HG 1/144 GN-X Part 3

Can still find a golden spot on an unlikely candidate
Continue with the work on HG 1/144 GN-X.


Edges around the front skirt armor's parts are painted in black using normal marker to create the black lines on the parts when they are assembled later.


Panel-lining for the binders and a few other parts.
The interior of the tail has some bit of details designed in it.


Panel-lining for the hip joint and rear skirt armor.
Very minimum details on the back of the armor.


The only more conventional-looking thruster for the entire kit. ^^
Painted the tiny nozzle inside this part gold using normal pen, just to highlight it.


Just panel-lining for the chest binders.


Various parts of the leg and foot that are painted.
Except for the area inside the foot, which is painted in black, the other parts all received some Gundam Marker Gray treatment instead.



The hinge joint portion of the ankle guard is also painted in gray so that no white space would be exposed when it moves later.


Extensive details on the bottom of the foot are not easy to panel line at all, but the overall look is very good for a HG kit.


Just panel lining for the other leg parts.


Two large discs on the side of the head are painted in gray using Gundam Marker - they also have foil stickers included for people who are not into painting.
And done for this kit. ^^ Will hold on for a while before the final assembly.

HG 1/144 GN-X Part 2

Faking the fake GN Drive
Started working on several parts of HG 1/144 GN-X after the introduction yesterday.


Some black and gray are needed for parts of the shield based on how it's shown in the manual.


Painted the area around where the white bar will come in black using normal black marker.
The back of the shield has quite extensive details for a small part. ^^



Painted the "hill" in the middle of the white part gray using Gundam Marker, followed by black around it using just panel liner.


Result of the painting done on the two parts.



Just panel lining for all the beam rifle's parts.
The barrel on the extension part and a small section on the rifle's body should be of lighter tone, but I didn't bother painting it for this kit. ^^;



Several very small areas around the GN Tau Drive cone and base that are painted in gray using Gundam Marker.
These parts actually have foil stickers designed for them, so you can imagine how small those stickers can be. ^^


Instead of the usual black lines, I used a normal red pen to draw the lines on the edges of GN Tau Drive to show it to be in "active" mode.


Result of the painting on these two parts.



Some more parts, this time on the arms, need some gray touch up. ^^


Painted all using Gundam Marker.
The two tabs near the elbow and the larger ones on the back of the hands have foil stickers included for them.


For the beam rifle's mounting spot on the forearm, apart from gray, the interior portion of it is painted black using normal marker to show more depth of this part.
Will be working on parts from the body and legs next. ^^

HG 1/144 GN-X Part 1

'X' marks the spot
Going back to a little bit of Gunpla after having fun with Revoltech and Nendoroid. ^^ The new project is on this guy: HG 1/144 GN-X.


From the first season of "Gundam Double O", GN-X is a Mobile Suit I like very much in terms of its mechanical design. The rather awkward face design does seem pretty intimidating, and together with other design elements like the long pointy binders, protruding armors and claw design on the hand units do project a fearsome image of this unit. Some of these designs, especially the face is rather unconventional in the world of Gundam, which is what attracted me to this unit in the first place. I also like the grayish color scheme used on GN-X. It's not a common color to be used as well, but it's a very suitable color to match GN-X's role as a protagonist MS in my opinion.

Then again, I would also want to say that I don't really like the idea of how GN-X debuts in the anime. ^^; It's almost too convenient for the three factions to acquire the help of Alejandro Corner, who betrayed the Celestial Beings and presented them with the technology of GN Tau Drive. Before the arrival of GN-X, I believe each faction is running investigation on the origin of the Gundams and the organization of Celestial Beings itself, and the entire investigation was covered in many episodes. I like the idea very much, since the process would eventually lead them to either discovering the truth, or at least give them some ideas on how to advance their own technologies to try to match the Gundams. All those stories seem wasted as the emergence of GN-X renders all the information worthless. When GN-X is powerful enough to counter Celestial Beings, why bother looking for anymore clues about the enemy? The entire story is then centered on the final showdown between the GN-Xs and the Gundams. The pacing is a bit rushed to build up towards the ending in that sense.

But I'm separating my feeling about the story from my liking towards the unit itself. To me, GN-X is a very awesome MS regardless of its role in the series.

For the model kit itself, it has a few superior points as compared to the other HG kits of the same series, namely the inclusion of 2 clear parts for the beam sabers, which is pretty unbelievable for not being included for all the Gundams, ^^; separated hip and thigh joints, something very usual back then when this HG kit was released, but no longer so today. However, it's still my liking towards the unit that made me pick it up in the first place. ^^




Introduction of the kit on the side of the box.
It's recommended to get more to build up a whole team of GN-X it seems. ^^


The content.


Box art, with matching action pose from a completed kit on the manual.


Runner A - Contains white parts mainly for the legs and arms, gray parts for the weapons and hand units, clear parts and red beam saber parts.


Clear parts and beam saber parts.


Runner B - Contains all light gray parts for the exterior portion of the unit.


Some hints on more variations to come.
Released after the end of Season 1 in Japan, I believe the design of the runner was made after confirmation that some variations of the unit will come out for Season 2.


Runner C - Contains dark gray parts for the interior or joint portions of the unit.


Some hints on variation design again.


Polycap set and foil stickers.


Quite a lot of very tiny pieces for the foil stickers, those triangular ones for the GN Tau Drive especially.


Cut out all the parts and categorized them accordingly.
Another contrasting feature of this kit is the absence of ABS runner, which is common for HG kits from the first season of "Gundam Double O". Like the hints on more variations to be developed for GN-X for Season 2 of the anime, I believe the material used for the runner was a factor considered when GN-X was first planned by the folks at Bandai. Comparing the two seasons, almost none of the HGs in Season 2 are designed to have ABS-type runner, but relied on the new polycap set mentioned in the introduction of HG 1/144 00 Gundam not too long ago. GN-X, while still a Season 1 unit technically, must have been designed to be in that way as well, so that its variations in Season 2 will match that particular standard.

Everything is properly planned you could say, which is really something not surprising for customers of Bandai. ^^