WIP: 1/144 HGUC HyGogg
The Kit
The original 1/144 HyGogg was released as part of the 0080
series of kits. For its time an
excellent kit, the HGUC version updated the sculpt, but didn’t really greatly improve
the original—it was just different. Of
note, the arms were better executed in the HGUC due to using ABS plastic in the
skeleton. Unfortunately, the detail
molding of the ABS left a bit to be desired.
Also, the cylindrical, orange hand missile cover in the old kit was
split into 3 sections, like the anime.
The HGUC leaves it as two halves, with a bad seam in the middle of one
of the three section panels. Overall,
though, it is a good update.
The mods—Shoulder
The
shoulders on this kit were much more toy like than I could leave them. To be fair, it is a complex area on the
“real” HyGogg, so HGUC execution isn’t too bad.
Starting with the shoulder binders (armor), the kit binders are
undetailed on the inside, and have prominent hinges and polycap (PC)
holders. I first cleaned everything out
from the inside, and then lined the interior with sheet styrene to give it a
smooth surface. I carve in panel lines
based on the anime, and gave the binder a sharp outside tip with SGT.
Building the master, I was left with how to cast it. I’m not by any means a professional resin
guy, so I had to develop a means to drive a fair amount of liquid resin through
a rather large, thin area. I came up
with using an oral syringe. The syringe
was doubly useful, since I could measure exactly how much resin to mix up, and
then force it quickly through the mold.
Using this method, each casting was perfect—no voids, no bubbles to
speak of.
The mold itself was rather simple,
with a single inlet and a single outlet.
The underside was sealed with clay, and the outlet was extended by the
blue wall of clay (otherwise it would have been trapped in the RTV). One thing that is very important—the inlet—needs
to feed through the bottom of the mold.
In this case, the inlet is the long L shaped piece of styrene. The mold wall along the outside of the inlet
needs to be thick as well, because if it is too thin, the liquid resin shot out
under pressure form the oral syringe will squirt out of the mold and make a
disaster. In this case, I went one extra
layer of Legos out from the inlet to ensure a good seal.
Work to do:
Build the internal frame, a tube-like affair that will connect
the binder to the shoulder joint.
The Torso/Monoeye
I made several mods to the
torso. I changed the sculpt of the back
boosters with Mori Mori putty to better match the anime. I also completely removed the torso side of
the shoulder socket. In this kit, it was
made up of a cylinder base on the torso matched by a simple peg mount to a half
sphere on the arm side. It should be a
sphere sticking out of the torso. I went
on to remove the area around the monoeye, and scratchbuilt a cylinder and mount
using styrene and SGT. Below, the mount
and the result from the front side:
Work to do:
This torso side of the shoulder joint will be rebuilt using a
plastic sphere, again to match the anime.
The sphere will be mounted to a ball joint so it can move freely in any
direction. I also need to match up an
LED and the wiring.
The Arms
The ABS used for the new arm skeletons is very tough, and holds
poses well. Unfortunately, it looks toyish.
Additionally, the armor shells on the arm are very thick at the edges, which looks horribly out of scale for a 144 kit. I took the arm skeleton pieces and removed
the molded in cable/pipe details, then cast resin copies. I thinned the walls of the armor shell to a
sharp edge, and also cast copies (very hard to cast a thin, flimsy tube-shaped object).
Work to do:
Wire together the resin armor and skeleton pieces; replace the
cable detail cut off of the original ABS part (most likely with snake chain).