Gundam

Gunpla Build - High Grade Command Quan[T] (Part 2) 2022-05-03

Pre-Build Note: Because the Command Quan[T] uses two tones of green, I decided to use a combo of grey, tan, and brown for panel lining, to give it a bit of a camo look.

With that out of the way, let’s get on with the build …

Feet

These are not the Quan[T]’s original feet. They’re wider, and they these little ridges running along the sides. I think they look a bit like combat boots:

As you can see, the bottoms also look like they have wheels (I don’t think they’re actually meant to be wheels, but it would be cool if they were).

Gunpla Build - High Grade Command Quan[T] (Part 1) 2022-05-02

It should be no surprise that the Gundam Breaker Battlelogue models reuse lots of old runners from existing kits. What is surprising is just how many parts from the original HG Quant[T] are not used in the Command Quan[T].

By far the trickiest thing is keeping track of which of the clear yellow lenses you need to keep, and which you need to ditch. They’re all very specific sizes, and some of them have their tops flattened off. You can’t just swap them all willy nilly.

Home Alone Builds 2022 2022-04-30

It’s been a while since I was home alone for a stretch (November 2019 by my count). That’s when I built two Gunpla over the course of a long weekend (or was it actually a single day? I honestly can’t remember …)

(I think) I’ve said this before, but I like building models when I’m alone. It keeps my mind busy, and distracts me from thinking about how much I miss my family.

Anyway, at the end of April, my wife and kids went away again, this time for a whole week. If I could build two kits over a long weekend, I was extremely curious to see just how many I could build over a full seven days. I wanted to do this partly for the fun of it, partly for the challenge, and partly to whittle down the backlog some more (especially since I recently added a few more kits to the pile).

My goal was to complete five kits, but my prediction was that I might get three done at best. After all, it’s not like I had those seven days off. I still had to go to work, do chores, and fulfill some other obligations. It wasn’t nearly as much time as it sounds.

As I write this, Home Alone 2022 has come and gone, and I can now tell you that the final total was three and a half finished models:

Gunpla Build - Paralympics Gundam 2022-04-18

Last year, Mrs. Wolfe got me a pretty cool, pretty funky model kit as a gift. This year she followed it up with a kit that isn’t funky, but is definitely cool.

As one might expect, Bandai was one of many companies that wanted to cash in on and/or demonstrate some pride in the 2020 Tokyo olympics. Thus they created two different promotional Gunpla. The first one is - you guessed it - the Olympics Gundam:

The second one is also an Olympics Gundam - namely, the Paralympics:

Gunpla Build - High Grade Jesta Cannon (Final) 2022-04-08

The very first challenge of photographing the Jesta Cannon was in figuring out how to … well … photograph it.

The colors are so dark that it was hard to see front of a white background. Unfortunately the black background that came with my lightbox is made of shiny plastic, rather than matte paper, so it was reflecting light everywhere. After covering it up with one of the side panels (which is made out of paper), the background looked better, but then the model was a problem. All that silver weathering compound I brushed across the body was now reflecting light.

At least, that was the case with my smartphone camera. When I busted out the mirrorless, I had to lower the brightness settings and the aperture (in addition to cranking the lightbox’s light source all the waydown) just to get it to look halfway decent.

It was, I suppose, a good lesson in photography. Note to self - dark model kits are dark!

Gunpla Build - High Grade Jesta Cannon (Part 3) 2022-04-07

Upper Torso

This model goes out of its way to include a big hunk of light blue plastic just to create this little bit of color separation:

It’s wild to see this from the same model kit line that went out of its way to make the legs of the Dijeh out of as few parts as possible. My guess is that since most of the engineering work was already done for the original Jesta, they had the luxury to get fancy with the Jesta Cannon.

Gunpla Build - High Grade Jesta Cannon (Part 1) 2022-04-05

As always, let’s begin with a look at the runners:

As you can see, most of the runners are massive. This model definitely has a generous amount of parts for a High Grade - and since I’ve already built it, I can tell you that only a few of them are unused “spares”.

You might also notice that it comes with two separte sheets of decals. One of them contains color correcting stickers, while the other comes with logos and other optional markings, much like the High Grade GM Custom. The latter of the two uses Japanese characters, rather than Arabic numbers. I thought this practice was abandoned a few years before this model’s 2013 release date, but it looks like I was wrong.

In any case, let’s get to those weapons.

Gunpla Build - High Grade Jesta Cannon (Part 2) 2022-04-05

Having already built this model before writing this post, I can confidently say that the following things are true:

This model has great part separation
The parts themselves are largely lacking in surface detail

Normally this wouldn’t be a problem. The part separation in and of itself should create a lot of interesting details to look at. But that’s not really the case here. The pieces are so flat and angular that they run the risk of running together.

What to do then? In this case, I decided to use a bit of silver weathering compound along the corners, and then brushed an even smaller amount across each body part once assembled. I figured it would add a little bit of extra texture, as well as give the model the illusion of very minor weathering (as if its paint is very slowly starting to flake off).

In retrospect, I’m not sure it was a great idea. The silver compound reflects light, and that made it difficult to get good photos (at least with my smartphone). Without getting ahead of myself, I had to futz around with the settings on my mirrorless camera in ways I’ve never had to before.

But we’ll get to that later. For now, let’s start from the bottom and work our way up.