1/144 GM Cold Climate Custom

WARNING: MASSIVE PHOTO DUMP BELOW!

Youtube link: https://youtu.be/8G97Ehsptfg

Ei guys good day! Today I'll be sharing with you my handpainted Custom HGUC GM Cold Climate. This is an old kit and its the one that I used for the hand painting and weathering tutorial I did a few weeks back. I was actually meaning to upload this a few weeks earlier but because my schedule got too heavy i was not really able to do it. Anyway, the idea behind this kit is to make a GM that's been through hell and yet is still able to fight. I'm a big fan of grunt suits, sometimes I like them better than the hero mechs just because there's nothing really special about them but in the hands of an awesome pilot they can really do great stuff, well, at least in my mind. 

As you can see I did quite a lot of damage on the kit... I also think I got a bit overboard. I enjoyed adding the weathering  it too much i guess but it looks nice for me so ill just do better next time.

So this is an old kit so articulation is really limited but the proportions are acceptable. The head turns in just that direction, a small bit of up and down movement. There is no added arfticulation on the shoulders just the basic up and down movements and the arms can only bend to 90 degrees. There is limited bicep swivel and some wrist movement. The joints have become really tight since I painted this so it gets pretty hard to move things around. The kit though has become more stable because of this.

In hindishight, had I planned this earlier I could have added more mechanical details on the interior of the leg as shown here.

The back part came out nice I think, although I think I should have added a bit more detail there... discoloration loos nice for me, not sure though if it will work in actual scale... 

I did the battle damage on this shield by drilling the holes in using an old hobby knife and then making the deep cuts and grooves around the hole using my side cutters. The other damages were did in roughly the same way and I just highlighted the damage using a combination of washes and dry brushing. The back of the shield has some nice details and looking back at it I wish I had painted them better. 

There, somwhile im showing off the kit i guess id like to talk about hiw I started building model kits... i first saw a model kit when my brother built a small plastic car... i was a little kid back then but the first real models I built were from a series of knock off model kits called Combat Armor and insortmof completed them all but Inwas not able to paint any of them because at that time I think I was around 9 I guess... then I begged my mom to go and buy mw this one 1/72 scale plane that I haphazardly put together using super glue and had one of our painters in the shop paint in yellow. Those were what I had as a kid but then someone gsve me a 1/144 HG HeavyArms from Gundam Wing and that was actually my real start into what I would consider serious kit building. 

That was around 2003, so around 15 years ago... wow. I did not realize that its been that long... ever since I've been building and I don’t have an exact cont of how much I've built but I do know that I could build more. The thing with me is that sometimes builds take longer than they should because of the supplies that I use, or mistakes that I keep on making but as far back as I can remember there has always been a kit on the workbench. 

So why do I build? For starters, Im a mecha fan ever since I was a kid and this has led to a sizable collection of both Gundam and Transformers. Ive also been encouraged to pursue the hobby by my parents because we had a fiberglass shop so I was exposed quite early to handling paint, working with sandpaper and since I also worked in the shop for a while I guess I picked up on some of the skills that are useful when kit building. Model kits sort of transport me to that time when I was a kid and aclassmate of mine brought to school an old hobby japan magazine with Patlabor on the cover and he allowed me to bring it home and I spent so much time poring over the pages of that magazine and it was just a good time. That same classmate, sadly I forgot his name, also had a dad who competed in model kit competitions and he gave me a photo of his dad’s model airplanes and I promised myself that if and when I had the chance to start building myself id really make a go at it. That feeling of mixed envy and hopefulness and joy that these things exist and that I can mess around with them has never left me.

Nowadays its a hobby, a really really good hobby. For me its really relaxing and it helps me wrap my head around designing robots which is a career path that I'm pursuing at the moment. Its relatively inexpensive compared to other hobbies for adults I guess and it always reminds me that I should never lose that sense of wonder and whim that I had as a kid because adult life is'nt all about adulting, I believe.