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Building
Building was pretty straight forward, I basically left all the pieces
unassembled before painting to minimize masking. I wasn't too satisfied
with my previous mixture of flesh (for Misato)
and so I did a lot of mixing and repainting initially. The problem is
mostly due to the deeper shade are too red (actually may be too little
blue, I'm not sure), so when overlay lighter tones are sprayed on the
shade color turned red which looks weird.
Masking was a bit of a hassle since the tank top has a few torn areas.
Eventually I settled with Blenderm tapes for masking... they have so much
flexibility that it consistently amazes me. Unfortunately I still couldn't
cover the masked areas well enough, quite a bit of overspraying occured.
Eventually I found a solution to remove the overspray - a little alchohol
and a q-tip to "polish" the oversprayed area. I don't know if
Mr. Color dissolves a little bit in alcohol, but I think the polishing
motion scratches off the overspray without damaging the underneath paint
layer. Then the fixed area is misted with basic skin tone and the area
looks ok. Could never do that to artist acrylics tho, since they'll just
scratch off.
Natsumi's right hand is holding a pear and that's the area that requires
liquid masking. Actually I could've done without, since I used enamel
colors for the pear and hence I can remove the oversprayed areas with
mineral spirits without damaging the skin tone underneath. That's what
I ended up doing since I did a bad job of applying liquid masks :)
Finally the bikini bottom - I couldn't really tell what it is, I thought
it was a torn up jeans but doesn't really look like anything. The instruction
said white with some sky blue so I just went with it.
Like Nanami', Natsumi has a pretty
well sculpted belly so a lot of effort was spent on making it look good.
But it can never be as good as Nanami's
:)
This is the first time I use electrical copper wire for hair strands
- turns out pretty well! I took a piece of vinyl cord, remove the coating
and get really thin strips of copper wire for hair. They work better than
fishing lines which I have difficulty bending them in the right curl.
Wires are easier to shape, although they're also easier to get bent out
of shape too. I think I'll use these for hair strands in the future.
Disasters - I tried coating the finished Natsumi with satin matte varnish,
but thought it wasn't matte enough. Then I sprayed Gunze super clear flat
on top before the satin coat completely dried. Miraclously it'd have work
if I haven't been so stupid pressing my finger on the surface... !@$@!$
After it competely dried I sanded the area smooth. This is an advantage
of Mr. Color - you can actaully sand the color without peeling off the
paint layer and leave a huge hole, something that artist acrylics does.
The fix was pretty fast and painless.
Some paint was peeled off from masking... may be Blenderm was too strong,
but most likely the surface wan't washed clean! All the peeled off areas
are in obscure spots that may not have been scrubbed during cleaning.
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