Zoids 1/72 Custom TRI-01 ♛ Tytempest “KHALIDA”
An ancient wild Zoid who has seen many wars come and go beneath her watch from the Triangle Daras between Nyx and the Central Continent. Records from the Helic Republic dating back to the times of the Wind Tribe have ambiguous sightings of the huge avian Zoid noted, and given that no humans or their Zoids have been able to safely travel into the Triangle Daras where she naturally resides, those sightings come with a number of legends attached to them…
The seed was planted by snakefeathers when I picked up a cheap JP Nightwise to look at building a custom zoid based on my original character Khalida early last year, given that Blox zoids allow for quite a lot of poseability and general customisation since they were more or less made for this kind of stuff. After hunting around I decided that at the very least a Buster Eagle would do for the wings and likely the body since that’d give me the right size I was after, and I ended up picking up a clear variant on Yahoo Japan for quite cheap. From there, it was just a matter of time. When I got them in hand I was really surprised by the size of the Buster Eagle – I mean, I knew it was designed to fuse with the Berserk Fury but somehow that just didn’t translate the size over to me properly.
Especially when you see the size of Nightwise next to it.
Asides from the feet and back cockpit of the Nightwise, all parts from it were assimilated onto the Buster Eagle. The tail made for a nice feather plating on the base of the blox body, and the chest piece fit perfectly on the lower torso. The wings became booster wings (think Jehuty style), which also are electromagnetic field generators. When it comes to the Buster Eagle itself, I more or less used everything asides from the cannons themselves, and obviously the head. If I had the skill (and patience) to of re-worked those Eagle feet into owl-style feet with some cutting and epoxy work I would have, but the spread of the feet as it is right now kind of helps balance her when standing thanks to those giant wings.
Build documented, I then took it all apart and painted it all. I used a combination of clear enamels, and bless Mr.Color for having clear purple because it was the major colour for this whole kit – I used half a pot by the time I’d done at least 2 proper coats on all parts that used it. Other colours were done with Tamiya enamels and Mr.Color metallic lacquers. I knew from the get go that her eyes would not be clear – I wanted that specific pop, and I got it with ラメ style gundam markers.
Also dang so much of the smoke-brown clear parts tinted really nicely with a single coat of royal blue; that wasn’t even a clear enamel I used, it was just that the single coating was still translucent enough that I got a really spectacular effect.
A lot of components were hard-set with gluing, such as her chest plates, back plate, neck frills, and neck blox so they didn’t come apart at the middle; the neck itself has mobility from the Buster Eagle’s actual mechanical design with two pins that leave a full blox gap between the bottom of the neck and the body blox. She retains complete poseability of her legs, neck, tail, and wings as intended. Her head can be removed and alternated between two peg hole options on the top of the neck block for different poses, and her wings can be removed and the twist-joint that allows them to be completely folded can be used – though I prefer her wings being permanently out.
She’s basically as sturdy as a Tomy (or a properly/well built HMM) with the poseability of a HMM. Really happy with this – both as a concept, a build, and a final product. I’m really, really happy.
