I had no prior experience with Gundam before this little model, and have never seen any of the Gundam anime, but I absolutely loved my experience building my first Bandai model! The intricate parts, the tiny stickers, and the awesome flexibility all enraptured me. (I had such a good time, in fact, that I returned to the store one more time some days later to acquire another even more sophisticated Gundam.)

The idea to recreate my first Gundam in my more usual medium, LEGO bricks, occurred to me soon after I finished assembling the Bandai model. However, as other projects took the forefront for me, I forgot about this idea… until one afternoon when I had a lot of time on my hands, and felt like building something new, I picked up the ol’ Gundam and decided to try my best to replicate it 1:1 with LEGO. Seemed like a fun brain teaser.

Read on to learn more about the design process behind this creation!