Neverlia gets herself another upgrade for what is my biggest kitbash and probably most customized paint job I’ve done on a kit yet!
I don’t really know what brought upon the whole idea, I wanted to give Neverlia yet another makeover, but this time put her in another body, which I was really interested in the Sigma Sisters Paradox body since she’s referenced the most in the promotional material, but 30MM’s Acerby Type-E caught my attention even more with the fact that her color scheme is literally identical to Neverlia’s. With this kitbash in mind, I also got this 30MM weapon set to give her more accessories that matched Acerby’s aesthetic.
Having built an Acerby last year, the Type-E doesn’t come with much surprises—building her only takes a sitting to do and is largely similar to Type-A besides the head, torso, hips and feet. Once finishing her up, I immediately swapped the head with Neverlia’s, and she already killed the look with just the mere head-swap, reminding me a lot of Raiden from MGRR especially when equipping her with the beam sword. I then built the weapons set, which I didn’t even know which guns I was going to use for her, but all of them were pretty filippin’ fire that I decided to slap all of them with the help of a few spare 3mm connection pieces from the Leg Booster set I used on my Acerby Type-A. While I was surprised that I managed to equip all the weapons, I was more surprised I cooked with the setup.
But I wasn’t completely satisfied with the look. Not only were the knees weak trying to carry the body’s heavy upper region, Type-E’s big feet were not doing it for me. I tried replacing the feet with Type-A’s, but that made the balance worse and I still had my doubts. That’s when I had the bright idea of just using Neverlia’s legs, for whatever goddamn reason made her balance better than using Acerby’s legs, and Neverlia’s legs are hard to balance in the first place! That said, I also borrowed her tail as it wouldn’t be complete without it, and instead of reusing her crown(?) I opted for a cat-ear headband that came from the Leg Booster set. I was definitely content with her silhouette now, but I then faced a much bigger dilemma—how was I going to paint her?
I wasn’t stuck on if I wanted to repaint her color scheme, it was rather how I wanted to paint her accessories. I went over to Paint.NET to craft a few ideas, but I wasn’t getting anywhere. That’s when I had the bright idea of replacing the dark purple with black, and suddenly my creativity spiked with ideas, eventually leading to this custom color scheme that uses 7 different colors, all spray painted, but golly I was in awe. I always preferred when Neverlia’s armor was depicted as black instead of dark purple, such as her box art and early renders, so I made it into reality. Both purple and lilacs were given metallic paintjobs, and I went all on the guns, inspired how my dad paints weapons on his Gundams, hence the military green.
I obviously wasn’t done just spray painting. As usual, I went all out on the detail painting, using a lot of red, metallic grey, flat gray and a bit of green and blue here and there. I thought I went this crazy when I did my Acerby, but damn I didn’t realize just how much more I did on Neverlia. Of course, I also went ballistic on the weapons, with the shotgun being my personal favorite. I then panel lined what little lining there was to do, slapped some generic warning decals from DelpiDecal and topcoated both flat and gloss, flat for the black, green, greyish purple and head, and gloss for the purple, lilac and weapons. It was truly one hell of a time refitting Neverlia into this techno-military aesthetic, so all was left was getting her posed up!
And unfortunately, posing Neverlia was a big pain in the ass. No matter how many times I repolish her, I’m always fighting her joints. While not as hindering her wings from the original kit, Neverlia’s hair still gets in the way a lot, and due to the gloss finish of her soles, she cannot stand by herself. However, the bigger issue I have is with Acerby’s joints, they were incredible with Type-A that I have no idea what wrong with Type-E, she’s so goddamn finicky to handle. Some joints are tight for shit even after sanding, while others are loose and/or pop off all the time, such as the shoulders. I burden myself trying to pose her fully equipped at all times, which certainly gets things colliding and stuff popping out and all that crap. However, once you get her on a pose, she will stay still and look motherfuckin’ badass. There’re so many weapons to pose her with that she is in many ways like Nuke Matrix’s FOX. I should’ve took a shot with her with her sniping pose, but I forgot :(
Overall, I’m real happy with Neo Neverlia, combining the looks of a badass mech and a cute anime girl, the style that makes me enamored with mecha musume in the first place. Her transformation turned out really well, and I’m happy to give my first girlpla a true makeover that I’ll be satisfied with for… well, a long time. This is really the first time I painted the primary color of a kit into something different (albeit sightly different), and really going ham on painting firearms. That’s about it, thanks for reading, and I’ll see you next time!
