AMX-004NG Qubeley Next Gen

The work of Makoto Kobayashi has been of keen interest to me ever since I first saw his original designs for ZZ Gundam. The semi-biomechanical nature of the design work with protruding mechanisms from organic shapes and heavily textured surfaces proved to be an uniquely difficult challenge when it came to modeling. I had the original HGUC Qubeley unbuilt, just sitting around, when the HG Revive Qubeley was announced - obviously, it was pointless to build it as just a Qubeley now, as the new kit would be far superior - thus it was decided it would be an experiment in trying to do the "Hyperweapon" style of Makoto Kobayashi.

A very wide variety of donor kits provided the details: Ma.K, other Gunpla, a Five Star Stories kit, and a couple aircraft weapons here and there.

A great deal of epoxy putty was used in this build to smooth over all the disparate kitbash components - this led to the kitbash being extremely top heavy and unstable. In the future, I would probably use something lighter like a polyester putty or use styrene to fill in gaps first and then smooth over.

The hardest part was keeping the design asymmetrical but still balanced - if I could do this project again, I would definitely start with some sketches first and dry fit everything with blu-tack putty.

This kit, while I definitely don't think it nailed the Hyperweapon style too well, was a really good exercise for taking a base kit and completely changing it's intended aesthetic, from the clean aerodynamic lines of the original Qubeley to the bulky monster it is now.

This build illustrates something I believe very strongly in: even if the final result isn't what you intended at all, and may be disappointing compared to the initial concept, if new things were tried and lessons from those new things whether successful or not can be learned, then it was all worth it.