Fixing Four

I’ve been working on and off doing fixes to Four Murasame that I posted a few weeks ago. Apparently a combination of factors made some people think that the shape of her breasts weren’t right, in that they were cone-shaped and didn’t flow smoothly from the chest. After investingating a bit, I think the problem lies with the kit’s sculpt. It seems there are odd grooves above her breasts, and I think when I started working on her a long time ago I’ve spotted it and thought something was wrong, but has since then forgotten about it. So I did some filling…

The shading of the area, and my photography setup also contributed to this problem. So after fixing all these things, I think I can finally lay her to rest

To be honest I didn’t really like the lighting I had in my previous batch of photos; it didn’t have that special soft touch. It’s more like my older pics taken with sunlight, with the scene well-lit everywhere but lacking soft shadows. So I experimented a lot and found one that works well albeit not perfect. I think I really need a second flash at times like this, sigh.

Plaques

It’s that time of the year again, when I have to find wooden plaques to use as bases. When I started out, I used the simplest form of wooden base from trophy shops, which are nicely finished and cheap. You have to find a shop that will sell the plaques without engraving service or any adornments, and you can get 4″x6″ or 5″x7″ finished plaques at less than $3-4 apiece. I usually buy lots of 10-15 and it lasts for years, especially since I cease using them for my more recent kits with diorama bases. But now I’m almost out, and I needed a few for my Macross planes, so the hunt begins…

Happy long weekend

It’s the memorial day weekend, so may be I can take some time to do some intense modeling. Typically I have more time to do kits in the beginning of quarters, like April, July, October, but less at the end of them. Right now I’m trying to see if my enthusiaism of the finished SV-51 will carry me through the 3 other macross planes that I’m working on: Ivanov’s SV-51 w/ twin booster, YF-19, and VF-0 w/ Ghost. I know if I let Ivanov’s sit, I may never get to it, because I’ve already finished Nora’s. The YF-19 really surprises me with the ease of build, so it looks like it’ll be finished the soonest.
Anyway enjoy your hoildays!

Macross Zero SV-51 gamma (Nora)

She’s been sitting on the floor, waiting for decaling… poor Nora. So I took a deep breath and finished her Anti-U.N. SV-51 gamma. Due to the pain involved I’ll classify this as a “never again” project

With this kit I’m also testing a simple gallery I wrote – should’ve done this in the beginning rather than spending all that time on the Gallery2 which I eventually ditched I wonder if I should keep the per-image navigation? While it’s neat, I don’t know how it stands up to attacks by robots – which is basically my trouble all along. Perhaps I’ll just have each thumbnail link to the direct image and be done with it.

Flying Cammy

I was partially done with the Yukishiro Cammy and was trying to test fit her against her base (yes I should’ve done it earlier ). Wow! I didn’t realize she was only hinged to the base via her hand. Now her pose makes more sense to me, and I have some ideas about possible bases to make. Previously I thought she was posing dynamically for the sake of posing

Sigh

The new gallery is down again. Apparently someone was hammering it, and the server couldn’t take the load. I guess I’ll try writing a simple one myself…

In the mean time I’ve resurrected all the old galleries.

Jigoku Shoujo

I got a bit burned out from working on Four continuously for the past two weeks (and still have to fix some stuff ), so I took a detour and started watching Jigoku Shoujo (or Hell Girl).

Basically the plot revolves around a girl from hell who answer people’s wishes for revenge by claiming the souls of both parties involved, except the caller would defer the “payment” until his/her time’s up, while the anatagonists’ souls would be claimed immediately. For the first 8-9 episodes it was “revenge of the week” stories, and from that point on it’s slightly different with a reporter guy and his daughter got involved in figuring out what’s with the Hell Girl and her gang.

While the idea is pretty neat and the stylish execution is pleasing to the eyes, the stories got very repetive after the 3rd episode or so, people just for one reason or another hate someone, and then have them whacked. With the reporter’s appearance, the show started questioning the whole morale of vengence, but I thought it got there too late; but it looks like something’s going to happen so I guess I’ll keep watching it.

Four Murasame on Bed

After messing around with lights I’ve finally taken the batch of pics for Four. I now see why photograher needs two sets of lights, one for backfill and one for “above”. I used to take pics lacking the backfill, instead used reflectors for those. Works for smaller kits, but once I get to bigger kits or “deeper” kits like Four, I couldn’t get light to where I wanted. In Four’s case, I had trouble getting light on her face. In this batch I switched the light source to the backfill position, and while the pics looks very well-lit and nice, it’s lacking that special touch somehow.

Here’s the description of the kit, and here’s the WIP – I’m going to use the blog posts as WIP pages from now on, very convenient.
I’ve also made a couple of wallpapers.

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Another version

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