It’s been a while
There isn’t really a particular reason why I went MIA for 3 months. A little bit of this, a little bit of that and it adds up. Initially I stopped building for finals, then I went to play WoW then I lost my camera, then I got into Demigod for a bit, now it’s Blazblue and before I knew it, it’s been 3 months since I last posted anything and Otakon is less than a day away… So theres good and bad news to this.
That’s the good news
The bad news, is I now have to explain how I got there. Make sure you’re comfortable because this is going to be a long story. I started the project on 3 different fronts The actual model, the base, and the ground work. Since this is going to be my first figure with actual terrain I had to get started off early.
I stained the plaques for both this project and Shiori to save some time since I like that color stain for Key characters. While this was drying I cut up some Jute Twine using FichentenFoo’s grass technique.
That’s pretty much one node of grass before I mixed the green and natural grass together.
After this I proceeded to glue the grass directly to the base, but I decided to scrap this idea and do a little bit of dirt. I did this for two reasons, the first was so I wouldn’t have to have grass going all the way to the edge of the base. The second is the stained plaque didn’t let white glue bond to well to it so by doing some dirt using celluclay it gave it some grip.
This was taken about two months ago after my finals. I primed the parts with Mr. Surfacer 1000
The next step I took a sponge and applied some Mr. Surfacer 500 to the Junk robot to make him look like he was casted in iron.
See the results?
Some seam work on the dress. Which I have to say I didn’t like, the sculptor could have done the waist as a seperate part and the dress and body as one but he instead split the dress into 3 parts with the waist attached to the main part. The way he does this makes it impossible to paint the panties with out having glue all over them from the inside…just food for thought.
I sprayed a light coat of Hull-red and a red-orange blend on the parts to emulate rust. I did a practice piece of styrene so I could test the technique out before I actually went to the real deal.
After I let that sit for a day I sprayed some hairspray onto the rust colored piece and sprinkled some salt onto it. Another technique I learned from FichtenFoo.
I let it sit for another hour to make sure the hairspray is good and hard and I sprayed the coat of acrylic paint over the top(not sure if you can use laquer for this or not but I’m guessing no since you need the coat of paint ontop to soak water for the hairspray to loosen). For the Junk Doll he has lots of different colored panels so I had to free hand each panel with the airbrush since theres no way I can mask it off and get the chipped paint effect I wanted from the salt/hairspray technique. After 2 hours when the acrylic paint is set but not cured you can go ahead and submerge the piece under water to disolve the hairspray and salt then take a stiff brush(I used a toothbrush) to get rid of the salt.
As for the ground work I just mixed up some Celluclay and tossed in some chalk pastels until it looked like mud and then spread it across the base.
Drying the celluclay with an incandescent bulb from my reading lamp.(my friend thought I was trying to grow something)
Then here we are at the endish. The photo is of my test fit and light test to make sure everything was the right tone under florescent light. I did some minor changes which I didn’t get a chance to take pictures of but if you’re at Otakon you can see what I did first hand and I will surely tell you the story behind that. You might have noticed that I don’t have pictures of the pieces as I was painting them and shading them. I lost my camera at that point so I wasn’t able to cover those event.
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Figure and base look great! Can’t wait to see the finished product; she looks like she’s aching for some clear satin overcoat.
I used to frequent Mike’s (FichtenFoo) site when I was still an avid modeler; now I just have a bunch of Gundam models waiting to be painted, resin figures still waiting to be prepped, and less and less spare time to work on them. What a pity it is.
Thanks, glad you like the base. Still learning the whole terrain thing but it certainly adds a whole new aspect to the finished product.
As for the gundam comment, if you’ve been following me for a bit, you’ll notice that I haven’t finished everything I’ve started. The Haruhi-Acguy is sitting above my spray booth waiting for some touchups and a matte coat. and my Bell X-1 is still only primed after I stripped the paint. Not to mention the C.C I canned last fall because I got fustrated
Oh wow…
That looks just gorgeous…
(her left arm looks a tad too shiny though…?)
haha yeah I was wondering how many of you would catch that arm being glossy still. I figured you guys wouldn’t care since it was just a test fitting to make sure the hair and junk robot’s colors were ok under florescent lights. I matte coated the arms and dress a little after to do some pastel shading and stuff.
lol, I see.
Though, I must say, it looks really stunning…
(and I haven’t even finished Clannad yet XD)