Feet
More than anything else on its body, the Gerbera Tetra’s feet feel like a holdover from when it was supposed to be a Gundam. Those square-tipped toes are not found on Zeon designs:
But I think they look good here. The body has a lot more curves than straight lines, so feet add some useful variety. At the same time, they don’t really stand out or look out of place. I actually can’t imagine this design with more rounded, traditional, Zeonic feet
Painting
I said it before, but there is a lot of surface level detail on this model, and I tried to paint it all in without overthinking it. The bottoms of the feet are fairly exemplary of my approach throughout the model. I tried to use little hints of each color without making it look too busy.Legs
I forgot to take a lot of pictures of the legs during assembly, though I think it’s obvious where all the parts go once they’re assembled.
Most High Grades don’t have anything close to a full inner frame, but the legs here get awfully close:
There’s a lot going on under the armor, including some visible details (like cabling and thrusters).
Once the frame is assembled, it’s a matter of attaching the many, many pieces of armor. But I can’t show you what that looks like, because I forgot to take pictures … 😓
But don’t fret! I did take photos once I built the lower torso. So let’s just move on to that.
Lower Torso
The lower torso resembles a lot of things:
- It looks a bit like the (lower) torso of a Gundam
- It looks a bit like the (lower) torso of an Autobot
- It looks a bit like a human pelvis bone
- Dareisay it, but it almost kind of looks like it has a vagina
I think it would look a lot better if it didn’t stick so far forward. Dial it back a bit, and maybe make it look a bit more Zeonic, and I think it could work. But as it stands, it is the one part of the body I don’t love.
But hey, now we can look at the legs!
As you can see, there are all sorts of surface details, most of them tiny maneuvering thrusters. I also love the larger thrusters that come out of the back of the legs.
Color Shifting Paint
Here's something interesting that I recently got as a gift:
It's (allegedly) color shifting paint, and it's pretty weird. When it's wet, it looks white, but then it dries to a shiny, glittery purple/blue (I guess maybe that's what they mean when it talks about shifting color). It's a neat look under the right lighting conditions.
I used this paint a tiny bit on the Urban Combat Gundam, but it isn't easy to see. Here on the Gerbera Tetra, I used it much more, in much more obvious places, starting here with it's ... ummm ... robo vag:
Conclusion
So far, so good. I’m really impressed with the level of detail so far, and the gloss coat is looking fantastic. But there’s plenty more work left to do in Part 3.