Making of Mai Shiranui (Yukishiro version)

(2) Like Blue Mary, the ends of her hair are very blunt, and in many cases multiple hair bundle ends in one flat surface that has no detail at all. They need to stay sharp to avoid an action-figure look, just like you don’t want a blunt Gundam antenna.

(3) The clothing on her chest suffers from the same syndrome a lot of other kit has, that they should not be adhering to the body, but are only so because of casting limitations. It makes the kit look less detailed and dynamic.

(4)The gigantic waist bundles are also ended flat and detail-less; it reduces the kit to a more action-figure look than a delicate garage kit. The same problem exists for the end of the back hair piece.

(5) Finally, a great kit like this should be given the appropriate base, and I was inspired to do a tradition wave-splash-on-the-rock thingy (like those Toei movie openings) Although it’s commonly done for naval ship dioramas, I haven’t seen one done for a larger scale kit, so what I did for Mai was mostly trial and error.

Below I planned the new eyeline by drawing it on the kit. They need to be narrower and wider. This version here is too wide actually. I drew a better one later. In addition, her face is too round, mostly contributed by the bloated chin/jaw area. I redeinfed the jaw-line by blackening the areas to be removed. Again a bit too much here, I sanded away less than this amount.

Also you can see the craptastic ends of the front hair piece where it’s purple. Well why is it purple in the first place? I soaked the kit in Castrol Super Clean to remove mold release, but the resin around these areas are badly cast and are of low density, so the agent soaks into the resin. It’s not a problem, but you can tell the casting isn’t top-notch.

The celluclay took its time to dry After heating under the lamp for a couple of days, they’re fully dried, and I created the water surface with acrylic self-leveling gel so that I fill all the porous holds of the celluclay layer. Then I build the rising waves out of acrylic extra heavy gel. They hold peaks well, but you can’t really get that high a peak with one application; with some patience you can get transparent watery peaks. Since the gel is very streaky, I piled another layer of self-leveling gel and painted the sea. The painting required some patience too so that you can gradually build up gradients on the wave peaks, and I have to keep reminding myself that real water is pretty much dark dark blue once you’re out of shallow water. After the blue gradients are defined, I dry brushed oil on the wave peaks and made streaks along the travelling wave fronts. The result is pretty pleasant! However the splashing wave on the rock is harder to get right, and I did the best I could to simulate the splashes. They’re difficult because in reality, you no longer get a body of water on the splashes, rather, the water breaks up into large droplets in mid air and falls back to the sea. That’s really hard to model on this scale, but I hope the uneven drybrushing on the splahses will create some of that effect.