Renoa and Siren - work in progress

OK, I promised to post my in-progress work on Siren/Renoa bust. So here we go :D

I had the hardest time finding some good references for Siren's colors. I do have few photos of original bust, but I didn't liked the washed out colors of it. I wanted to make it more vibrant and alive.
So here is the most two useful references I found (thank you kumama for your input :D )

I got the kit from hobbywarrior.com couple of years ago, but didn't had enough confidence to build such an elaborate kit. I wanted to do justice to the sculpt :D

The resin is Thai quality (very fragile), but the details were very good.

As you can see, Rinoa is very tiny. She is just a little bit bigger then my paint bottle, but the amount of details is amazing.

I did had few problems with the cast. For example, her legs were sanded down (probably to remove a seam line). The top of her thigh was smaller then her knee area O_o

I used some Aves epoxy putty to add a little more shape to her legs.

Another problem area was her underarms. Same problem as for her legs.

Its kind of hard to see on the photo, but the area from her elbow to under arm pits is completely straight. Had to add more curves into that too :D

Few random bubbles and holes. Nothing too bad or too hard to fix.

Renoa done with prep, now its Siren's turn :D

This lady had two big wings, one hair piece and two tails (?) and every single one of those pieces needed some fitting adjustment.

One of the hair pieces would not fit into designated area. After using some heat and putty, it started to take shape

Same hair piece, but on the top of her head.

Also had to fix in few of the chipped areas.

its time to paint \(^o^)/

I used a little bit more darker skin tone for Siren, since I planed to use more lighter color for Renoa.

This is the first stage of skin for Siren. Nice medium skin tone with some warm shadows.

Added more shadows.

This is one of my favorite pictures of Siren.

After the skin was done, I applied the liquid masking stuff (Sol). I don't know what I would had done if I didn't had this stuff on hands O_o

It would be a nightmare to mask all this with tape.

Its kind of funny, but my sister just loved the "antique" look of Siren :D She said that she actually prefers her this way.
Oh, by the way, ignore the brown color on her hair. I was trying out my inks :D

After the skin was done, I started to look at her wings and discovered a little problem. The wing fits in very well, but it still left a big gap open. I decided to just go ahead and attach it to the main part. Plus this saves me the time on trying to hold the wing for drying :D

Applied the warm yellow/ochre to the wings and shaded it with light brown/gold. Now the base coat is all painted and I can have some fun with shading.

Painted the rest of the body.

For this project I got myself a set of ink colors. I never used them before, but it was a very fun way to learn.

The bottom part of the wing have brown ink applied (light washes so it sinks into the crevices) and the top parts don't have any ink on it.

After couple of layers of ink, I used clear blue for the tips. After this I dry brushed light yellow on the surface, to imphosise the raised areas and add some highlights. I don't have any photos of that step, since I got a little bit carried away :D

Rinoa got some color too. I airbrushed the skin first and shaded with pastels (there is no way I could have done it with airbrush >_< ). Masked the skin and airbrushed the light blue for the coat. After that everything else was hand painted.

Actually this is not a final version of colors for Rinoa. I had to totally repaint her because her blue was clashing with the tips of Siren's wings O_o

This is all in-progress pictures I have. Please let me know if you have any questions :D

Thanks again for all the people who voted for me and checked out my entry.


P.S.  Just including the link to my photobucket for complete pictures of this kit
http://s254.photobucket.com/albums/hh107/zasranka1/Renoa%20and%20Siren/