Thursday, October 11, 2007

Arisugawa Shii

Finally, after a very long time I found some time to update my blog. :D Today is a good day for me. I just finished my commission watercolor work (will probably post some pictures later) and now I have time to work on my Shii.
This kit is based on Shunya Yamashita's work and sculpted by I-don't-know-who, but whoever did it, did a great job. I love this kit, even thought she is half naked. I wish I had her body :) OK, back from a dream land. I am planning to use this kit as a entry for Winter Contest at the E2046, so I am trying to make her as perfect as possible.

The build is pretty straight forward. There is nothing hard or complicated about this kit, so I am going to skip the boring parts like sanding and puttying. Here comes the fan part - painting.

I am using acrylic paints (as usual) and Model Master sealers (stuff in the cans). Usually I start with painting the skin first, but I decided to change my order on this kit. I painted the shirt first, added some highlights and shadows and sealed it. The reason I started from shirt is that its all white and I didn't wanted to repaint all that white tone. It never comes out as clean as I want it to.
Next came the skin. First the base lite color, added some shadows, sealed it, pastel shadows, sealed it, lite-lite mist of base skin color to blend it all in, seal it, and some highlights, seal it.
Next I attacked the stockings. In the original art work, her stockings are purple, but I decided to change her colors a little. I painted her legs with skin color, even the part that have stockings. Masked the thigh part :) and used some brown color diluted with Future Floor Finish (no water). The Future Finish makes paint transparent and gives it a very nice glossy finish. I haven't made many stockings, so I was very satisfied with the results.
And this is how she looks after I assembled some of the parts together. Of course she didn't look like that for too long. When I was gluing the legs together ( I used 2 min epoxy glue) the leg shifted a little bit and it created a small hair thin line between the joints. It was bugging me too much, so I had to fix it. As expected, while trying to fix it, I manage to make it worse. So now she is all wrapped in the tape and her thighs are primed and ready to paint again. I hope I will have more luck the ( 1..2..3.. ) the third time :)
While I was waiting for some stuff to dry and fixing the leg problem, I painted the hair and her eyes. I tried to make her look as human as possible, plus I just hate painting lips, it never comes out the right way. After some struggling, this is what I got. Not too bad, if you ask me :) Now the only problem is that half of her face is going to be hidden behind the bangs and her glasses.
So this is as far as I got. Hopefully I will get more time to finish her up. Wish me luck on fixing her legs.

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