This big (1/4) and super-kawaii angel is sculpted by T’s system’s Miyagawa san. The shy expression is pretty lovely! I have mixed feeling about the original kit though… the kit on its own is pretty bare. The kit comes with a couple of spare resin-cast feathers that you can place to make it slightly more interesting, but in general she needs to be set in some background. Originally I planned to have her set in a bed of feathers, which would make her appear nice and soft. But after I’ve made her wings, I decided having the white wings on a bed of white feathers is a bad idea, diminishing the prominence of both. Hence I decided to place her on a piece of “post-modern” blue fabric I originally bought for another kit. They blend together surprisingly well, I thought. I also wanted to give a featherly motif to the base, so after some trial and errors, I settled on the idea of a swirl of feathers. The whole package is pretty pleasing to the eyes, but it really isn’t meant to be “situational”, i.e. I can’t really say what the heck the swirly feathers are supposed to be ^o^ It’s there because it looks neat, heh.

I tried a few new things on this kit.

• The wings were made from real feathers.
  1. Each miniature feather is cut out of larger ones I bought from craft store. It’s a bit tedious to cut out each one by one, and each wing requires quite a few dozens of them to be layered (doesn’t help that each wing has 2 sides). However it also wasn’t too hard, once you get the hang of it.
  2. After cutting out feathers of different sizes, I used Pacer’s Zap Goo to glue them onto a wire frame. You don’t want to use a liquid glue because the liquid will drench the feathers, turning them into a mess. The Zap Goo is a rubber-like glue that doesn’t have this problem. Except I found it drying a bit too fast, and the bond to be too strong. The UHU brand glue may be a better alternative.
  3. After laying in 2-3 rows of feathers, I layered a couple of rows of feather arrays created by cutting off one side of a feather from the stem (I really need diagrams ^_^) to make the body of the wings.
  4. Aluminum wires are inserted into the wire frame, which is used to attach the wing to angel-san.
  5. Some trimming and rearranging of the feathers and you’ve got real wings!
• To “embed” angel-san into the fabric, I created a foam bed for her using expanding foam. The foam is originally a liquid, and will expand and solidify upon mixing. I pour the liquids into a plastic bag, and then flatten it onto the frame, pressing it occassionally to distribute the foam evenly. When the foam started to expand, I placed angel-san on top to have her “embedded”. A bit of trimming on the foam is needed afterwards, since it’s hard to get the foam exactly the way you want it when it expands.
• Because my post-modern blue fabric is a bit transparent, I needed another piece of backing fabric to be laid on top of the foam first. I glued that on using those 3M spray glue. They have misting and non-misting kind, the latter actually ejects glue like cream dispensers. I used the latter to layer the backing fabric, and the misting, clear spray for the transparent layer. You want to wait about 30 seconds after spraying the glue before gluing the fabric, so that it won’t get soaked by the highly liquid glue that came straight out of the can.
• The swirl of feathers were glued on mostly using the clear misting spray glue also. However if the glue gets on the feather’s fine threads, it’ll gel them together. So care must be taken on where you spray the glue. Zap goo were also used on some feathers.
• The picture frame used in the base is a cheap kind I’ve got from Walmart. I replaced the glass in the frame with a piece of plexiglass/acrylic board. This is really nothing new, but I’m surprised how cheap the plexiglass is, and I’ve gotten a piece that fits the frame exactly.

Making angel-san was extremely fun… actually building her wasn’t, but all the gimmicky stuff was. I’m looking forward to making more winged people in the near future. Kit Review

Seam lines: ?/5 Pinholes: ?/5 Casting: ?/5 Fit: ?/5 Part Break: ?/5 Help

I never really like working on big kits, especially badly cast ones. Angel-san’s casting is more or less ok, but the seam lines were pretty large, and the part divisions are not great - for instance the hair was cast in 3 pieces, with the flowing end abruptly sawed off in the middle. Fit is not good either, especially her left arm. Perhaps I’m an idiot, but she has one of the most difficult front hair to install - her right bangs were scratching her face. I need to super heat the bang and wrapped some tapes to protect her face when I snap the front hair piece in. Building

I guess I got excited and put all the stuff in this section in the intro ^_^;;; No matter.