MS-09H Dwadge

One of my favorite artists when it comes to Gundam is Kazuhisa Kondo - his addition of hard real-world details to mobile suits evokes a lot of atmosphere and with this build, I was finally able to attempt to bring it to a HG kit. The Dom Tropen HG is old enough that it would take as much work to clean it up as it would to just modify it quite a bit, thus it was going to be my candidate for turning into a jungle combat variant of the Dwadge.

The first addition was the large backpack - the vents are made from HG RX-78 chest vents, and the large fuel tank is made from an aircraft centerline fuel tank. The humps on the legs were added with epoxy putty and the leg fuel tanks were made out of styrene tube. The shoulders had various parts grafted on and then the shapes smoothed over with putty. The feet had the Dom Tropen tubular jet things removed and the holes puttied over. The skirts were extended with styrene sheet.

The texture was added with Mr. Surfacer jabbed with a rough brush and then the entire kit was painted with Tamiya paints. The canvas wrapping of the original Dwadge's bazooka was replaced with camouflage netting to enhance the jungle theme, as well as combing the front of the standard Dom bazooka with the rear magazine feed of the Raketen bazooka. 

As a long time admirer and fan of Kondo's style of drawing mobile suits, I hope this build did his artwork justice. Extending the armor, adding texture, and modifying the shape of the mobile suit can be a great way to bring designs or artwork that never received a proper kit to life. Now, if only I could get my hands on one of those Kondo style resin kits...