Now we finally get to the part of this build that I actually worked on in the month of April.
As I mentioned in the intro, the Alex has a lot of tiny detailing work to be done, and I finally got it done on a night were I was feeling particularly low. My IDGAF attitude caused me stop worrying about how it would turn out and just push through it.
The results are better than what I did on the F91, though not quite perfect either. Let’s just say it is “good enough not to bother me”.
As it turns out, once all this tiny detailing is taken care of, the rest of the build comes together fairly quickly. Most of the rest of the details are simple panels lines.
Feet
The ankle guards are (wonderfully) big and chunky, and they lock very securely onto the feet:
It is a bit weird to see a Gundam foot where the bottoms are blue instead of red, but it is just one of many ways in which the Alex differentiates itself from the pack.
Legs
The Gundam Alex has extra thrusters on the sides and the rear of its legs, making them the most complicated part of the build:
Despite the legs being symmetrical, the parts are not all interchangeable. Take this orange piece for example:
One of them has to be used on the left, and the other on the right. If you try and swap them, the rest of the parts won’t snap together. Weirdly enough, I’m pretty sure that this white piece in the back of the leg also cannot be swapped:
When I tried putting them on the “wrong” side, they didn’t fit flush with the rest of the leg.
Once we have them assembled, the legs look fantastic:
So many little details, so much color, a nice sense of bulkiness - this is the complete package. The only downside is that the articulation leaves a lot to be desired:
Lower Torso
Here too we see a lot of nice surface-level detail:
I find it interesting that the “crotch V” is gold-on-black, rather than gold-on-red/blue/etc. It doesn’t really match with the rest of the mobile suit’s color scheme, but it also doesn’t look out of place.
I am particularly proud of how this bit of detailing came out:
I suppose the grey line in the center could be darker, but from a distance it looks quite good.
Lastly, I wanted to point out these little pieces on the side of the torso:
These are, in fact, separate (and tiny) pieces. Usually something like this would be surface-level detail molded into a larger piece of plastic.
Conclusion
So far, so good. The model has lots of great detail, and aside from the crazy detailing, the build has been extremely smooth and straightforward.