a canonical depiction of the mobile suit as you’re going to get, so I figured that would work well as a baseline. Here is the color it comes up with:
That is definitely some sort of minty grey, though I wouldn’t exactly call it blue.
Now let’s go back to my photo of the runners and use the color picker again. This is what it shows:
That is definitely more of a greyish blue.
Here are the two colors side by side:
They’re certainly not the same, though I suppose they’re in the same ballpark.
Let’s get some more data points. Here is a pic of the Master Grade GM:
And here it is in the color picker:
And here it is again next to the color from the GM illustration:
These two are almost identical.
Finally, let’s use the color picker on the box art:
Turns out it’s flat out grey:
After this little investigation, I’ve drawn three conclusions:
- The GM is in fact supposed to be some sort of minty, bluish/greenish grey
- This particular model kit isn’t quite color accurate, but I think it’s close enough for all intents and purposes
- It’s understandable that anyone might get confused about the true color of the GM when Bandai and Sunrise themselves aren’t consistent about how they color them
Anyway, back to model itself.
Pre-Build
I know the GM is a simple, basic mobile suit, and I know that this particular kit costs only ten bucks. But I’m still shocked that, polycaps aside, the entire model fits on just two runners. Two!!
Though it may be simple in terms of total part count, I wouldn’t necessarily say the build itself is a cakewalk if you intend to do all possible touchup work. Since this is an old kit, there are a lot of particularly ugly seam lines, as well as a few glaring areas in need of color correction.
I’m not going to give you a blow by blow account of the build process. It’s pretty much the same as any Gundam or GM type model I’ve already built. I will, however, go over all the work I did for each individual section.
Shield
The shield is the same as the Gundam’s, albeit in minty blue:
It seems like with every time I build a shield, I go back and forth on whether or not to paint the backside. In this case I decided to go for it:
GM Shields
In the original show, all GMs are depicted using this Gundam-style shield, but pretty much no subsequent GM variant is ever seen using it.My guess is that back in 1979 it was easier to draw the same shield design everywhere, but that eventually someone decided that the design would feel less special if mobile suits other than the Gundam kept using it. That would explain why GMs have since been depicted using simpler looking shields.
Beam Spray Gun
This is by far one of the smallest accessories I’ve ever come across:
It may not look like much, but it’s still an iconic Gundam weapon, and I’m glad to finally add it to my collection.
Painting Weapons
In past years I insisted on completely painting over High Grade weapons and accessories, to keep them from looking drab and monochrome. But now I'm on a bit of an opposite kick. Lots of these weapons - especially the old ones - were meant to look simple, grey, and monochrome. When you paint over them with more realistic colors and details, they often end up clashing with the mobile suit itself.For these reasons, the only thing I did to the Beam Spray Gun is add some panel lines (that, and the fact that the Spray Gun is so small that painting in fine grained details would be nigh impossible)
Beam Saber
Since this is an extremely old kit, it comes with an old style “toothpick” beam saber:
It was never my intention to use this for photos; instead, I planned on using a beam saber from the GM Custom, since it’s pretty close in color. But I was going to do this one up with some sparkly pink paint, just to see how it would look.
However, I ended up spraying it with top coat before letting the panel lines dry, and they bled all over the handle. At that point I decided it wasn’t worth any more effort.
Head
It’s probably easiest to just go through a list of all the things I had to do to get this (and all the other body parts) ready to go.
- There was a nasty seamline running down the side of the head, and it was quite a pain to clean up. It’s funny to think that they eventually solved this problem by (sometimes) molding the helmet as one single piece.
- The green camera lens on the front of the head is color accurate out of the box, but the one in the back of the head is not. I ended up going over both of them with a metallic green marker for the sake of visual consistency.
- There’s two very noticeable panel lines on each side of the head. These were a bit tricky; the plastic was still a bit rough from the seamline removal, and I’ve since learned that panel lining marker loves to embed itself in all those little scratches in the plastic. It leads to a runny, smeary look if you’re not careful.
- As is typical, the vulcan cannons needed to be painted.
- Newer GM-style model kits usually have some sort of surface detail right behind the clear green visor. That’s not the case here, but it’s not really a problem. The clear plastic is textured, such that you really can’t see through it and into the hollow interior of the head.
All told, it was a lot of work for such a small section of the body.
Chest
- As usual, there’s a seamline running down the sides of the chest, but as usual I ignored it (since it’ll be obscured by the arms)
- The chest features the model’s one and only decal. It’s a black rectangle that goes right in the center. On it’s own, it looks pretty dull, but thankfully my waterslide decal sheet included a very specific decal that makes it look more like a cockpit hatch. It a crucial decal, and I wish they’d have just included something like this in the box.
- There’s a few places on the backpack that need to be color corrected with grey or black paint.
This wasn’t too bad, all things considered. And it looks pretty solid, especially with that cockpit decal.
Lower Torso
Poor GM. Instead of having proper skirt armor, it just has a couple of rectangular metal plates:
To its credit, the front plate is on a hinge that lets it move the teensiest, tiniest bit forward, so it’s got that going for it.
There were no seam lines to remove here, and no need for color correction beyond panel lining.
Arms
- The only notable color correction was painting the insides of the joints black.
- There were seam lines to remove on the forearms
Legs
- Once again, I painted the insides of the joints black.
- There are a number of panel lines, and I’m only mentioning them because they bring out some subtle curves in the legs, without which they look kind of boring.
- There is a seamline that runs right down the front and back of each leg.
- The very bottom of the leg needs to be painted grey, and there are two little pistons that you can choose to color in if you wish. I used a silver marker on them.
This was the most work intensive part of the build. It’s got a little bit of everything: decals, color correction, panel lines, and seamline removal. But I think it will all be worth it in the end.
Feet
- The ankle guard has a seamline.
- The joints of the ankle guard are painted black.
- I panel lined and painted the bottom of the foot.
- I had to paint the interior area of the foot grey for the sake of color accuracy. The only problem is that there’s lots of parts in there that rub up against the paint and scrape it off. There’s not much to be done about this, but thankfully it shouldn’t be too noticeable.
This too was a lot of work, but I think it will be worth it in the end.
Conclusion
The GM is now complete. I’ll see you next time for some final photos.