Not much progress done on the Gerbera Tetra, so I’m posting some older build’s WIP again. This time, it’s a custom 00 Qan[T] with several goals in mind :

Get rid of the asymmetry (I enjoy it from time to time, but here the GN Shield looks way too cool to settle for only one :))

Polish up my scribing / plaplating skills for future builds

Find a custom color scheme working with all the clear green parts this kit has

SPOILERS : red works really well with green.

No, it’s NOT a Pokéball…

I started with a full Gunmetal inner frame, the 00Q doesn’t really have internal details to begin with (and it’s not the focus of this build), so it was pretty straight forward.

Gunmetal paint is a godsend, plain and simple.

It’s hard to see here if you’re not familiar with this mobile suit, but I’ve doubled all the GN condensers (on that pic you can see it next to the knees). I’m pretty sure lore wise that doesn’t make any sense, but I like that look better 🙂

While waiting for the paint to dry, I searched for a way for the suit to stand on its own without falling backward. With two GN Shields, it will be VERY back heavy and I wasn’t sure I wanted to use a stand to display it (turns out I did, oh well…). The answer was easy, considering the 00Q’s chest is hollow to allow an LED to be installed :

1500 ? Should be enough for a while.

These are awesome. They’re small, heavy (seriously, don’t order online, the shipping cost makes it way too expensive), non-toxic, AND magnets work with them. That helped me solve another problem with the ankle guards :

Well, that’s new…

Never worked with magnets before, Neodymium magnets sure are strong ! The ankle guard is a sawed-off part stolen from an HG Denial Gundam that’s on hiatus. By using a magnet here I ensure a tight “fit”, more solid than glue or cement, and I can paint it separately.

Next is red. I tried to do some pre-shading for the red and white parts, and actually managed to do something decent :

Too bad that will disappear next step…

After many tries on spare parts, I managed to find the correct distance / pressure / paint thickness to get a correct result with my airbrush. I pre-shaded the red with a darker red, and the white with a really dark blue. Here’s the result for the red parts :

See the shading ? No ?

Apparently I don’t thin my paints enough, so the dark red pre-shade is completely covered by the red -_- I think I spent two evenings pre-shading all my parts for nothing. Oh well, live and learn, right ? That red turned out really nice anyway, so it’s no big loss.