Anime figure question.

I don't know if I should call her cute anymore (the body is a tad more 'adult' then I thought it would be, my mistake  lol )

It's cool that you can see where the ribs ends and stuff, the detail level is higher then i thought. 

How do you make the seams invisible? Did you airbrush the entire fig? 

Over...

smeagol the vile wrote:

She is very cute, the kit, so far, seems alot less revealing then most, eh'

 Yeah she does, no negative criticism intended, was just not expecting that look on the body

so far this is one of the most active threads on this part of the forum! Great!!!!!

I see quite a few figs with this level of skin at shows. Most IPMS shows have a no nudity rule. I see it get bent now and then bit its there usually. Figure shows on the other hand are anything goes and you will see a lot more Gtaste style kits in those. Im comfortable with that level of skin showing becuase I know I can take it to a show with no problems.....Unlike my Mermaid! oh well...

great buld so far and you are doing very well. Do her *and yourself* a HUGE favorand go get a display jar at Hobby Lobby and keep her in it. I know the jars look funky, but figures tend to attract a huge amount of dust.  I have smaller figures in eveything from baseball plastic display holders to betta fishtanks that are apst thier prime. Good for keeping the dust off.

I washed her with some oils however there still to light but Im a little scared to darken it up. her head and legs are on. I will pin the next one different next time.

She looks really good.  I again, love the hair, I love the flow from light to dark.

Now, Im sure you want some criticism from other's eyes.  First, your eyes, even though the outline is alittle thick, are very good, get that fixed and you will be fine.  The ears looks quite good although I would show more of a difference between the furry and the skin parts, eh' (If you have cats you know what I mean.  no fur in their ears besides thin white fur)

Her skin is really to light, unless she lived in the house without going outside for a year then went to the beach, try using a darker tone, even, if I may dare say, give her a tan, she is in a bikini after all eh'?

I know your scared, but I really think it would make ALL the difference in the world if you darkened up the sunken lines on her thighs, belly button, stomach, and the bikini lines.

A heads up about the eyes.  After doing a bit of research I noticed something.  Most anime, well drawn anime, that is.  The eyes dont have black surrounding them thick, some dont at all, some just have a line under the eye.

There is always a black line at the top for the eyebrow.

So I would say the best bet is thick at the top and as thin as possible for the rest, that would make it look great, even try to do it as a wash .

MY GOD!!!!  its here already!!!!  my order from e---- got here in a week in a half..  crazy!!!!  and from what i can see shes really clean

   this girl is going to take time but cool beans 

She really clean but will need some work not perfect...  took longer to get the one from HF.  I think I might order another one just for fun.....

  I think i need to get some two part epoxy putty...  tamiyas ok 

Thats why I order from that shop! its FAST.

 On Smeagols suggestions, he has valid points. My own preference would be to not go messing with her now that you are at this final stage.  Use the suggestions on the next figure.  Oh, and take her away from your painting area, and look at her in different light.  She will look totally differnt under different light situations....and flash on a camera kills EVERYTHING. I have been told time and again I need to add highlights to my eyes...then take the fig out and rephotograph in the sunlight and there they are, my typical highlights, plain as day, but they were invisible under the flash.

I fully believe that it is VERY important to move to the NEXT figure. Learn what you have learned from this one, and apply it to the next. Time and time and time again I see guys trying to "fix"things on thier first figure or model. ....only to stall out in the middle of the "fix" leaving things half done and the figure/ model/ project gets put away in disgust. One guy in our club has been on the same model for over two years, trying to fix things he thinks are wrong, instead of moving on to the next. I have never seen this as a "giving up" attitude, this is the learning process.  Case in point: last night I was working on the leahter on the bust.  I wound up getting black base coat on the flesh! ARGH. Even though the skin is sealed, removing the errant black paint removed the skin!!!!  Now I am faced with completely repainting that section, not really what I wanted to do, but something to learn from and overcome on the next one.  My plan WAS to have this bust done by the weekend. Now, due to my fix, I am pushed back at least a week to repaint the entire upper chest and shoulder and try to get it to match the rest of her.

Well, I demand one thing that mecha builders are horrible at, and thats wip shots.  I demand pics, I wana know what these new things you got are, show us show us.
The suggestions were for his next kit.  Even anime figures require research, eh'

I watched a wip of someons sculpting a hentai kit.  He must never have seen nipple before, because they were (relative to scale, as in, an inch for her)raised an inch off her breasts and looked like wrinkled hot water bottles...

You show her, how stores show her.  GEt a bit of tape, stick it on the nipples, and there you go.

or ask manny, he can help censor your stuff, half his stuff is nekked girls.

I just jumped into this part of the hobby after lurking for over two years or so and am really glad to see this thread on here and for it to be doing well. I was scared of skin tones and that was what kept me away from jumping into figure building. Then about a month ago I decided to just go for it and start on a figure I had in storage for the last two years. I am at the priming stage and having a diffcult time with the primer right now. Not use to priming and not use to the paint that I am using. Just having to adapt to new techinques. I am also finding it hard to keep my subject dust free while painting. I need a spray booth but can afford premade one and am not sure if I am handi man enough to build one.

On the part about buying the kits. As some might have already told you be wary of those that you find on ebay. Its considered that those made in Thailand are not all that good and most of those you find on ebay are Thailand sellers. Those made in Hong Kong are considered to be best of the recasts. E2046 is really good, I just bought two kits from them this last Christmas and they look very good. I am looking forward to working on them. Hobby Fan is also really good some say even better than E2046 but they tend to be moving more towards PVC figures and not so much resin kits and their wait times are very long.

  I have from both and to tell you the truth there about the same when it comes to the casting..  Now for service I must say e____ was pretty fast and i know it got here faster the HF's did.

  What primer are you using??  and what is the trouble your having with it? As for dust I tell you I have 4 young kids burning around the house so dust is always in the air so what seems to work for me is I wash in the kitchen then let dry then set her up to be primed outside then back into the kitchen to dry.   then i just use tack cloth and lent free paper towels on her the rest of the time.. I also keep a small fan blowing over my work...  seems to keep the dust away.  Id love a booth but its not in the card for me right now..  So lets see some work... 

rrmmodeler, one thing, dont be afraid, its just a model, and it can be repainted. My metal girls used to get stripped with Easy Off oven cleaner and repainted!!!!

you can use the ready made skin tones such as those made by Mr. Color or even Model Master, but I really dont care for the Model master enamel skin tones that much. Frankly for small areas such as only a face that shows, I really really really prefer to use gaming paints such as reaper. They have "triads" of color that match each other. Im using a lot of "golden skin tone" right now and i love this color.

Primer:  I prime my models with Duplicolor light grey sandable primer. aand sand most of it off. My beach girl has six CANS of red primer on her ....ebay special. When you are happy with the prep work you can apply any fine light grey,black or white primer such as Mr. color, Tamiya Fine, Floquil Figure Primer or even Mr. Surfacer 1000 applied with an airbrush. I spray in my garage and then put the figure in a tub to keep dust off.  Also, vacuum your area before you paint. I live with cats and its an issue, so I try to keep my paint area clean.   Yes HF has nice kits but I would match anyhting from E2046s ORI line to the HF kits and yes they tend o move to prepainted vinyl.

Good luck!

I decided to stop being worried abut getting the right skin tone and just go for it. The fun thing about the Anime figures is that you can just do what you want, and since I use arcylics anyway I can just soak the figure in windex or simple green or what not and start again.

The primer I am trying to use is Duplicolor White Primer. The problems I am having are just me not being use to using spray cans. I felt I had little control of the can and decided to decant some of the paint and spray the paint through my airbrush. I liked that better. But I hadn't decanted before so it took me a bit to get that right. Got that figured out now I am just having the dust problem right now. I do everything to make sure the part is clean then spray, Then I kept finding that a hair or a dust particale had landed on the model just before I spray, during spraying, or just after making me have to go and sand and pick to get the particale/hair off and do it agian.

The paints I am using right now are Ceramcoat Acylics so I can mix the colors I want and they are cheap. I don't like most of the premade skin tones I have seen, they just don't look right to me. But since I got a few anyway I will most likely use them from time to time as shadow coats or hightlighting or whatever the case might be.

I am also giving painting miniatures a try. Something I have also been lurking around for a while. I have ordered a good number of Reaper Master Series Paints for that and may end using them for the larger figures in the future. I have heard that their skin tones are very good. But the amount you get per bottle is small I hear, so might just save them for the miniatures. We will see.

i use Reapers almost exclusively. The thing with them is, you are using TINY amounts of paint. Unlike the Deltas of the world where you have to keep slapping it on to get a color, you THIN THIN THIN the reapers. one drop of paint to several drops of water and a drop of a flow extender. My girls have maybe thirty layers of paint on them but you would never know it, each layer is translucent and i have learned to build up my tones and colors. I have and use the same bottles I started with! Only the white and black are near needing to be replaced.

Warm your paint up before you spray and you will be happier with it. Cool paint does not apply well at all. Also i blow my figures clean with compressed air before I spray and inspect with an LED light...it shows fuzz that may be stuck in things like clothing prior to painting.

off to work on Usimutu 

HTH

  Ok getting close to the end with this kitten.....  looking at the gloves I thought it might be cool to have a metal look to them however they came out little to dark..  Im going to wash the cloves with some oils to see if i can give them some detail...  I had fun masking and it seemed to work pretty well the way i did it.. 

That kitten of yours sure has a mighty bite! You will have a real eye catcher when she's done

Just one thing, I would give that leg (pic 2 from above) a wash to tone down that bright almost  white part below the knee joint.  Just my personal preference 

keep it up!

Patlabor you use the Reaper paints...cool. Sounds like you airbrush them do you? How are they with airbrushing if you do. I went to the a paint and take today for reaper as I have done before and found as before they are good paints and that I like them. I am glad I made the order and looking forward to them to arrive. But the guy giving the clinic didn't know much about how they are with airbrushing. So I would like to know more about that if you know. I would also like to see your opinion on their skin tone triades. If they bottles do last a good while on the large figure kits and they do airbrush well then I will definitly be using them for the figure kits I got plan to do.

Dustin she is fantastic! how are you going to display her? E2046 always has these acrlic two part bases on sale that you can put a picture inside of, underneat her, maybe OF her in series...i have one for a fig but have not used it yet.  

the Reapers airbrush OK just turn down your pressure a bit and dont flood them on. I use Vallejo airbrush thinner and then clean up aftwards with Badger airbrush cleaner or ammonia, just make SURE to get ALL of it out, including the inside of your color cone in the nose of the airbrush. I see I need to go back over Usimutu's eyes again...the wash was too big and its noticable so i need to cover that with a overall layer of skin tones.

I like the triads, they are easy for me and I can mix and match between the three. I have fiar skin, golden skin, dark skin and tanned skin. properly applied and properly thinned, with most of the paint off your brush , using flow extender, your brush stroke will dry almost as you finish your stroke. it takes practice but Im getting to that point...thats how i can get all my layers built up so fast. I busted her ear off again, had it fixed and repainted in an hour. now i just need to fix those eyes and the chest and that will be done tonight.

Iworked on the katana using the reaper paints mixing colors to acheive worn leather, overcoating with a super thin wet coat of orange, letting that dry, drbrush with the golden skin tone very lightly and then a dark wash. fantastic worn leather effect.