EBASENET - It's all about modeling

HG 1/144 Scale - Freedom Gundam /
2005 Bandai Action Kit Asia Cup (BAKAC)

Posted by Whitebase : 23th February 2008, 07:30 pm

This is the work in progress log for the 1/144 scale HG Freedom I did back in 2005 for the BAKUC competition. Original concept was to build this as a diorama, with the Freedom ‘perched’ on top of a high cliff, with both beam sabers drawn, and a lot of ‘Daggers’ falling apart around in like what we normally see in the good ole samurai flicks. As with all my projects, I ran out of time and only managed to finish the main kit.

I started out this kit by detailing up the head a bit by sharpening up the V fins, and also rescribing the panel lines for the face and around the eyes.

Next, I did some work on the saber holding hand. The kit came with a very nicely molded hand holding the beam saber. However, for my kit, I wanted the twin beam sabers to be connected like in the anime, so some modifications were made. I roughly cut away the original plastics for the molded in saber, leaving the open palm. The cavity was cleaned up using some needle files, and the beam sabers were put back in. Shown below is a comparison between the original, and the one I cut away.

The 1/144 HG kits usually have poor proportions and look very short and blocky. The Freedom is always depicted as a very sleek and elegant piece of machinery, so a lot needed to be done to make it more anime accurate. I started by reducing the thickness of the fore arms. I first tried doing this by sanding down the bulges around the elbow joint.

This wasn’t enough because the ‘wrist band’ area was still very thick and huge. I further sanded that area down to make the entire assembly slimmer. Shown here is also a test fit with one of the recasted HG Wing Series Hands.
<See WIP for DeathScytheHellCustom for details>

While this was already a slight improvement from the original, it was still far from what we see in the anime. At this point, I decided to just cut away the entire wrist assembly, and reconstruct a slimmer forearm using milliput.

The ‘wrist band area was reconstructed back using pla-plate sheets.

I lengthened the upper thigh area by about 3-5mm using stacked pla-plate sheets, and did the same for the lower leg. Shown here is a test fit to see if the proportions were ok.

I wanted the knee guard area to separate and fold up like the MG version of the freedom, so I separated the parts.

To cater for the dynamic pose I required for this kit, the knee joint needed to be modified to bend more than the standard 90degree angle. I learnt the following trick from a Japanese modeling magazine. (Can’t remember which one now...) I first roughly traced the shape of the upper thigh and lower leg onto pieces of paper and cut out the shape like so.

Next, I roughly drew a rough shape for the knee block, and overlayed the paper cut out for the upper thigh and lower leg like so. Using some needles / pins, you can experiment on where the proper pivot points would need to be, to allow for maximum movement, and you can also gauge where the overlaps would be so that you can make the necessary adjustments to the parts.