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A relatively minor update this week due to a variety of issues such as 1) me going through a state of mild melancholy, 2) hayfever is a bitch and makes it hard for me to focus 3) you guessed it, more MGS4!
Having said that, it’s still a milestone for the kit as there isn;t that much left to do now, just weapons and the head. Oh, and the mother of all cleanups!
On a completely different note, these recent changes to wordpress are godawful! Bring back the old style dammit!!! I don’t like the built-in uploader!!
Bit of a late post this week (blame MGS4. Just started playing it after buying it last weekend!)
Anyway, After the fun that was liquidstone fate, I went back to my main project of Ignis. Good thing too, because it wasn’t until recently that I was able to complete enough of her to make sure that these shots would be safe for work (remember, this Cerberus project kit is cast off!)
So this is where I’ve gotten to so far.
After the base, I thought it would be plain sailing. How wrong was I? The legs proved to be much harder than I had anticipated. Primarily because the black buckles made the light stockings a pain to paint (because of all the masking) and the general detailing meant that I had alot of masking fluid to use, which complicated matters when removing it.
It’s been a while since I did a simple progress post, but I have been working steadily on my cerberus project Ignis so I thought an update would be good.
And so I came to realize that the 1 thing which I was fearing regarding this kit as a major obstacle was, in truth, rather easy… It was the other parts I should have kept an eye on…
Anyways, here’s a look at how I did the base!
When I started it, I had no clue as to how I was going to get my desired effect so I simply painted the whole thing in a deep red colour. I figured it was a good base to work on. I also lightly sprayes dome pink on the tongue-like tentacle thinking that I would eventually need to distinguish it from the rest of the base. The horns were covered in masking tape as it would be easier to paint over the primer than the very dark colours which the rest of the base would eventually become.
Next I sprayed the whole think with a thin layer of purple. Hey, purple seemed appropriate for the base (in case you haven’t figured it out yet, I was totally winging this up to this point)
But there wasn’t much difference after the purple spray so I decided to go further and add some dark blue into the mix.
Getting closer, but it was still lacking something. But at this point I got stuck. So after scratching my head
and getting rather annoyed I went on a bit of a self destructive (and somewhat crazy) idea. After finding a bottle of black wash (really really thin paint basically). I thought I would liberally apply it to the base. By that time I didn’t really care how it turned out because I was just messing about and planning what I was going to do on my second try. The Black wash was a pretty damn bad idea though because it clumped together and just became a black blob which covered everything, so I decided to rub as much of it off as I could. Then something cool happened…
And so, what it my main project at the moment? This…
Ignis from Cerberus Project. You know? the one which Yamato has recently announced that they were going to make into a PVC kit?
Man, I still remember the hard time I had trying to find one of these babies after last years summer Wonderfestival. Had to pay a pretty penny for it as well! And now it’s coming out as a cheap PVC… orz
well, good luck to them. They’re probably going to need it (yes, I am a little bitter about the announcement. This is the first kit I have bought which has been (or rather will be) converted into a PVC figure, which lowers it’s overall value). The pic above shows the model after pinning and most of the flash removed and sanded out. There are some seam lines left which will need to be taken care of, but cleanup has been pretty good this time round.
And now we return to what the blog was initially started for, MODEL KITS!!! It’s been several weeks since my last update on the progress of Yoko so if I didn’t have something to show for it, it would be safe to start worrying…
So she’s starting to take shape now. The jacket is giving me a little difficulty as I can’t quite get the colour right. But I think I’ll be able to nail that soon.
Well, I said I would do it, so I did! Most of the preliminary steps have been completed now. the parts fits were pretty good for the most part. The pics below show what the larger parts assembled look like, with the areas where I needed to putty to fill in the gaps.
It wasn’t all fun and games though. There were a couple of things which threw me off.
The end is near!!! And while it would be a lie to say that I hated painting this kit, It’s not an experience I am in any rush to repeat (says the person who also bought the YoikoQ C.C figure at the summer wonderfestival)
Ignoring the rather morbid premise of a pic of a dismembered head, you can see that the head is now completed. When I last posted about C.C, the hands and head were still incomplete.
I decided to paint the nails pink just to highlight the fingertips. Otherwise the hands looked very bland. As for the head, the Geass mark on the forehead was both the hardest thing I had done in a while, due to it’s very small size and precise requirements and also the most pointless thing I have done on a kit…
Man, this was a mission!!!
After several weeks of painting, more painting and several mishaps I’ve managed to get the bulk of the project done!
Amazingly, for weeks of work, not that much seems to have been done. Don’t be fooled!! This monster is far more trouble than it appears!!
Many thanks go to Melonpan over at Figure.fm for posting pics of his completed gathering C.C from E2046. With those, I was able to figure out where all the accursed belt parts went and how they all fit together!!! There are still checks and tidy-up to do before I move onto the next part, which should be more interesting than the “all white” painting I’ve been doing on this kit up till now.
Well, I did say that I would give an update, not that there’s much to update at present.
The parts have cleaned, sanded and primed, as shown in the above pic. For some reason, this process took an insanely long time due to various mishaps when priming. Word of advice: Always pay attention to the distance between the part and the Primer can when spraying. I had to redo the primer 4 times because i kept putting the parts too close to the spray which resulted in air pockets and craters in the finish. so you don’t get a smooth finish which really shows up after painting. Just to add more problems, the only way to remove them is to sand the paint off after it has dried and spray again.
Painting has begun but I’m dragging my feet a little because the figure doesn’t stand up by itself!!! As a result, I’m waiting for a display base to arrive so I can fix the figure when the body and legs are completely done. Otherwise, I’ll just have painted parts floating around my workspace with nowhere to put them. The base should arrive soon so then i can go full throttle on the painting, not that there’s any difficulty in this kit, it’s mostly just 1 colour afterall…
In fact, maybe I’ll do another one on the side…
I said it once and I’ll say it far more times than is unnecessary: I HATE PAINTING EYES!!
They never seem to go smoothly for me… But after 3 attempts (including 1 where I had to paint half the face all over again after a mishap with paint thinner) I’ve finally managed to get to stage where the eyes look correct and acceptable. Note, I didn’t say perfect. If I wanted a perfectly painted kit, then I’d never finish as there’s always something I would redo! So, for the penultimate stage of this little project, let’s look at eye painting in a little more detail!!
Initially, we started with a face which was painted completely over in flesh colour, as seen in the first pic along with hair parts.
The first thing we need to do is paint the whites of the eyes. This is pretty much the only time I use something other than acrylic paints on my kit. For this stage, I use enamel paint. The reason being that being that enamel paint doesn’t react with paint thinner, so if you make some big mistakes later on, you can use thinner to wipe out all the acrylic paint on top but the enamel will always remain so there’s one step less to worry about. Just be careful when wiping the paint off. You don’t want to overdo it and rub off some of the skin paint around the eyes by accident… orz
Continued after the jump
Bit of a small update today as we’re on the final stretch of this little project and the eyes (as always) are giving me a real headache. I’ve nearly done them but for now, I thought I would update the progress with the rest of the head.
And by rest of the head, I mean the hair and bunny ears. Since they’re all that’s left. Mina was a little tricky as her hair colour was not straight up blonde, but more of a darker shade which was harder to mix together. First thing to do was to spray the hair pieces white, to make sure that the final hair colour wasn’t too dull.
Once that was done, I sprayed the pieces yellow. The hope was that the yellow would brighten up certain areas so long as the main colour was not sprayed on too thick. Unfortunately, that didn’t quite work out as planned…
More after the jump
Methinks it’s time for another update!! When we left Mina last time, she was cleaned and primed ready for painting.
and now?
Please excuse the shots, I’ll make good ones when she’s finished… I promise!!
With regards to painting, I won’t dwell on it too much as it’s pretty much down to the individual for techniques and how they wish to tackle it. But I will cover some general techniques which will be essential for any wannabe model painter after the jump.
It’s been quite some time since I posted anything about my current figure project, so i thought an update is in order. Luckily, she hasn’t stalled yet!! They say that preparation is half the battle. That certainly would be the case here…
When we last left Mina, her preliminary fitting was done and excess flash was removed but that was about it. After that came the cleaning. Obviously, you couldn’t leave the flash marks and seam lines as they were, otherwise they would show up really badly when you came to the painting phase. (more after the jump)
away from me!
*ahem*
There’s nothing like a wonderfestival shopping spree to get you in the mood for building yet another kit. I took n extended break after the, rather draining, bubba haruhi bunny kit but I though I should do my last remaining figure kit before the summer 07 batch arrives.
And here she is!
This is the original 月面兎兵器 ミーナ (Getsumento heiki Mina) figure as seen in the live action drama 電車男 (densha otoko, or train man). I managed to obtain it at around the same time as my bunny haruhi but it took a back seat as I worked on other kits. Now, I find myself in the mood for making another model kit, but I doubt that there will be a Hermes-tan who will take this figure away from me when it’s done.
Truth be told, I was trying for a prepainted version, but there was a hiccup along the way… Nevertheless, now that I have one, I’m going to complete it. I’ll also be doing a small step-by-step guide on how I’m building this kit so those of you who are interested in making your own resin kits may find this and future posts of interest. Feel free to ask any questions on the kit.
more thoughts and the first steps after the jump.
