Reflect Cammy part 7 (final)

Finally finished up the rest of the detailing for her. I made some last ditch effort to shorten her beret and see if I could have her hold it, but it just didn’t look as good if she didn’t. Ah well. At least I think I managed to put it together with the boots without making the trio look too crowded.

Boy she’s another kit that felt like it takes forever~~~~

For Cammy I made a few choices I don’t usually make, like having her eyes staring straight. Usually I find eyes staring sideways give the figure more intensity; but in this case, I’d like the figure to be viewable from both the front and the back, so I had to compromise by the middle stare.  Clickity click the pic below to visit her gallery.

Some stuff I didn’t mention during the WIP… Her hair pieces are cast in clear resin which is nice, but is rather hard to take advantage of. In fact I wish there weren’t in clear so that I didn’t have to pressure myself to make the braids transparent Anyway I learned lessons such as “don’t do a wash on clear parts with oil” and “don’t do a wash on clear parts with regularly thinned clear paint” I eventually washed them with very thin clear, otherwise the pieces will look a bit dirty. After a thin layer of base color with drybrushed interference gold, I think I managed to preserver a little bit of the translucency of the braids.

Although I didn’t use the blonde eyebrows I bought for her eyebrows, I found them extremely good as stray hair The single bang she had is a bit weird on a real type figure; it might have worked better in her Shadowloo uniform because of the cap? Anyway may be I should’ve installed a second stray bang that’s usually visible in her character pics, but I think the stray hair works ok in making the bang less weird. As to why I didn’t use blond eyebrows… they’re actually quite hard to spot, and may end up making her look eyebrowless

Reflect Cammy part 6

Just realized I missed part 5

After weighing various options I bought small bottles of EasyCast clear resin for the water. The resin is very runny and takes a while to cure; I could still stir the mixture around after 6-7 hours. But I’m quite impressed how bubble-free the resulting cast is (unless I stir it ) I have wanted to create some water motion for the running river, so I tried to create flow by shaping the uncured resin. But it levels extremely well so in the end I wasn’t half successful. This thing takes about 24 hrs for soft cure, and 3 days to fully cure, so after waiting a day I applied heavy gel on top to create some small flow. The gel is white on application, and it’ll dry clear. In the pics the gel has only partially dried, so you can still see some cloudy spots.

I did a pretty stupid thing when casting the resin. As you can see, the diorama base is raised, so I needed to put up some “walls” so that the resin can stay put. Well unlike other more reasonable modelers, I used Playdol clay to put the wall up, since it “feels” that this setup should be more leak-proof. Well it’s leak-proof alright, but it’s also insanely hard to scrap away the remnants of the clay, which sticks and smears to everything it touches. Lesson learned In the process I also did quite a bit of damage to the wooden base, so I had to refinish it. The back of the wood is beyond help, I probably will have to cover the whole base with another color; what a waste of time.

I’ve also created a couple of “horse shoes” which are used as the special circular “guards” on top of Cammy’s boots. I have not been able to find designs of the boots when they are untied, so I assumed they are rubber and will yank outwards when the boots are untied, turning the original circle shape into a horse shoe shape. The laces will be taken care of properly later.

Oh yeah, one thing that puzzles me is that the resin has to be stirred for a couple of minutes *twice*, each time in separate containers. Not sure what the point is.

Reflect Cammy part 5

Having more or less done with the main figure, I’m making a small diorama base for Cammy-chan. The scene depicts Cammy have just done her daily ass-kicking and is relaxing a bit along a river side, dipping her feet in very shallow water. The base is the usual Celluclay fair, but this time in order to create small “rocky beach” type of groundwork typical of river basins, I tried the Golden coarse pumice gel. I kind of like it, it’s really easy to apply and the grains sticks pretty well. I imagine finer pumice would be ideal for beaches. I’d like to add some pebble stones to give it a little variety. I don’t know what I want to do for water yet. Heavy clear gel would work, but may be a pain to apply for such a big area. May be I’ll try a little EZ water…

And yes, Cammy’s shoulder needs a little patch up later Her holding the beret cap in my previous post was a bad idea since it somehow made her left side look unbalanced. She looks more relaxed without it. I’ll just lay it on the ground or something.

Reflect Cammy part 4

Argh I think I’ve burned myself out last week doing marathon work on the Silent Mobius plaque. But after getting all the supplies I needed for Cammy this week I’m giving Cammy some due attention

I was waiting for her eyelashes to come; after seeing how they look on Reflect’s Rei, I think Cammy would look good with them as well, so I’ve bought a bunch of doll eyelashes to try. I still don’t have a good way to affix them to the kit however, and it was a battle to superglue them to Cammy’s eye-socket, involving lots of smudging and scraping. Argggh.

One thing I didn’t pay attention earlier was her braids. It turns out that in the original kit, the left braid was rested a little on her shoulder armor. In my version though, the shoulder armor is gone, and leaves behind a weird “bump” behind. I was trying to heat and twist the braids so as to remove the bump, but viola, it turns into this flowing pose that I much prefer! Combined with little bending on her “bang”, she now looks more like the “old” Cammy. I’ve also made a beret cap for her (yet to be detailed) to hold and am in the process of modifying the couple of boots into hers.

Now I just have to come up with a simple but effective base for her

Reflect Cammy part 3

Did more corrective work on the Reflect Cammy, and now it’s painting time. She’ll be holding her Beret Cap on her right hand, and her unloaded boots will be lying somewhere on the floor.

Reflect Cammy part 2

Finally action resumes on Codyland where we left off, with un-nazi-rized Cammy. I’ve made a lot of changes in the past week, but it’s a hassle to take my camera out of the photo rig setup these days.
Btw it’s a royal pain to upload multiple images with wordpress!

I made two main changes from last time, first I corrected the unsightly right shin that was bent wayyy too much, and second I’ve lowered her left shoulder. Because her shoulders were hidden under some heavy pads, it was a lot of guess work how she look underneath them. In the first version I guessed wrong on her left shoulder, making her look like she was shrugging

Another challenge is her feet, sculpting those toes were quite difficult. If they were anime characters’ toes, I think I’d have a lot more leeway, but with a masterfully sculpted figure like this there’s less chance for mistakes.

Comments? I’ve only got her base skintone on so there’s still room for fixes.

Un-nazi-rizing Cammy

I’ve spent most of the weekend resculpting Reflect’s Cammy. Here’re a couple of original buildups of her:

This famous sculpt is great, except I’m not a fan of her Nazi uniform, so I’m changing her to adorn her original Delta Red outfit. In addition, she’s done with a fight and relaxing a bit, so she’s taken off her boots (will be on the floor) and the red beret (will be held in her right hand). I was actually quite nervous when I was doing the resculpt, since I’m nowhere close to Yoshizawa’s sculpting skills. Her twisty right leg was tricky, with the boots it didn’t look too bent, but without it I had some trouble making it look right. Her shoulders were also quite hard for me since I had to completely resculpt them, because the original kit had them padded with armor. I’ve only done the right shoulder so far. Actually I haven’t really spent too much time on the left side of her body/arm. The 6-7 round of sanding, shaping and priming for her right side was torturous…

And while we’re at it, I’ve reshot the Yukishiro Cammy’s pics. I wasn’t able to get a satisfactory set before, but with the second flash she came out a lot more defined.