Digital Sketchbook

I’ve been tossing around a bunch of ideas.  This concept stuck.

Concept:  Create a hybrid of the Chaos Gundam From Gundam Seed and Gundam Epyon from Gundam Wing.  The two gundams share the similarity of transforming into fearsome mobile armors.  Unfortunately, the Chaos Gundam was an awesome machine, but got very little respect.  (It was always punked by the Impulse Gundam.)  I think this is due to the pilot inferior piloting.  Things would have been different if an ace like Zechs Merquise were piloting it.  So I’ve decided to blend some of the design of the Epyon into the Chaos; Chaos Gundam Zechs Merquise Custom.

The Chaos Gundam looks ok in Mobile Suit Mode.  Proportions are good.  It’s just lacking some style.  The mobile armor mode looks somewhat half baked.  It is some kind of claw monster, with humanoid arms?  The weapon pods can detach and fly independently, but they look like flying barrels.  If Donkey Kong piloted a gundam, this would be it.

For this project, I’ll be using the 1995 1/100 scale TV version Epyon Gundam.  The Epyon transforms into some kind of 2 headed dragon mode.  Conceptually cool, but it looks lame.  Actually, it looks like Epyon Gundam is performing some Yoga pose and flying at the same time.  In Humanoid form, Epyon looks nice but his proportions make him look fat.   (This design of Epyon was created before Katoki redesigned the Gundam Wing heroes, which ushered in the trend of oversized wings.)

Project Goals:

1. Transfer some of the Epyon’s style to Chaos.
2. Create well planned Transforming Gundam that looks less like a folded gundam and more like a completely transformed gundam.

Arms and Shoulders

The Epyon’s shoulder looks much more stylish than the Chaos’ shoulder. However, I’m going to retain Chaos’ arm; it looks more “muscled”.

The arm remains the same.  The shoulders, I separated into 2 portions.  I added a layer of polystyrene to act as a spacer.  I cut the nubs of the top layer of the shoulder to allow the parts to slide together.  The interior of the shoulder was trimmed to allow the arm to slide in and out without taking apart the shoulder armor.  A layer of polystyrene was added to guide the shoulder armor over the torso shoulder peg and hold it in position.  This will create easier painting later on.

Design note: I didn’t feel it was necessary to mount the shoulder armor on a hinge since they do not hinder the arms’ movement.

All parts slide together.  They rely on the torso shoulder peg and the shoulder to hold everything together.

Head

The Epyon Gundam has a horrible head.  It looks as if the Eypon had a ate too much and got too snug inside it’s helmet.  The best design feature, in my opinion are the fins on the side of the head.  These are very characteristic of Gundam Wing.  By Epyon having these head fins, it shows these 2 gundams are related.  Chaos’ head looks fairly ordinary.  No extaordinary features make it stand out.  On the bright side, it does have a helmet that is not standard Gundam White and the V fin can fold (part of the transformation).

After some trimming and glue, I mounted the head fins onto Chaos’ head.    Chaos looks much more intimidating and I haven’t really done much to improve the design.

That’s all for now!