The attack of Zeon
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As the battle raged on outside the Colony, the attack moved inside and into the heart of the Federations territory. Noticing the High Mobility Prototype Sazabi entering the Colony through a gaping hole in the outer hull, the lone GM pilot knew that this may well be the last thing he would ever do. He had to stop the Sazabi no matter what happened, the survival of the Colony was all that mattered. The pilot pushed the thrusters to max and sped inside the Colony after the Sazabi.
Landing near a power substation that powered one of the main military bases, the pilot readied himself for battle. Before he could even draw out the beam saber, the Sazabi was on him and next thing he knew he was flat on his back staring back up at the gaping hole in the hull he just came in through. Fear set in as the pilot tried desperately to get the GM back on its feet only to see another Mobile Suit walking towards him over the hill. 'What in gods name is that?' he thought as the Dra-C Walker came into view. 'This is it' he muttered to no one in particular as his attention turned back to the Sazabi and the horror that was about to be unfolded onto him......
Here it finally is, it's taken nearly 13 months to build from first snap to packing it up to take to the Gunpla Builders World Cup in Sydney. Where do I start with this?
I had decided after the 2012 GBWC that I was going to do a Sazabi for the 2013 comp but had no idea of what I was going to do with it. My first thought was to do a sort of Deep Striker using a Saz and a Zeong, but I couldn't work out a viable way to mesh to two kits together. I then decided to go with a Nightingale conversion but then realised that my skills weren't that good yet to do that one so I went with a Saz crossed with a Nightingale to get a High Mobility Prototype Sazabi.
Having a heap of left over parts from the Kshatriya build from the previous competition, I use the binders from that kit to create the rear wings and shoulders. To mount the shoulders, I had to pin and use epoxy glue to hold them in place and with the rear wings, I modified the rear missile pods and used a self tapping wood screw to hold them in place.
There was a lot of thrusters added to the kit, with around 30 in total and armour spikes added to the rear wings and shoulders. Panel lines were scribed all over the kit and the rear tail section created using the shield, filled and detailed on top of the original rear skirt. Piping was replaced with snake and mesh chain and wire mesh was added in a few spots.
For the Walking unit, I took a HGUC Dra-C and gave it SD Kshatriya binders as legs. My original mock up for this had the claws from the HGUC Khastriya binders as the legs, but the weight and lack of support just didn't work at all, so I scavenged half the the SD Kshatriya and flipped it upside down to create a stable set of legs to work with. To join the two halves together, I took a foot part from the SD Zeong kit and used that to tie them both together.
Painting both of these kits turned out to be pretty easy, with a blue theme used for both (Tamiya Field Blue and Medium Blue were the main colours used). Detailing was done with the usual Silvers and Brass that I like to use and then everything was weathered using the sponge chipping method. At last count, there was around 360 decals on the Sazabi and around 20 on the Dra-C.
At this point, the GM was built and then painted without any modifications done to it. I was going to do mods but by this point, I was a bit over the whole thing, so I went with a straight paint build. It was weathered and decalled as well using the same sponge method and around 30 decals.
I searched for what seemed forever trying to find something in HO Scale to use for the diorama. I looked for skyscrapers, building sites, military stuff, anything I could think of. Finally I decided to go with something a little simpler that trying to build an entire city, a power substation. Once that arrived, I build the parts I wanted to use and then modified them to sit on the base how I wanted. The hill was made with some polystyrene and then the whole thing covered in plastering filler.
Once that had dried, it was painted with browns and greys and then detailed with various Woodland Scenics products. The power plant was painted and weathered and then a custom fence was made using brass rod and wire mesh. Once that was complete, the kits were all added to the base in their final poses.
This build went to the Australian Gunpla Builders World Cup in Sydney on August 10th 2013 where it won first place in the Open Course, meaning that it will be making an appearance at Gundam Front Tokyo in Japan around the 21st of December 2013.
This build was my biggest and most full on yet. It took almost 13 months to complete and is estimated to be around 300 hours in work. In the end, I am proud of what I have accomplished with this build, but now it is all done, I look at it and can see a lot of stuff that could've been done better. Oh well, it's done now and it's going to Japan, so time to move on and start something new for next years GBWC!!