Frame Arms Girl Durga I

 This is Kotobukiya's Frame Arms Girl Durga I. 

Based on their Frame Arms Girl Magatsukia, they made her sister based on the Western Knight style instead of Samurai. Like Magatsuki, She flaunts her gorgeous body, while her armor hints at her power. 

This build is my entry for USAGS Mecha Girl Contest.

Starting from the box, it is a simple design with a beautiful picture of Durga on white background, showing off her gallant form

The box is tall and filled with parts, not to mention several pictures of the finished kit on the side. The half-naked look on the unarmored version really draws people in. They really know their customers. 

The instruction manual is same in the front.

The back of the manual has a guide for its decals. 

The color guide is inside to mix your own paint for accurate color.

This kit includes a sheet of water slide decals. There are some intricate designs here which I am thankful they added because painting this design is really painful.

The box is filled with parts.

There are the usual pre-painted parts

Among the parts, there are these gold parts. As usual, it's not that great looking.

Surprisingly there are two shades of gold.

And there are the clear parts.

And rubber-like materials that have these molded hands.

The build was fun. The instruction was clear. The parts came out of their sprues easily and cleaned easily. Parts fit without any issues, and cleanup was easy. There are some mold lines here and there that needs to be addressed and there were some seams lines that need to be addressed if you are painting this. 

Here are the pictures of the finished kit. 

Let's start with the unarmored version.

She is gorgeous. With her pale skin and pastel blond hair. She really gives off this western doll look.

Or Tsundere.

That ribbon on her head is spot on. Whoever made that needs a raise.

It uses the body from Magatsuki and it really shows off more skin than usual. Her body parts are really sculpted well and it is gorgeous.

 

I still can't get around how her hit parts look right from a different angle. Good Job Kotobukiya!

She also poses well in her unarmored version. You can make some cutsie poses and it fits her so well.

I really can't keep my eyes off her back. That sculpting is just beautiful.

And her body just looks right even in an awkward pose.

Here are the pictures of the armored form. Her western doll look now looks imposing. It really pulls off her gallant knight in shining armor look but as female. 

I swear even the engineers knew how well they did her hip, leaving her behind exposed and hair split so it can be shown off.

She is not perfect though. There are some issues with color accuracy, and a lot of parts need painting to make it color-accurate to her box art. Still, she looks great even without painting.

Of course, you don't have to stick with how the instruction tells you to add armor. I decided to take off some of her armor so she can show off her beautiful body. like this.

Yup. I will go with this.

The painting was a bit hard. There were a lot of parts that needs to be addressed in a way, that painting would require masking. A good example is her arms. The armor on her arm is a two-piece that goes on her white part, and the purple part has seam lines in the middle. Once you clean the seam line, Two color parts are now one piece, so masking is required when painting. And this is a moving part, so careful painting is needed. Some of the details need to be masked as well to get a clean painting as well. 

Usually, I would wing it and get it done, but this was going to be my entry to a contest, so I took some extra effort. The end result was that it took more than two months to build her. 

For her face, I didn't use the water slide decals. Instead, I painted them. I am getting old, so It was hard to paint small thin lines but I think I was able to get to an acceptable level.

For her skin tone, I used CS551 Flesh Color Set. It took several layers to get the desired results, but the end results came out amazing, and I was able to show off her beautiful body. Hopefully, the engineers are happy with these results because I didn't want to insult their hard work.

The gold I went with MODO T-010 Zero Gold. It is a pre-thinned gold that is extremely thin, and the pigment is really fine. The spray resulted in an inconsistent hue, and I found that multiple layers of light mist gave the best results. The end result of this gold was amazing. It had a really shiny and smooth gold metallic look and I would recommend it. 

I also drew in some details on her white clothing on her body, Small thin lines in intricate design to get some extra details. Except that I had a shaky hand, so that thin line became a thick line and I wasn't able to get the design I wanted. 

And here are the results of my hard work.

Gorgeous.

I really love how her flesh tone came out. especially the back and behind. 

The problem is that I used a lot of layers to get these results. Her hair, her body, her armor, and her hair, all have at least 4 layers of paint. The kit is engineered with extreme precision, so a little bit of paint made the joints really snug. I did a mask off parts to minimize this, but some paints still got into the joint so some joints became stiff, even breaking in some cases. Another thing was that when you pose her, the extra thickness of the paint, meant that it will scrape. 

So basically my finished product is a statue that I can move maybe a little and swap out some parts.

Honestly, I am not proud of it, and I need to find a way around this and improve myself.

As for the kit. I highly recommend it.