Dark Duel's Shop-Fu and assorted artsy stuff

[Bryant Molirse]

As far as your Impulse mods, instead of slapping on the shield from IJ, maybe try adding some parts from the Zaku Wizard packs to the Force Impulse?

[Dark Duel]

Hmm...Well, I did a teeny bit more than just slap the IJ's shield on there (note: IJ, like SF, will almost certainly not be appearing in GSD/A. Well, SF definitely won't. IJ, probably not)
Be that as it may, I'm not happy with it overall, so I'm probably going to ditch it altogether. We'll see. Depends on other factors.

[Dark Duel]

Boredom struck again, leading to the following:
Duel Dagger in custom colors.
It's actually a mod of Jean Carry's Long Dagger, but as the Duel and Long Daggers are basically identical except in paint scheme, it really could be either one.

[Dark Duel]

Hullo. Haven't really done anything artsy in a while, but there is this banner I just whipped up for a Seed sidestory RPG I decided to do.
Also(and unrelated), there's this custom Slaughter Dagger I whipped up mostly for kicks by adding a couple of additional thrusters to the Aile Striker and a couple of extra weapons from the Sword Striker.

[Wolfman]

I has new stuffs.

1. I did this background of Lemon-sama and the WeißSaber a while back. First time I really experimented with messing with the transparency of layers.
2. More recently, during a bout of intense nostalgia that caused me to go back through and rewatch Zoids CC/GF from beginning to end, I did this similar wallpaper of Reese. I'm less happy with this one.
3. Speaking of Reese, I cobbled together custom lineart of her custom GenoSaurer based on the Kotobukiya HMM manual lineart/sketches. I also evolved it into a custom GenoBreaker.

Thoughts?

I'm getting a 404 Not Found message for the custom Genobreaker from Imageshack. Could you please repost it?

[Dark Duel]

Yeah, sure thing. The funny thing is, I don't even like the 'Breaker all that much, but this came out pretty well, I think.

[Wolfman]

Thank you.

[Dark Duel]

Guess who's taken a level in badass?
This is the Knight Saviour Gundam, which is an idea that's been dancing around my head for a looooong while. Whipped up the base lineart in about 10 minutes last night. Made a few corrections and did the colored version plus an alternate paint scheme this morning, took over an hour each.
Anyhoo, this would be a proposed upgrade developed for the Saviour - though whether or not it ever actually sees combat I still haven't decided. I really like the Saviour though, so it's pretty likely that I would use it.
Its armament consists of a pair of "Amfortas Kai" high-energy long-range beam cannons, a pair of "Hyper Fortis" beam guns, and a pair of wing beam blades.
Plus of course it retains the CIWS, the flight mode's machineguns, as well as the beam sabers and beam rifle. It's significantly faster and more maneuverable than the original Saviour as well.

The name on paper when I originally developed the concept was just "Saviour Kai". I decided to call it "Knight Saviour" because, well, it seemed appropriate. Plus it sounds cooler.

[Dark Duel]

A while back I started messing around with the Force Impulse to possibly design a more multirole aerial-combat Silhouette.
I wasn't happy with the results I got altering the Force Silhouette, so when after completing the Knight Saviour I decided to revisit the idea, I opted to do something a little different. The basic concept remains the same - essentially a multirole, aerial-combat Silhouette that boosts long- and close-range combat capability as well as maneuverability.

It's not yet complete - the completed version will mount a pair of anti-MS beam swords on the backpack like on the Destiny Silhouette (smaller than the Excalibur Anti-Ship swords). But anyway, here it is.

EDIT:
Here is the current finalized form for the ZGMF-X56S/η Impulse Gundam (Silhouette name still pending) - Two different color schemes created

[Dark Duel]

*Sigh*
Been working on getting my Fanfic Wiki up to date in preparation for picking it back up - which I've been meaning to do for quite a while but haven't gotten around to.
I'm actually going to go back to the beginning, probably, and make a few changes to try and streamline what I have and improve on it before I go ahead, but anyway.
All of the ships and most of the mobile suits are up and updated, and I've also started on character profiles as well, beginning with the two most important characters, Shinn and Athrun, with a slightly altered normal suit design for both and entirely customized art for the latter.
Ideally, I should have all that done and be ready to get started again within the next month or so.

[Dark Duel]

Following up on Athrun in the last post, for my GSDA wiki I've done custom flight suit art for Yzak Joule.

And now...
Given my intense dislike of much of the last third or so of AGE, I've done next to no work art-wise with that particular lineup. But boredom, insomnia, and "why the heck not?" prompted me to mess with the Thelvia.
-First, I got rid of those IMO rather silly-looking bits.
-Second, I gave it a slightly less bright paintjob - drawing from those pale-green-and-black G-Bouncer mods we saw at one point.
-Third, I made one tiny additional aesthetic change to the head
Result:
XMS-00S2 Thelvia Kai
Thelvia Kai w/ shield & beam rifle

[Dark Duel]

This time, it's an AGE-FX palette swap/recolor. Guess what inspired it?(rhetorical question)

[Dark Duel]

I have the SD AGE-2, and you can actually combine the Normal and the Double Bullet parts to make a hybrid.

After locating images of the hybrid in question, I got it into my head to try and create non-SD versions of this rather awesome-looking variant of the AGE-2.
This is the end result:
AGE-2 Hybrid Form Mobile Suit Mode
AGE-2 Hybrid Form Strider Mode
I have to admit, it looks pretty friggin' awesome, if I do say so myself. I'd tried a while back to do something similar that looked great in Strider Mode but terrible in MS mode. But this looks even cooler.
I'm thinking of eventually doing a variant with the DODS Lancer instead of the Hyper-DODS Rifle. This version would also have the AGE-2 Normal's legs instead. In the meantime, here's one that has the Normal's legs, though it still has the Hyper-DODS Rifle.
Mobile Suit Mode
Strider Mode
Can't really make up my mind which I like better.
Thoughts?

[Dark Duel]

Following up on the previous, I've found a pretty good answer to the issue of "Do I prefer the AGE-2 Normal's or DB's legs?"
I combined the two - gave it the sleeker front from the Normal's legs, but the sides and back (with their missile launcher) from the DB.

Now, I've done two distinct custom paint jobs for this variant, which I've dubbed "AGE-2X Gundam AGE-2 Custom" - and as its designation code implies, this is a variant of the AGE-2 optimized for use by an X-Rounder. Anyway, here's the first one, inspired by the AGE-2DH and the game-only AGE-2 Geist wear, with a bit more added color:
Mobile Suit Mode
G-Strider Mode
Ends up looking like it should be overriding your theme music, neh?

Anyhoo here's the second paintjob. This one started out as being, basically, the Titans Gundam MkII colors. I added a little white detailing to it, and I like how it came out.
Mobile Suit Mode
G-Strider Mode
Thoughts?

[Dark Duel]

And here's a third paintjob for the AGE-2X, which I really did mainly as a color study for a custom paint scheme I want to use for my AGE-2DB Kit. However, I really like how it turned out.

Mobile Suit Mode
G-Strider Mode

[Strike Zero]

One thing I'm wondering is how the two cannons are supposed to fire forward if the wing binders are in the way. Though it does look somewhat neat combined.

One thing I'm sad AGE never did is mix-and-match parts between wears. I was actually fairly surprised that they never went nuts with the number of different wears to begin with, given that more wears would mean more model kits to sell. The show's ultimate Gundam even did away with the concept completely!

[Dark Duel]

Quite a while back, I did a wallpaper of a slightly customized Strike Freedom that basically just tweaked the two things about that design that annoyed me the most: The gold inner frame and the sheer mind-numbing stupidity of its wing design - what with the WoL being unusable unless the DRAGOONs were ejected/deployed.
This was a variant I was planning on using for a fanfic project, but I ended up not using it and doing something else instead.
Whatever.
Anyway, I'd also done lineart at the time of the same variant, which I never got around to posting, until I lost the file when my HD crashed a few months back. So I ended up recreating the pic
ZGMF-X20A Strike Freedom (modified - uncolored)

I used the MG lineart because it looks sleek and awesome; IMO, every other version of SF that's out there looks fat and ugly.

[Gardner1701]

Is there another link to your wallpaper? The first one isn't working right.

[Dark Duel]

Okay, here's what the WP looks like:
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8210/8190 ... 3bf479.jpg

[Dark Duel]

And here's the colored version.
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8058/8204 ... 0ef29a.jpg