#vidar

pixie hollow requests—part one!

Favourite Mobile Game characters!

I had a bunch of fun with these!

Original template by @serenedash Here

I don't think there's any surprises for those who have followed me for long enough. Originally I was just going to have Ventus as a stand alone, but after I drew his sketch, his smile looked less sweet and more... sinister. I KNOW Darkness/Vanitas doesn't really do much in terms of possession, but... you know; I'm a Vanitas enjoyer and I gotta to shoehorn him in somewhere!

I don't know Missing Link characters apart from the ones shown in the trailer. I haven't seen the cutscenes from the beta yet- I wanted to wait and play the game for myself, but uhm... look where that's gotten me so far, haha. I've still only seen the trailer and maybe a few seconds of the cutscenes to get references for Remus and his Keyblade. I only know Nept from Tumblr, even though I have Missing Link Spoilers as a hidden tag.

MG 1/100 Gjallarhorn Arianrhod Fleet Unit No. 21 Gundam Frame ASW-G-XX "Gundam Vidar"

It's done!! After completing the frame last week, adding all of the surface armour and acessories went quite smoothly. I'd already weathered and prepped everything, but even then I had to move quite quickly to get it done during the build meet I was at.

The Vidar is a disguised and revamped Gundam Kimaris Trooper, incorporating new technology and armour onto the ancient Kimaris frame, including a 3rd Ahab Reactor (done in a really nice trans-pink), knee thrusters, and these really nice rapier sheaths on the skirt armour.

Being a modern Master Grade kit, it comes colour separated from the get go, with a complete inner frame that peaks through the multi-layered armour plates. The Iron Blooded Orphans MGs in particular seem to show off a lot of the inner frame, so I'm happy I took the extra time to weather and detail it, although a lot of the frame marking stickers did get covered completely.

The colours chosen for the kit are really nice, especially the almost lavender blue that makes up the majority of the armour panels and contrasts really well with the bright pink marking stickers. I had a lot of fun with these - there are far fewer than on a RG kit, and they're nice and big so they're easy to apply. I even added a few extras, including the Bauduin family crest on the shoulder and cockpit. There's also some really nice shiny gold and chrome pieces for the frame.

There wasn't much for me to do in terms of further detail, apart from panel lining. I used both a liquid enamel liner as well as felt tip to touch up any mistakes. For some of the black armour panel pieces, I also experimented using a light grey liner, to give them some extra contrast, as black can tend to get lost and look like it isn't there at all. I've seen people do this on aircraft and it usually looks quite good, and I think it gave a few of the armour pieces a really nice worn metallic effect.

I also painted the little pilot figure and added some weathering. For the armour panels, I tried adding some drybrushing to the edges before assembly, helping to accentuate the seams between panels. I tried out a new weathering technique too using a chrome paint marker on a few of the sharp edges, and spreading out the self-leveling paint using a q-tip. This added some super shiny worn edges that catch the light and add a bit of textural variation over the matte finish.

A neat feature of this kit are the eyes and rear camera. They're moulded as a single hidden trans-pink piece that's also UV reactive, so you can make them light up both by shining UV or blue light on them, as well as placing a light source behind the head. Unfortunately there's no room in the head for an LED, although you could probably hollow it out to fit one in, and hide the battery in the backpack.

This kit is super poseable, with nicely designed joints that aren't difficult to move but are decently stiff and can hold themselves in place. Apparently the hips have been redesigned from the original MG Barbatos, although I still found them a little looser than I would've liked.

There's a decent number of gimmicks for this kit, as well as weapons and option parts. The feet include the fold-out "Hunter's Edge", which is partially missing on the HG version.

There's a few gimmicks included on the side-skirt/sheaths. There's two small verniers that swing outwards, and a little extra joint piece to let you move the skirt around for more flexible poses. The sheaths include 6 replaceable blades for the rapier, as well as the handle, and you can recreate the "reloading" action by sliding the entire sheath down, which actually pulls out a single blade attached to the handle.

There are also 2 extra "detached" blades, representing used blades that have been deposited as explosives in another mobile suit (although there's not really anything to attach them to for display, until Bandai releases more MG IBO kits).

One of the coolest parts of this kit are the twin pistols hidden in the front skirt. The holster gimmick can be a little finnicky when replacing the pistols, but they're held there securely when in place. The pistols themselves are nicely recreated, and you can even rack the slide of each one!

Finally, there's the large 110mm rifle. This has little tabs that slot in to a few holes on either side of the skirt, and an aiming camera in trans-pink that even has a foil sticker behind it to make it stand out. The rifle was always the funniest aspect of this suit to me, as it's clearly IBO's homage to the RX-78-2 beam rifle, and yet it's used by a suit that shows up as a transitional form in like 3 episodes and it gets fired once.

It's still undeniably one of the coolest parts of the kit, and it even has a removable magazine, although the part lacks a catch and so can be removed a little too easily. I wish it had had an actuating bolt as well, although it didn't really have one in the show.

Alongside all the weapons are a few hand options for holding the weapons. The hands are rather nicely done, with only a single hand that needs to be built, alongside a single moveable thumb. Instead, you switch out the fingers, between a pre-posed left and right pistol grip, open fist, closed fist, or open hand. This was much more preferable to working with the poseable hands I've seen on other MG kits. I still have sour memories of the fiddly poseable hands from the RG kits. The removable fingers also make it easier to swap out weapons for posing, and there's a little slot in each hand that clips into the weapons to hold them securely.