I got two more videos in the can now. One for painting the skin tone and the other for just general painting that includes work with metallics and a little discussion on Alclad paints from the regular metallics to their enamel candy line and hot metal red. As usual, I ran into some issues with the paint chipping off the resin. I attribute the issues to improper soaking or cleaning of the resin. I did soak it over night which is my usual time allotment for that process. But the cleaner may need to be changed out; I’ve been using the same tub of purple power for well over 6 years now, possibly longer. I don’t think there is an expiration, but there’s quite a bit of gunk deposited in the liquid. The parts may have just had some super mold release. Who knows. The process is the same, you accept it and continue.
The following process progressed over several days, and in the video, I compress all this into a 25 or so long video. Post production editing is cool yet laborious work.
Painting Anime Skin Video:
The other video as well as a pictorial description of the kit’s progression so far after the jump.
First step after all the surface prep is complete for the skin tone is to spray on white base. Airbrushed paints are fairly thin and will inherit some of the tonal properties of the previous layer. This is why I spray on the white base. I don’t want a figure to be dead skinned.
The skin tones I use are a dark base tone, then the medium tone, then the highlight tone.
The spray progression is different from the above order. I spray the base tone first. Then I spray on the highlights with the lightest tone. Last, I spray on a blending layer of the middle tone to blend the highs and lows together. Below is the progression for the main body part.
The arms are sprayed the same ways, dark, lightest, then middle to balance things.
The skin for the arms were then masked off and the bangle painted using Finisher’s pure black, Alclad Bright Silver Candy Base, and followed by Alclad Hot Metal Red. Hot metal red is ok to spray on such small parts. But it is really meant to tint other metallic colors, not as a stand alone color. Do not use it as a stand alone color for any large areas; you will end up using a shit ton of the stuff, and it ain’t necessarily cheap.
Back to the body. The skin areas are masked off so that I can paint the undies and her top.
The the ever fun task of slowly ripping that band-aid off your healing wound in hopes you don’t pull up the scab, skin, hairs, etc. See video above. Yeah, this sucked, but it wasn’t too bad.
I had three spots chip in the upper body above her top. Her under boob had a small chip. And the leg had some missed masking areas so I got some black paint marks. The kit was masked off, the paint chipped areas sanded down to blend down the break lines in the paint, then repainted. It is a pretty quick process because I only needed to focused on the damaged areas.
Pulling off the repair masks and success, no more chips and the existing paint issues are repaired.
Below is the progression for painting her chaps. After priming, the belt was painted with Mr Color Mahogany, as it was effectively the lowest level in reference to other parts of the chaps. Belt is masked off, then the buckle is painted with Finisher Pure Black, then Alclad Polished Brass.
This was masked and the main chap areas were painted with Mr Color Khaki as a base, followed by Middle Stone as the highlighting tone. The chaps where then masked off and the buckles of the suspender straps were painted with Finishers Pure Black and Alclad Dull Aluminum. These where then masked off and the suspender straps were painted with Finisher’s Metallic Indigo. Then the part was unmasked. One part didn’t unmask as well as the other. I still had some small issues on the “good” chap piece; but the one pictured below was a loss; so I tossed it into a tub of lacquer thinner and ran the tub in the ultrasonic cleaner for a few minutes. I realized that this was overkill when I noticed that the thinner areas of the resin got really soft and can close to completely melting. But I bet that damn mold release is completely gone!
Regardless, the kit is still in progress and below is a video detailing some of the above progress as well as more metallic work on Sena’s Blacksmith Hammer.