Say hello to Vamdira, a Dandadan-based Rydira custom based on [anime spoilers] >!Vamola, basing it off more on her anime design where they covered her exposed skin with pink fabric!<, and this color scheme was made kinda out of the blue. I originally planned to paint Rydira with this color scheme , but having painted so many girls with black limbs and acquiring Shuremi, a gal with a predominantly red color scheme, I wanted Rydira to be a bit more unique, and [Dandadan spoilers] >!Vamola’s!< color scheme kinda worked with Rydira, which became the plan I followed!
No joke, I started Vamdira the day after I finished Shuremi, and like her, Rydira does feel like a complete 30MS going for a very biker/skater girl aesthetic that comes with a jacket, baggy sleeves and pants, a helmet and of course, a skateboard. While her aestehtics and detail are a punch above other 30MS kits, she builds very similar to her sisters, albeit coming with ever-so-slightly more plastic. Like my Neo Neverlia, Vamdira is almost fully painted besides the skin, the parts that were white OOB, and the gray joints that are (mostly) hidden from sight. However, unlike Neo Neverlia, this paintjob was certainly more ambiguous, mostly for two reasons: 1—I’d be using paints I never used before and 2—trying to spray paint gray and black pieces to white, and boy the latter was quite a painful experience.
When it came to selecting paint, I found whatever was closest to my concept, and none of the colors were 1:1 besides the white primer I used for, well, the white. The closest I found for Vamdira’s hair was Tamiya’s Candy Lime Green, and while it is very saturated it pops out a lot and goes really well with her purple eyes. Now I could’ve probably found a more accurate blue, but Tamiya’s Navy Blue was something I had in hand because my dad has been constantly using the color for his RC drift cars, and I’ve always had great experiences with Tamiya’s military colors, which the navy blue was no exception. Whatever black I wanted to keep black, I used Tamiya Gunmetal, and for the pink parts I hand painted them with Tamiya Pink. Most of the paints were fine for the most part, but it was the white I was worried about, and yeah, it was indeed the worst part of the painting.
I bought and tried a can of Mr. Hobby White Base 1000, and no matter primer I’ve been using lately, they all have been thick and runny, and I have not seen any thinner primer in any of my local hobby stores to use instead. I made sure this time that I taped almost every joint to avoid thickening them, but I didn’t cover all of them, so I still had pretty bad fitment issues when I assembled the kit together. The first coat of primer gave pretty bad coverage of the parts, so I had to spray another coat of it, which was better, but was now leaving a lot of paint bubbles and corners were still subpar. Either way, I just winged it because I certainly didn’t want to give the pieces a third thick coat of primer and decided to trust on hand paint to fix the mess.
But Vamdira sure was tight with the primed parts. One of her elbow joints immediately cracked as soon as I tried to push it in, which luckily the kit comes with spares that I was able to use and paint with Vallejo White, which was luckily identical to the white primer. The wrist joints needed a good sanding down, the knees, while the joints not tight themselves, were hard to move due to the friction of outer knee and the thighs/shins. It was also really annoying to get the pegs that connect to skateboard to flip out of the feet, which I also did heavy modification to let them slip easily. That being said, she was still posable, so I wasn’t consumed in rage… y-yet.
Next up was hand painting, which I hoped it’d save the day by masking the imperfections of the primer and for most of the part, it kinda did. I painted a lot of Tamiya Metallic Grey on the jacket and the legs, which now look like they belong in the AOT universe with all the straps breaking the white of the pants. Some other colors were applied here and there, and I faced my last difficulty with painting with the pink on the thighs, where it wasn’t really adhering properly, and would usually get thick that it would smudge when I pressed on the piece. I avoided painting any pink by the ball joint as I didn’t want to tighten the area, but I kinda regret it as the white still can be visibly seen in a bunch of poses. Oh well. Finally, I did quite a bit of panel lining, added some caution decals and gave her a flat coat (her hair was gloss coated), all of which went pretty well. It’s time to get on her wheels!
First of all, I really like how Vamdira looked with all the hand paint applied, there’s a lot more going on the legs, and she was truly one of a kind, having colors I’d usually wouldn’t ought to paint. Despite her joints being tight, Vamdira was really fun to pose, really helped by a stand I recently bought at Hobby Lobby in which the arm is basically one big wire, allowing me to pose Vamdira with her skateboard flawlessly. Despite the skateboard and helmet being her only accessories, she can do a lot with them, but you’re gonna have to be careful when you stick her feet into her skateboard because the ankle joint cracked on me, and unlike the elbow, there wasn’t really an optimal spare in the box. There are spare ankle joints, but their holes are too big for the ankle pegs, which I just had to insert a shitton of double sided tape to firmly connect the pieces together. Now, this would be very frustrating if I planned on keeping Vamdira on her feet, but because I was keeping on her skateboard, I really didn’t notice the damage at all, and it luckily broke as soon as I was almost done posing her. She also comes with one of the angriest faceplates I’ve seen in a girlpla kit, so it was fun getting her posing her in rage for like, several pictures.
Overall, Vamdira was an experience I thought was going to be a bad experience after my priming troubles, but in all honesty, she wasn’t! I managed to fix mask most of its flaws and still got an enjoyable experience posing her, even if joints did eventually snap on me. She has a super cool design that I managed to give her a super cool sci-fi color scheme, just be aware that if you do want to pick her up, she is expensive at $40 due to stupid-ass tariffs. This will probably be my last girlpla of the year as there’s only… 10 days left of the year. It’s been another great year girlpla, and I hope the fun continues next year! See ya!
