1/144 Mobile Sumo


The Mobile Sumo is the mobile suit used by Harry Ord in the anime Turn A Gundam. A lot of people dislike this anime because of the show's non-traditional Gundam designs. The designer for this series wasn't Japanese, in fact he was an American designer named Sydney Jay Mead known for his work on Bladerunner and Tron. 




Personally I am a huge fan of this series. This is the only model kit line that I have completed and I promised myself that I'd paint and build all the 1/144 Turn A kits. I've already gotten around to painting 4 of them: This, the Turn A, the Mobile Kapool and the Mobile Flat. Unfortunately I built the last 3 almost 5 or 6 years ago and I'm not really that keen on what I have done with them. While I still would want to share images of the kits they are currently very dirty because they got submerged in flood water four years ago but I think I will be repainting them or try my hand at getting some of the old kits again to build anew.




This kit suffers from gold plastic syndrome: They are very brittle. I needed to fix so much cracked plastic that I actually spent more time on damage control than on actual building. Other than that, everything is pretty much straightforward and the only thing I scratch-built were the two axes.




I used Tamiya Acrylics on this kit followed by a generous weathering of oil paints diluted with turpentine. I enjoyed the process and the results came quite nicely so I've stuck to that technique whenever I needed to do some heavy dirt application or to add a patina of color to my kits.







All in all I would say that this is one of the most satisfying builds I've ever done, largely because I am a fan of the Mobile Sumo. Also, when you've been building Gundams for almost a decade, things get pretty repetitive so mechs like this are always welcome for me. 



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