Dark Duel's Shop-Fu and assorted artsy stuff

[Deathzealot]

Hmmm... Those are mobile suits from Witch from Mercury which is a Gundam show. So it is Gundam stuff.

[Dark Duel]

I suppose I could have worded that better. By "non-Gundam" I meant mobile suits that *aren't* Gundams - like the Heingra and the previous one I did, the Helmwige - as opposed to actual Gundams, which have made up the lion's share of the editing I've done lately.

[Deathzealot]

I suppose I could have worded that better. By "non-Gundam" I meant mobile suits that *aren't* Gundams - like the Heingra and the previous one I did, the Helmwige - as opposed to actual Gundams, which have made up the lion's share of the editing I've done lately.

Ah! Grumble. Should have gotten that, as I typically yell at people who think every machine/mecha in Gundam is actually a Gundam. Sorry about that.

[Dark Duel]

Eh, no biggie. It happens, and my post was worded a little weirdly.

[Omega]

Thanks. Just did another one that's been on my mind for a while, but pivoting back to IBO this time. This is one I've been wanting to do pretty much since the Helmwige Reincar was revealed, but never got around to doing until just recently:

Helmwige in Thrudgelmir-inspired colors(Front and Rear views)

Helmwige in Thrudgelmir-inspired colors(Front view with Valkyrja Buster Sword)

Somehow it'd be really hilarious if it turned out the original Helmwige had a Sanger/Wodan style pilot at the helm in the Calamity War

[Omega]

Continuing with custom stuff of Mobile Suits other than Gundams, this time it's a custom CCP-068 Heingra, using some parts from the CFP-010 Heindree and the Heindree Sturm. Color scheme inspired by the Duel Gundam. I went ahead and did two separate loadouts: A close-quarters loadout optimized for one-on-one duels, and a more general-purpose long-range assault loadout:

Custom Heingra Close-Quarters Type
Custom Heingra Long-Range Type

Ooh this is nice to see XD

[Dark Duel]

Somehow it'd be really hilarious if it turned out the original Helmwige had a Sanger/Wodan style pilot at the helm in the Calamity War

Yeah, that would be pretty damn funny.

Ooh this is nice to see XD

Glad you like it. My idea is that it's a refurbished salvage job with newer weapons acquired through grey-to-black-market connections by a smaller company that scraped together the resources to get an old Heingra up and running and send it, with a pilot, to Asticassia to enroll in the piloting program.
Thinking of working up art of said pilot next by editing existing character art designs, and I've got a pretty good idea who I want to base them on.

On a related note, I did find one thing amusing while I was working on this: The Heindree Sturm really doesn't look that much like the Heindree at all - it's more of a Heingra variant, visually.

[Omega]

Yeah, that would be pretty damn funny.

TBF as the Gamigin and XK show, IBO's willing to dabble with some more creative ideas, which is why I think this'd be a fun thought

Glad you like it. My idea is that it's a refurbished salvage job with newer weapons acquired through grey-to-black-market connections by a smaller company that scraped together the resources to get an old Heingra up and running and send it, with a pilot, to Asticassia to enroll in the piloting program.
Thinking of working up art of said pilot next by editing existing character art designs, and I've got a pretty good idea who I want to base them on.

On a related note, I did find one thing amusing while I was working on this: The Heindree Sturm really doesn't look that much like the Heindree at all - it's more of a Heingra variant, visually.

It's a funny little detail really; the Heindree Sturm honestly feels like a GM II in the whole Heingra -> Heindree line

[Deathzealot]

You know, speaking of old mobile suits and things. I wonder how the early model Demi Trainer looks without the upgrades given to it by the Earth House for the use of Chuchu.

[Dark Duel]

That's an interesting question, actually...I'm not sure it'd look all that different from the current stock Demi Trainer though - considering that, judging from the aforementioned Heindree Sturm relative to the Heingra, or the Beguir-Beu compared to the Beguir-Penthe, MS tech doesn't seem to have progressed all that much between the Prologue and the main series.

On another note, I finally finished up the pilot of that custom Heingra:
uniform
pilot suit

I dunno what it is about her design, but I've done more expies of her in other Gundam verses/designs than almost any other Gundam character except Four. Maybe it's because she reminds me of Topp from 08th MS Team. Anyway, he pilot suit was easy - I took the art of Suletta, recolored it using the art of Guel in his pilot suit, and swapped the heads. Had to color the rear view, because the base I use was uncolored lineart, but turned out all right. The uniform was put together from four or five different base images, and the rear view head I basically had to put together from scratch. Took a while before I got it to where I was mostly happy with it, and it's not perfect, but it suffices.

Needless to say, I also did a variant of the uniform in Holder colors, to go with the original colors of the flight suit pic I used:
uniform
pilot suit

[Deathzealot]

Why does she look familiar?

[Dark Duel]

Probably because I used pre-existing character art from a different character to put it together(in this case, Mudie Holcroft. I've done more "alt universe" expy versions of that character than almost any other except Four Murasame. I think it's because I just like the character design). I do this a lot, because it's easier than trying to draw from scratch. I once did a Yuuki Tatsuya expy in Gjallarhorn uniform(I've lost that pic, sadly, in a hard drive crash). The art itself is cobbled together using official art of several different characters which I pulled from the website.

[Dark Duel]

So, I did a thing.
https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/526 ... 9f79_b.jpg

I wanted to see how it looked if I swapped the Aerial Rebuild's faceplate for the original's. I tried and failed to do the same with the torso, so I had to leave the original torso on here. On a whim, I also recolored the shoulders to white. I kinda like how it turned out. The original Aerial's faceplate just looks better IMO.

Then I switched out the blue for black:
https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/526 ... b3a0_b.jpg

[Omega]

Huh... May do what I did before with your Asmodai if I can get ahold of the Aerial Rebuild and regular Aerial HGs and try swapping the faces between the two frames if I can, as now I wonder if the Rebuild's face might look nice on the original frame. That said, this is an interesting combination here

[Deathzealot]

You know Dark Duel. I had an interesting thought I wanted to share about the G-Witch mobile suits when I was browsing them. First of all, I want to mention this isn't a request or anything, just an observation, and a thought I wanted to share with you. Basically, due to G-Witch and IBO sharing Mecha Designers, there are more than a couple G-Witch mobile suits that could be easily turned into IBO Frame-Type Mobile Suits. Just prune off some of the beam weapons from the designs. For example, the Michaelis could easily be a Valkyrja Frame mobile suit design. While the two variants of the Demi Trainer could also become a Frame Type Mobile Suit design with little modifications. Anyways again just something I was thinking about and wanted to share.

[Dark Duel]

It's interesting, I had a similar thought about the Michaelis or possibly the Beguir-series possibly being converted into a Valkyrja Frame as well. I'm working on something else ATM, but maybe after that's done, I might give that some thought...
AFAIK, right now only five of the nine Valkyrja Frame models are officially accounted for, so it could possibly be used to fill in one of the missing four.

[Deathzealot]

It's interesting, I had a similar thought about the Michaelis or possibly the Beguir-series possibly being converted into a Valkyrja Frame as well. I'm working on something else ATM, but maybe after that's done, I might give that some thought...
AFAIK, right now only five of the nine Valkyrja Frame models are officially accounted for, so it could possibly be used to fill in one of the missing four.

Good to know that I wasn't the only one who had that thought. Though in my opinion, the two Beguir mobile suits don't have that flare the Valkyrja Frames. Shrug. Speaking of which. Wait, five Valkyrja Frames? There is the Grimgerde from the series, the Oltinde from Gekko, the Waltraute from IBO-MSV, and the Sigrun from Urd-Hunt. That's four, what is the fifth one? The Helmwige Reincar? I thought that was converted from the Grimgerde. Still thanks for reply.

[Dark Duel]

The Reincar is converted from the Grimgerde, yes. But since it's basically a replica, one can thus assume that the original Helmwige looked pretty much exactly the same - except its model number would have been V06-0526 rather than the Reincar's V08Re-0526. Thus, I count it separately.

[Deathzealot]

The Reincar is converted from the Grimgerde, yes. But since it's basically a replica, one can thus assume that the original Helmwige looked pretty much exactly the same - except its model number would have been V06-0526 rather than the Reincar's V08Re-0526. Thus, I count it separately.

Huh. Interesting. Still, I just noticed something I never have with IBO Mobile Suits their feet are always different from the normal "Flatfoot" of other mobile suit designs. Basically, different claw-like feet, separate toes and heels, or a high-heeled foot. A couple of them have somewhat "Flatfoot" designs but are still a bit different.

[Dark Duel]

That is a good point. There's a fair amount of variety in design there, which I find rather interesting. That's one thing I've rather liked about both IBO and WFM is the diversity in design of mobile suits.

Speaking of which...
So four score and seven years ago(or what feels like it), I had done a custom recolor of the Blu Duel Gundam, which I had called the GAT-X1024 Dark Duel Gundam - which inspired my user name on this site. I went looking for it recently, and could not find it, sadly.
So I decided to recreate it, only I used the customized Blu Duel I did a few years back instead of the original version.
This was the result

Then I decided to apply a simplified version of these colors(omitting the gold) to that custom Heingra I did a little while back:
Close-Quarters Type
Long-Range Type

Now, since I finished the Heingra, I've been working on something that would be...let's call it an upgrade from the Heingra, using the other Grassley designs - that is to say, the two Beguir-series machines and, of course, the Michaelis. I've a little idea story-wise how she'd get ahold of it, but that's neither here nor there for now. Anyway, I put the finishing touches on it a while back, except for the color scheme. And I figured since I had this color scheme I'd just worked up for the Heingra, I'd see how something similar would look on it.
Again, two different load outs - a Close-Quarters Combat load out that uses one of those stinger things from the Beguir-Beu, with a pair beam sabers and a compact shield with an integrated beam gun(taken from Michaelis), and an upgraded long-range attack load out using the Heindree Sturm beam rifle and two beam cannons. While the Heingra had one cannon and one beam saber in this load out, this machine doubles-up the weapons, so two beam cannons, two beam sabers. It also has a modified version of the same Heindree Sturm shield, with a dual beam gun mounted underneath said shield.
The main body itself is sort of a combination of the Beguir-series and the Michaelis, with the head being a mix of parts from all three MS I used as a base(mostly the Beu and Penthe, but with the larger crest from Michaelis).
I still don't have a name for it.

But here they are:
Close-Quarters Type
Long-Range Type