Asuka Swimsuit * my first ever figure kit

Finished 09/11/06

I think i puttied her arm pretty well, no visible seam line or gap, which was pretty big. No visible gap on her bikini line, no visible gap on her skirt. I hand painted her accessories with testors enamel brass, and her beads i used tamiya enamel.

First time

• Making anything resin
• Using Mr Color Lacquer
• Using epoxy Putty (Magic Sculp)
• Using epoxy glue
• Attaching anything to a base

Heres a recap of my errors:

• Eyes, eys eyes eyes! Darn cameras and their macro lenses. Actually was my third attempt, 1st attempt i used enamels, 2nd attempt i used acrylic tamiya but i didnt like the color of tamiya flat blue so i switched , 3rd attempt switched to gunze bright blue for the eyes. If any one has good brush tips for the eyes feel free to let me know! other wise im gonna try to spray the eyes in next time lol.

• Upskirt: i neglected to take an upskirt picture cause it really isnt great, due to the fact that i did a post skirt, post paint, post assembly putty to fill in her leg gap, i thought the gap wasnt going to make a big impact but her bikini line IS visible, so i had to take action, u can imagine how this would totally mess up her panty paint job.

• Base: Not a big deal, i didnt account for the model tipping slightly and i should have drilled the hole at an angle opposite of her tilt but i did not measure this ahead of time, thats why the only way she stands correct is if she is mounted non center of the base.

• Prep job: Something that might take me a few models to get the hang of, pre prepping for the paint job, ie: cleaning up the bad recasted resin, wet sanding every stage of paint and using surfacer as my guide to clean resin prepping.

• The small hair in her hand wasnt that great, i tried hand painting it, then i just sprayed over the hand painted job and it didnt come out clean at all, something i shoulda planned in the beginning, trying to match the hair with that hair in her hand.

• small gap on her right ear but no biggie. Some chipping, my fault i did not clear coat the skin tones, was afraid of glossiness arrising, but will definately just do it the next time around.

• *note: tried touching up with mr color, brushing on scratched areas etc... worked pretty well, brush is ruined but it worked.

• Im probably gonna get some kind of clamp magnifying glass to paint those eyes and small accessories for future models. I dont want to have to see my errors through my camera

Heres a recap of this kit:

• Not that great recast (although i have the feeling the original wasnt that great either), about 1/32 to 1/16" mold shift, lots of resin anomolies.. extra resin at areas, messy globs of resin, just wasnt good. I know hobby fan usually shells out good kits, but not in this case. If i were to do this kit over, i would sand the entire kit at least 1/64", yes that bad.

• The left leg not fitting, does it fit this way? or does it fit that other way? *headache

• Oh ya did i mention lots of casting errors?

• Flash on the tip of the flower bud, i mean com' on gimme a break.

Im glad this kit is done, and i feel like i've accomplished a lot, this was a toughy for me, i'm not a really experienced modeler, i've probably only made like 10 kits and only spray painted about 8 of those kits. So doing this was a big leap for me. I've developed my own techinques and learned new ones. As for now im sick of thinking about this kit, i dont want to see asuka ever again, and i look foward to my next kit and im very excited about continuing with more and hopefully good casted resin kits.

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This is my first ever resin figure model.. my life has been an abundance of gunpla, but no more! Finally gave up and joined the figures group. I actually just got this kit today (monday) and couldnt wait to start it.

Bare with me since this is my first kit, im pretty sure i know what im doing, but i've never done it before :o



Asuka Swim Suit



molding quality of one of the legs, the molds didnt seem to line up as well as i thought, maybe this isnt so bad i really dont know but looks bad to me


heres a pic of the back right leg after sanding, my first peice sanded yay. I decided to get rid of the mold lines before degreasing, well because i dont have degreaser atm.. duh

im working on the left leg and hopefully will have that done tomorrow night along with the torso/face. *sigh im having too much fun with this figure my rx 78-2 .ka is still un primed :( . The upper leg part where the hip bone arcs chipped a little when i tried to take off the flash :/ ill try to fix that with putty after i degrease everything. The big toe on the right leg is also defective, theres a hole in it and no toe nail imprint, i guess more on that when i get to it.

So far seam lines have been the greatest challenge, i can barely see them when they are really sanded down. But definately harder than mechas in the sanding department because of the organic shape of figures, mechas are just square so sanding is just a simple flat it out process.



presanded. on her necklace the 2nd "A" in ASUK"A" has a little blob of resin no it, luckily the "K" wasnt affected.



after sanding: the neck wasnt fun to sand at all, and the side of the bra was not fun either, i might have lost some detail in the bra fold, the other side wasnt so bad which was strange. I still see some line ill probably go back to that. I've been having nightmares about seam lines :angry:



"Hello my name is Asuka and im holding a shell and some wierd stringy thing!"
these are the peices so far ive finished sanding down the bad mold line.

it seems like every time i get rid of the mold lines, i look at it again later and it reappears

For a color scheme i might just stick with the red, in my artistic opinion the cloth around her waste could use a light "pattern" but thats something beyond my skill right now especially in something folded that much. Im gonna do a character flesh 1 as a base and lighten or darken it depending on how dark/light the default color is, i've never seen it before still waiting for it in the mail (mr color). For the shading ill probably have a light tone on the front of her left arm and legs using a lightened flesh tone using white. For the darkened flesh, maybe flesh tone mixed with a drop of red and yellow. Unfornunately i forgot to order brown, but fortunately i did order character flesh 2, maybe i can make a shade out of that. The hair looks like a orange, white, yellow, drop of red combination to me, with darkened orange (add black?) as the shading. I might go really subtle with the flesh shadowing cause the red suit is really overpowering.

8-18-06 Update

Heres a short summary of what i've been doing the past 2 weeks.

Ok soaked and scrubbed with Simple Green Engine Degreaser, *yes its actually green.

The bottom hair strand came chipped, it was just a broken nub, after a failed attempt at puttying the tip back (putty crumbled) i just sharpened the nub and it came out acceptable.


Rescribed the A in ASUK"A". Wasn't easy, just kept trying putting trying puttying. Shoulda moved it a little to the left but too much pain the arse.



Update 08-24-06


Pics of the left and right leg gap filled, still need to work on the arse gap, all this is really redundant because it will all be covered but i might as well do it. I used magic sculpt to fill the gap, the top of the leg peices were chipped so putty was necessary anyways.

Still waiting for my SAL order.

Update 08-30-06

ok here are some pics of the painted flesh tone, im not gonna lie to you and say i got it right the first try, or even the second try but lets just say theres a good amount of flesh layers on her.




didnt fully push in the legs, there is very minimal gap but it will all be covered anyways. I did do shading / highlights but very subtle, some parts like the bikini line/ stomache line might not even show cause they will be covered by the skirt. A lot of flesh tone layers on there from me trying to experiment a good color mix. Shading was the easiest part, i would say highlights are more difficult of the stages, just because its harder to determine placement and intensity of the highlight.


oh for joy! finally the time has arrived "masking" my most favorite part of modeling, i only love sanding even better. I have masking sol but refrained from using it cause im too chicken scared of paint peel.

After this ill attempt to attach the arms/ putty/ repaint process, then the....... . eyes :o , , something i've never done before and scared of.

I put on another white coat for the bra/ panties and painted them red, i will post pics after im done with the red shading. Hopefully i wont botch the bra up, i really dont wanna mask that over again.

Update 9/01/06

^ First Anime Eyes Evar!

used tamiya enamel, id love to say i did it in one try but, of course not who can. The paint job is rough but i did my best, it really isnt easy, you really have to do it in 1 stroke or else it comes out pretty rough. But these are my first anime eyes i will always be proud of them.

Heres my little story about the necklace: the blue gem thingys on her necklace were done in blue tamiya enamel, thanks to my amaturish paint brushing skills i accidentally got some on her flesh, big mistake, it was the area at her neck area, i tried cleaning it up with enamel thinner but this just resulted in the spreading of the blue enamel, things got messier. I then tried qtips and just tried to overflood the area with enamel thinner in hopes it will just come off, no luck, it just seemed to worsten and worsten, soon her whole neck area was enamel blue. So then i said "screw it", i took all the enamel off and repaitned the neckline, reshaded and that was that, lesson learned. Some blue also got on her face 'sigh' this was after i drew in the eyes, i had good flat eyes too, the paint was was smooth cause it was all done in one layer, sadly i got some flesh tone , too much flesh tone on her eyes and they seem faded, so i repainted over them, maybe i shoulda just done a full revamp, but i was just too restless at this point.

^ some other pieces i've painted, ive actually painted all the pieces but too lazy to take pics of them all.

^ torso with hair and bangs attached, the eyes look ok, maybe its cause the hair is drawing the attention away from the eyes lol. As you can see the arm is still not attached, thats something im not looking foward to. The masking off the bra and panties came off a little rough, "good enough" considering my standards but not perfect, i touched up a few areas. There are rough spots around her flesh areas etc.. partly due to the white base going on a little rough, shoulda fixed it but was too impatient with it, another lesson learned. Next up is the gluing process, another thing i've never done before. . .

Spray Booth WIP

Hey guys here are some tutorials that inspired me to make my own spray booth.

Link 1

Link 2

The first link (the cheapest) is how i chose to make my booth because it was easier and very cheap! Some things that differ are how the air is sucked in, this is mainly because my fan differs from that tutorial's. I chose to place the fan gamera's way because of the design of the fan itself.

These are the list of items that are needed or that i needed.

• Large/Medium plastic container box
• 70 cfm+ Bathroom Fan
• 2 L shape Brackets, 4 small 3/8" screws #6, and fitting lugnuts.
• Packing Tape
  
• Heavy Duty Box Cutter
• Drill or Pin Vise (Or any tool that can drill about a 1/8" hole in the container)
• Phillips Screwdriver
• Extention Cord, Power Strip (or any other preffered switch on/off method)
• Air Conditioner Filter
• Aluminum Duct Tube, make sure it fits the fan output
• Time: About 3-5 hours labor + ? hours getting the supplies.
  

Step 1:

• Get a cheap plastic container, and get a cheap 70 cfm + bathroom fan, i got my NuTone around 20 somethin' bux at home depot, they have a cheaper 50cfm one but .. come on its only 50 cfm!

Step 2:

• Measure where you want the fan to be and trace with a marker around the fan on the box so you know where to cut. My box coincidentally has grid lines which made it 100 times easier.. 'ahem nm. Anyways, if you want the fan to be outside the box and not slightly inside the box, then cut the square a little smaller than the dimension of the fan box, this is for the taping that you will be doing later. My box was pretty darn hard, i cut myself with the box cutter cause i was pressing too hard, don't do that, just have patience and slowly slice away at it, it will eventually cut through, but put SOME elbow grease in it for goodness sakes.
  

test fit: great job!


Step 3:

• Buy or get about 4 small screw's / lugnuts. The size i used i think was a #6 3/8 from home depot, phillips fit. And get 2 L shape panels. Screw the panels on the top left and bottom right areas using those little slots that i have no idea are for, maybe screwing maybe not.

Step 4:

• Place the bracketed fan in position on top of the container and measure where the screws will go and use a hand drill, or ... if your ghetto like me and dont have one... use a pin vise, that's right.. pin vise same one you use on your models/ resin kits. Use a 1/8" drill bit if you have one, i used a 1/16th and kept drilling multiple times to make a 1/8" hole for the screw.

Step: 5

• After screwing the two brackets in (1 screw each is enough more is better), tape all around the air fan to make sure no air/space can get out, there might be holes for screws also you can tape up but its not necessary, just make sure you get the big gaps surrounding the fan. This step imo is very important as sealing the air in will produce a better suction from the intake area.

Step: 6

• While your at your local hardware store, pick up one of these. Air conditioner filter, they are pretty big and you get a lot for about 4 bux. Don't bother looking at the price of a spray booth filter, its rediculous. This big arse sheet alone will cut into a dozen sheets.

Step 7:

• Take off the cardboard glued to the paper, this gets really messy *sigh. Then cut off a peice, dont worry the metal thing is easy to cut with regular scissors. Take off that darn'ed metal thing then cut the filter to the size of your bathroom fan grille cover thingy, a little smaller so it wont popout but make sure it fills the grille end to end.
  

After cutting the filter to size, put the filter in the grille , dont tape it in yet, then place the grille with the filter in it over the hole in your booth where its supposed to go, you can take off the grille springs if there are any. And tape that sucker all around, I used packaging tape but you can use whatever works for you, packaging tape is nice and sticky so thats probably your best choice, duct tape would work but its not clear like packaging tape.

Note: Its your choice to put the grille over the hole, i think its a better idea because spraying directly into the motor would not be good.


Step 8:

• Thats it your done! now test the fan, my fan came with a power cord which was very short but long enough to fit through one of the slits on top of the casing where it sticks out. I connected a extension cord to it which leads to a power strip. I just flip it on and voi'la it works. As for 70 cfm, its strong enough to hold paper on the grille and a small peice of cardboard, strong enough for organic vapors it is!

Just connect your aluminum duct tube thingy to the output of the fan and thats it! If the hose aint long enough like i dont think mine is, you need those elbow connecters and another hose ;/, very expensive. Hope you enjoyed this WIP tutorial, this booth is very simple and very budgeted and imo works just as good as those 3-400 dollar booths. This booth does need support under the fan as there is no way the container can hold the fan up, i used an old gwing box ;/, and since these containers DO sit at an angle, the fan cannot sit straight on the ground without compromising a big gap between the bottom of the fan and the container, wood is a different story, it also looks nicer with the grille in the middle :P. Enjoy!

Oh yah, if your room is dusty like mine, just blast that thing on, remember its using an air conditioner filter which filters bacteria and dust particles!!

Also when your not using your booth you can put whatever in it and close the lid on it, or slide it under the bed or in the closet, its very compact and versatile.

*sigh now to clean up the mess i made.

Z'Gok Chars Custom 1/144 HGUC

Z'Gok MSM-075 Chars Custom 1/144 hguc

Pros:

1. Pretty good detail
2. Minimal Seam Lines
   

Cons:

1. Ball joints suck really bad.
2. Legs are not flexible and easy to break off the hips, pretty much non poseable for legs.
3. Probably the crappiest joints ever concieved in a bandai model.
   

First time:

• Using primer : Mr Surfacer 1000
• Using future floor polish, future + Gunze Sangyo flat base.

Notes:

• Used Tamiya and Gunze Sangyo Acrylics. For the red, primer, black,gloss red (tamiya). For the dark grey arm/ leg joints i used primer, black, midnight blue, lightened midnight blue (gunze). The eye, i just painted the sticker so it wouldnt look cheap, i failed but i think it looks better than if i painted the eye myself short of putting a clear eye sticker on there.
• I applied the grey chest panel after the chest was painted, fitted the panels through the top of the chest instead of having them prebuilt in the chest and having to mask them out for painting.
• The acrylics were a bitch, kept on scratching, fixed multiple areas multiple times, lots of scratch touch ups with a #0 paint brush. Let's just say im not playing with it anymore.

I will post more pics when i find a easy way to take them in my little room.