Hey all! I’m back with another… wait, this isn’t Izumo nor Yufia like I posted on my latest haul… What gives?
Well, my dad’s influence knows no bounds and he somehow got a friend of his wanting his own gals to display with his RC car models after we completed his Hresvelgr and Innocentia! My dad and I went to Gundam Planet last month, which my dad had bought (not as a gift, he was paid back) his friend two models he liked from whatever was available there, which were Materia and Durga I, and I would be commissioned to build and detail them! I really wanted to get one of my girls built already, but hey, money is money! I approached these two exactly how I would do any other, minus the additional detail painting I usually do as I modeled them exactly how they look on the box. So, how did it go?
Materia—she literally only took a day to complete. Having built Innocentia not so long ago, this was one of, if not the easiest girlpla I’ve done yet, and that’s really saying something with Bandai’s 30MS around. Snap building her took me one sitting, painting took me like 30 minutes, and then I coated her next morning, and boom, she was done. Innocentia Racer already felt ancient engineering wise, but wow, you can really tell that Materia is old—the hair is super simple, there’s literally like no accessories besides a bunch of hands and faceplates, and the faceplates looking, well, not how good they look now. She’s still cute though, and posing was a breeze. She can’t stand for shit though.
Durga I, as you might expect, is the much more involved model kit, and honestly I gotta pat myself on the back for getting her as color accurate as possible. Though shoutout to my dad for painting the purple on the skirt and the belly armor, we didn’t have the exact purple in hand, so my dad gave it his best shot and did a much cleaner job than I ever would’ve done. He did miss an area on the belly armor but uh… whatever his friend probably won’t notice.
I built Durga Darkness back in 2023, so I knew exactly how to approach Durga I. She’s super color inaccurate out of the box, requiring a bunch of gold paint here and there, that I didn’t even snap build her complete, left the clear pieces on the runner and went straight into hand painting all the mustard gold and required gold detailing with Tamiya Gold Leaf, exactly how I did it with Durga Darkness, but goddamn, there’s just so much gold to paint. Unlike Darkness, I had to panel Durga I, but I was using a new pen, so it wasn’t bad, and I’ve learned to tolerate Koto decals well! Decals that pass sharp corners are still a pain in the ass, but I applied them without a hitch otherwise! The third party decals I got for Darkness got that glow that I prefer tho
Of course, I topped her all off with a flat coat, and oh god flat coat troubles strike again. I used the last of a can that was producing really good results, only to find out that it was starting to frost and did not bode well with some of the gold paint. The can ran out in the middle of coating, but I had a new can to use, only to be left with confusion after giving the rest of the parts a good spray… why was the coat glossy? I don’t know how I made this rookie mistake that I’ve never done before, but I just had to shake the can real good until it started rattling, which I then had to give Durga a few more coats until she was finally consistently flat, and goddammit even more gold was corroding to a point that I had to repaint some pieces. Reassembling after coating always gives me trouble for some reason, as getting Durga to her complete state for the first time left me frustrated. She didn’t look as clean as I hoped she’d be, fitting pieces together took a bit of re-sanding, it’s a good thing that since that one gold piece had to dry off for the night, I did not pose her until the next day.
Cuz like Mad Wolf Prime, posing Durga up was pretty seamless. And I must say, her unarmored form is pretty hot, that I’m kinda inclined to get another one only to have her in that form. Her colors and faces somehow make her look more complete than how Darkness looked, maybe it’s the contrasting colors that make her pop. Hell, maybe I just posed her accentuating her curves better. After that, it was finally time to assemble her armored form for the first time, and I was pretty shocked at the amount of detail there is, especially around the torso. Even though there are so many individual parts you attach onto her, she is solid as a rock—though again, she can’t stand for shit—and while her hair and shoulder armor clash with each other quite a bit, I was able to get a few poses out of her using a Simple Stand. Having her stand right next to her Darkness counterpart, she fits right in.
But alas, she ain’t mine. Nor is Materia. They’re not even in my possession anymore as I speak… I only got to admire my work on Durga for a few hours! But all in all, they were fun builds, I got paid for it, maybe I can just get another Durga from what I earned, but I haven’t built a musume for myself for 4 kits now, so I’m gonna get along and start Yufia soon. Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you soon.
