FAQ

  1. How do I contact you?
  2. Do you sell any of your kits? Can I pay you to have some kits built?
  3. Why can’t I save images from your site? Why don’t you let me save the images?
  4. Where can I buy model X? Where did you get X?
  5. I can’t see any bigger images!
  6. How come some pictures seems missing? I can’t load the pics on some pages.
  7. What’s a good airbrush to buy?
  8. What are good places to buy models?
  9. How do I get started?
  10. How do you do fleshtones?
  11. How do you do paint blonde hair?<
  12. How do you paint extremely fine/panel lines?
  13. Have you seen a model of ?
  14. How do you paint eyes?
  15. How do you make custom decals?
  16. How do you paint stockings?
  17. Original vs. recast
  18. Where I can get Mr. Color?
    1. How do I contact you? Feel free to comment on my posts which I monitor, and I’ll reply via comments as well.
    2. Do you sell any of your kits? Can I pay you to have some kits built? I stopped doing commission a long time ago since I’ve been too busy building my own kits, but if you really really want something from me we can talk, comment on my posts would be the best way to contact me.
    3. Where can I buy model X? Where did you get X? Most of the currently produced kits are available from HLJ . Rare kits can be gotten from Yahoo Japan auctions, and you can bid thru various proxy bidding services.What’s a good airbrush to buy? I like the Iwata Eclispe CS – a double-action gravity feed brush capable of very fine lines and is extremely easy to clean (of course it also depends on what you spray through it 🙂 You can find detail specs from any decent online stores such as dixieart or bearair. My tools page has a little more info on the airbrushes I own.
    1. How do I get started?
      • Video – Model Mania vol. 1+2. I think these are great videos for beginners and David Fisher explained a variety of different techniques and seeing it being done on video helps quite a bit. These are available from Amazing Figure Modeler.
      • Books – The first books I bought are from Kalmbach – Scaled modelling tips something something. This is a really neat book about many different aspects of modelling, and have quite a few tips for beginners which may save you $$$. Another book was Building and Painting Scaled Figures by Shep Paine, I wish I bought it much earlier – it explains the theories of shadows and highlights very well, as well as how to do skin tones (The book was out of print, the second edition was supposed to come out in 2001. You also can buy “How to build Diorama” by the same author, the most important section of the figure book is reprinted here). Then there’s Max Watanabe’s Perfect modelling manual, which is in Japanese but with more than enough pictures to give you an idea what he’s doing, available from HLJ. This book covers injection kits as well as garage kits, building, remodelling and painting topics. Finally Hobby Japan articles also helps a lot.
      • Web sites – I learnt so much from the web. Recommended sites:
      • How to buid garage kits – my half-assed attempt at such.
    2. How do you do fleshtones? I do fleshtones in two phases, first airbrushing in the basic flesh colors and then use oil paints to fix up. See the article on skintone.
    3. How do you do paint blonde hair? Blonde is not yellow (except for anime characters)… recently I found Mr. Color light brown a great base color for blonde. Calling it light brown is probably a misnomer since it’s more like goose egg white. Mix light brown with yellow and white at about 4:1:2 and you get something pretty close to natural blonde. Then I wash with oil with burnt umber mixed with naples yellow, and highlight with naples yellow mixed with titanium white.

    1. How do you paint extremely fine/panel lines? You can use different paint mediums to achieve this. Enamels and acrylics in general do not react to each other, and you can use their thinner on the other medium without any harmful effects. If you paint you base coat in acrylics, take some enamel paints and a fine brush and draw the line in; when you mess up, you can use some mineral spirits to wipe out the mistake and try again. You should still be careful though, because it is possible the color will taint the base coat. My favorite combination is lacquer base coat with artist acrylics for details; artist acrylics forms a film on top of your base coat but doesn’t really bind to it, so you can wipe out your mistake easily without worrying about tinting. (updated 12/00) The approach I use nowadays is to wash with artist oil. The advantages are (1) oil is slower drying, so you have time to create many interesting effects (2) oil wash can create a softer colored line than hobby paint colors; if the line is too black, you can blend it to reduce the contrast (3) less tedious. The key is to use mineral spirits (normal paint thinner) to thin the oil. The mineral spirits will force the oil to dry faster, yet not so fast that you can’t work on it. First thin some black oil (I use Ivory black) with mineral spirits to a waterly consistency, and paint in the panel lines quickly – no need to be careful here. Wait a bit for the mineral spirits to evaporate so that the surface is no longer glossy (work on several different parts in an assembly line fashion will obviously save time here.) Then take a napkin and wipe in direction *perpendicular* to the panel line. I found for some cases wiping 45 degrees actually works better. When you wipe you create nice diffused black color around the panel line. You can also take a wide, bouncy paint brush to blend and soften the edges. If you wait too long, the oil becomes hard to blend. In this case you can dip your brush with a little mineral spirit, wipe most of it away, and brush lightly on the area to remove the excess oil. If you want more working time, thin with odorless mineral spirit, which is weaker than mineral spirit and allows more working time (overnight.)

 

    1. How do you paint eyes? Click here.
    2. How do you make custom decals? See under Finishing on Tutorial.
    3. How do you paint stockings? It’s not very hard. Thin paint more than usual, and mist over your skintone lightly, until the desired transparency is reached. The thing to watch out for is don’t put on too heavy a coat – paint usually becomes more opaque when they dry, so it’s easy to overshoot. After you achieve the desired effect, you can optionally start shading. Shading stockings is a bit counter-intuitive, so it’s best if you have reference to real stockings. For example, if you have white stockings, many depressed areas will actually be given more white because in those areas there are more fabric. I also like to use clear colors to do stockings (except white of course), since they have very thin colors to start with, and allows a lot of control.

 

  1. Where can I buy Mr. Color? Given my high praise of the line I’ve gotten many queries on where to buy them. I import them from sealmodel. In fact, if you buy lots of stuff like primer, spray etc., it’s quite a bit cheaper buying from them and shipped surface, if you can wait for it.

5 comments

  1. The last three links in #9 appear to be broken. Just FYI, your work is amazing by the way, cheers.

  3. i jzt want to ask some tips, i want to knw if it is really necessary to apply a white base coat to your model if yur going to remove the seemlines using a putty then u want to have a good finish on in? is that really necesarry?

  4. Tonight I purchased my first Gundam kit, the Astray Red Frame, and was reviewing the pictures and commentary on your finished kit. Your work is quite inspirational!

    I was wondering which set of HDM hands you used on the kit to replace the kit parts? I’ve noticed that there are quite a lot of 1/100 scale hands available. Thanks for your time!

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