WIP: Infect! Part IV - Sakura

Another small update: almost there! I finished Sakura, in a few hours, in the morning, I will take off the masking tape hoping that there won't be much to be fixed. The flying ribbons are done too. Her hair bow is still missing but it won't take more than a few minutes to paint that. And the whip thingies. And after that, I will have to assemble the whole thing and try to find a way to secure it enough to let it reach the other side of the country.. that's actually the part that scares me the most.

Here you see Sakura standing:

And here a view of the ensamble:

More tomorrow.

WIP: Infect! Part III

Time to show some progress. Here are a few random shots.

Faces:

The main problem this model presents, other than a freaking amount of parts, is the fit: nothing fits as it should, everything needs heavy modifications!

Here is a shot of the base before said modifications:

                                        

Sakura's stand, modified because otherwise Sakura would be leaning too far back:

The inside of the base also needed some grinding, and later some puttying so that the "lid" could fit on the lower part:

And the clear part too got grounded quite heavily because no amount of heat I was able to produce would bend it  to shape:

Fitting Berserker's hair was a problem as there was too little surface for glue, so I had to go for creative pinning:

Filling the gap between brow and hair:

And Saber and Berseker on the base (never mind the terrible colors, there's only so much a cell phone camera can do):

WIP Eiko Yamato - part II

More than Japanese, she's Irish. More than Eiko, she's Erin...
Photo taken using my cell phone camera, and of course the flash light washed away all my efforts at shading. That's ok, you'll see it in daylight shots I guess!
She's wearing only half of her skirt as that's the only one that would stay on without pins, glue or sticky tack... I didn't want to risk the paint job when all I wanted was to check the general effect.
I like it for once! ^_^

Wip: Eiko Yamato - How to improve and paint clear resin

As you know, I've been spending time and energy on "Infect", Dark Saber and Kuro Sakura. However, there are moments when paints or putty need to dry and I can't do much, so I spend these times prepping or painting stuff I've had around for ages.
This is the case of this Eiko Yamato, which has been sitting on my desk for months, all pinned and primed begging for some attention (you can see her in the background of a lot of my shots).
So I painted her red hair (yes, mine is a red-head) and, since I had some left over skin tone paint from Sakura, she got some of that too:


This is my best pinning job as of today, the parts are actually held together only by pins (first time ever I manage to do that! ^^). Except for her arms, I puttied them to remove the silly bracelets that are supposed to hide the joints.

Today I decided to deal with the skirt of her costume, and to show you how I do it.
When dealing with clear resin, your best friend is Future Floor Finish, an acrylic wax sold everywhere in the world except for my country.



If you happen to live, like myself, in a country where it's not commercialized I strongly advise you to befriend someone abroad who might send you some, or to get some yourself as soon as you go on a trip! ^^
The one in the photo is the US version, the packaging and the name change from country to country. Here you find a lot of info about the product and the names you might have to look for:

http://www.swannysmodels.com/TheCompleteFuture.html

Anyway! At first I wanted to go for a pearly look and so I used some Pearl Ex Powder mixed into some Future. But I didn't like the result, it looked sort of cheap. Unfortunately clear resin, joy and pain, doesn't hold too well to stripping (or at least I couldn't get it as clean as I would have liked). Acetone might work, but it might also cloud up the transparency effect, so I'm not gonna try.
In the end, after some windex-rubbing, sanding and scraping, this is what the 2 parts looked like:



See how opaque and scratched up they are?
The first thing to do is to coat them with some Future straight from the bottle.
In this shot, the left piece has been coated in Future, the right hasn't. Can you see the difference?

In this photo, I coated the right part too. Not perfect, but much, much better!


Next, one drop of clear green in the Future already in my airbrush:

And a couple of coats later, this is the result:

Except for the time wasted stripping the previous pearl paint, it's a very quick process, it only took me 1/2 hour to get this result. This is also how I painted the clear parts on Berserker, except that there was a lot of masking involved so it took a little longer. In that case I used a little more paint to the mix as a totally clear body part is somewhat creepy, isn't it?

I might end up spraying a little thinned down gold to make the effect more interesting, or I might not, I don't know yet.

Now back to work on Saber and Sakura!

WIP: Infect! Part II - Berserker

I've been doing some more work on this monster model: time to start painting Berserker with his clear parts.
At first I was afraid I made him too Hulk-ish, but my customer said he likes him and I'm glad as I really like him too (sort of.. you know, hard to really like this guy!)

However, I soon enough realized that the clear parts were supposed to be painted red... my bad. So today I repainted him:

As a side note, I tried to use the luminous paint I got months ago specifically for this model, but it doesn't glow... this is weird! Maybe it needs to spend more time under the light to get "charged"? I don't know, let's see what happens...

I also finished Chii, but I haven't been able to snap a few decent photos yet (these ones too are so bad because I had to use the flash.. winter sucks for taking photos), so I will try as soon as a sunny day comes out.

More to come - hopefully!

Chii with Egg Whisk WIP - Part III

By the Murphy's law, here it is, the big problem! It's actually my fault for not realizing when I did the dry-fit that, other than the hair, another part had a major problem: her right arm. The arm didn't fit in the socket, a part of it protruded out and so I had to do a lot of grinding. Currently, her arm is covered in putty, hoping I will be able to make it presentable and to recreate at least some of the folds of the fabric.


Otherwise she'd be basically done. Of course her arm will need stripping and repainting... I also need to add some whipped cream around her face and clothes.
I'm especially happy with her face, it's the first time I paint Chobits-eyes and I wasn't sure about how to go for them. But I think they turned out ok.

Chii with Egg Whisk WIP - Part II

Yesterday I needed to take a break from Saber and Sakura, so I decided to start on Chii with Egg Whisk. I did start working on her hair months ago to tell the truth, as it was the only problematic part of the model. If you are interested in seeing how bad it was, you can find it here:

http://stuff-from-misato.blogspot.com/2008/10/asuka-angel-wip-strike-ii-and-while-we.html

It was like the parts were from different models, so much the fit was bad. It took me hours and hours of different kind of putty and a lot of sanding, to get a result that is not even decent in my book. But I can't let a piece of plastic to ruin my life, right? So I went ahead:

And to my surprise, I almost finished it in only one day! If nothing happens, tonight she'll be ready.. though she's supposed to be part of a diorama I'm planning, involving two more figures and a lot of Re-Ment goodies. Problem is, this diorama is growing in my head by the minute, and as it is I already don't know where to display it! ^_^;

So, this is Chii so far:

WIP: Infect!

This is a commission piece I'm doing. Definitely not a beginner kit, that's for sure!
The ref photo is one I found online... it's an amazing paint-job and I'm trying to get inspired by it somewhat. Of course I know my limits...

So: skin tone painted on both Sakura and Saber. Though I'm not sure if I need to paint Saber's legs in flesh color or not, since in the ref photos she seems to be wearing white stockings. I'm waiting for a word from my customer about it.

This time I tried to use a different skin tone than my usual: I started with the palest I have, Flesh Tone by Americana, added some white and also a little yellow. I got a nice, pale tint!

For the armor, this time I'm using Enamels: first some Model Master Chrome Silver:


Then I shaded it with Burnt Metal:

And then I painted the decorations in Humbrol Gold by brush:

I'm not sure if the fabric parts of her outfit are blue or black.. they seem blue from the ref photos but again, I will let my customer decide.
The rest of the model will be painted with acrylics as usual. The complex base also has some LED lights inside. However, the ones provided are all the same purple, so I substituted one with a red one, that I will place into Berseker head so to give him a red eye. I hope it works out.
The girls' eyes and the blood/whatever-they-are marks on bodies and armor will be painted with glow-in-the-dark paint.
I really hope this will come out alright!

WIP: Kit-bash conversion Asuka --> Nana Osaki

Recently I got hooked up with "Nana" by Ai Yazawa. I had never liked much her style, but Nana is such an incredible story and the characters are so likable that in a little while I got the manga, the anime and even the 2 movies.

One night I couldn't sleep (nothing unusual here) and, tossing in my bed, I started thinking about random stuff. And BAM! I got hit: I needed to convert this Asuka into Nana Osaki!






I have 2 versions of this Asuka: I got the first one when it came out, but when the second version, complete with decals and more clothing accessories, came out I had to get it again. And I'm glad I did, because the leather jacket will be perfect for Ms. Osaki! \(^o^)/ With all the spare parts I'll still be able to build Asuka, if I ever feel like.

The clothes were already pretty fitting for the purpose, the most obvious correction to be made was, of course, the hair.
At first I thought about using this Rei's hair, since I'm going to use her stockings and her microphone anyway:




But it turned out to be not the best idea: somehow Rei's hair, all nicely butchered up, seemed to be out of scale here, definitely too bulky:

So I decided to start from scratch!
First attempts:

But something still was not working right. After hours and hours of sanding, remodeling, sanding more, remodeling (you get the idea!) I got at this point:






Much better, no?





While I was on a 2 weeks vacation in Austria, I kept thinking about mods I could make. I decided that Nana doesn't need to hold the guitar. First thing, in the story she never actually play it on stage (at least up to the point of the story I reached) and by removing it, I'd also sort out the problem/mystery that has been tormenting me since the beginning: the guitar is too short and doesn't reach her hand!

So I chopped off the hand at the wrist:

I reattached it at a different angle and made her hold the microphone and the cigarette instead of the guitar (which will go on a stand next to the ampli... yes, this is a very ambitious project, ahah!):





Next, stockings and garter belts. I also started priming in black hair and leather jacket, to check the general effect:





Rummaging through my brother's left over crap, I also found something that I can mod into an ampli, saving me at least a little time and effort.. lucky day! (^_^)/
Front hair part, my worst nightmare!! But even this is getting done, slowly but surely! Well, not so surely, but slowly, yes! (^_^)'








More work is required on the bangs, but as I said, I'm getting there I think!
So this is where I stand right now:







This is it till the next update! (^_^)