Sheryl Nome, the 16th

This is the first figure I started after I moved to Cebu. Well, I can't say that I actually started it here, because I did the skin over a year ago in the US, but aside from that, it was all done here. First, I want to complain a little about the figure. The kimono does not fit her at all. It's all warped and out of shape. I had to put a lot of effort into making it fit - including a trip into the oven. Which, by the way, I forgot he oven here was in celcius (I'm used to fahrenheit) and I smoked up the entire house for a little while on accident. Fortunately, the three pieces inside the oven ended up fine since I discovered the mistake soon enough. Anyway, I fixed the kimono as well as possible, but as you'll see, it's not quite right and to be frank, I'm too tired of dealing with it to make it look perfect.

Aside from the kimono, the other pieces were fine - just minor adjustments. The sash needed lots of trimming, but it was straight forward. Her figure looks surprisingly nice! The only problem I have is that the body is that of a 1/7 figure, but the head is of a 1/8, which makes her look weird. It's a BIG DEAL, it really is. Overall, I'd say that I regret purchasing this figure, but I'd say I brought out the best in it with my mods, so it turned out okay.

The biggest problem I had with this figure (aside from the kimono not fitting) was the base. And it's not due to anything with the figure, but because I used a crappy spray paint. The paint would not stick to the base and bubbled up, creating areas where the spray would not cover. I clean all the pieces of this figure, so there was no casting residue. I personally believe it's because the spray pain was just crappy.

Lesson 53: These figures are important and precious. Don't use crappy spray paint on them.

The kimono is both the best part of this figure and the worse. It doesn't fit, it's not detailed, but at the same time it's the first thing everyone sees when they glance at the figure. It's large; it's pretty. Or rather, the original isn't so pretty but I painted mine to be pretty. It's the first thing people see. I look at it, and think it's a shame to not be able to see underneath it. But oh well, you can't have your cake and eat it too.

Honestly, this figure seemed easy compared to the last one. There wasn't anything tricky, there wasn't anything that impossible to overcome, as long as I ignore the kimono issue. It was, however, probably the most complicated in regards to it's accessories and pieces that I've done in a long time.

If you'll pay attention, I didn't even paint one of the larger hair pieces. I just liked it how it was and figured that any paint couldn't really improve it. lucky!

14th Figure: Maria Naruse

I enjoyed the anime Shinmai Maou no Testament. I'm not attracted to oversized body parts, however, so my favorite character was Maria. I also liked her because she helped the other characters do exactly what we wanted them to do ;)  But nevermind all that - this is just purely a great figure. I might not have painted a Maria figure if they had her in her normal outfit or in a uninteresting pose, but this one caught my attention immediately. And, if I don't say so myself, it turned out lovely.

Except for the broken piece. She's supposed to have a strap or something on her left hip, but all she has now is a hole...


Lesson 48: Don't use airbrush paint reducer


Maybe it's because I used too much, I didn't mix it well, or my paints are too poor, I don't know, but the only real mistake on this figure was that I used airbrush reducer when spraying her hair's highlights, and it ended up not looking smooth, but was very 'dotted'. I would have been much better off just adding more white paint and spraying un-thinned paint. It wasn't bad enough to make me redo it though - but it's annoying.

The two difficult parts of this figure were the alternating colors of the stalkings, and the thin straps of leather.

It's obvious how thin straps could make things difficult for you. It takes a very long time to mask them. I thought about just painting them, but I KNEW it would not turn out the same, and I'm confident I was right, and I'm happy I went the more difficult route of using the airbrush. But it wasn't for just the paint! I had to mask a second time for the finish! Oy!

I used the black masking putty to help with the tricky edges that were hard to mask. It really helped! It actually helped so much, that I started to use it more and more. But that was as mistake. The putty isn't very sturdy, and will move very easily. I made a few mistakes just holding the pieces in the wrong place.

Lesson 49: Masking putty is great for difficult corners, but don't use it for larger lines/areas.

Also, the stripes didn't have any indicators of where they were supposed to go, so you had to just look at the pictures online and guess where to draw the lines yourself. What made this more difficult was: of course, the alternating colors is a masking nightmare, but also, the bend in the knee made knowing where to put the lines very tricky. I had to paint the right leg (bent leg) three times before the stalkings looked evenly spaced on the front and back. Three times!! with what was already difficult with those alternating colors. It was not fun, and I was not happy. Well... now I'm happy, but was wasn't very happy back then.

I'm a little regretful about the skin color. I thought at the time, under a desk lamp, it was moderately shaded, but turns out, in even light, the torso skin doesn't look shaded at all! All my shading effort gone to waste! I don't know if it was just my fault, or if the paint dried and lost it's contrast... or maybe it's the finish, I don't know. But, the lesson is:


Lesson 50: If you're going to bother shading, you'd better make sure it's enough to make a difference. Over shading is better than under shading. The finish will likely reduce some of the contrast as well.

It's been so long since I painted it (1 year) that I can't really remember anything else to write about it.... so, just enjoy the pics :D

Sixth Figure - Cheap Thai copy, Devil Lady

After my first two attempts at completing cheap Thai resin recasts (Rei and Black Rock Shooter), I was definitely wary of doing any more. But I had just taken almost a two month break, so with that additional energy, and a big desire to do this figure, I decided to finish up my final Thai recast: Devil Lady. I didn't have any putty or way to fix the gaps and holes, so I knew it would be practically impossible. So this is the result: the best I could do with a glue gun, acrylic paints, and an exacto knife.

Devil Lady was full of heartache for me. The only reason I even started on it was because I figured I'd rather have a crappy painted figure than a cardboard box full of lady pieces. But just like the first Thai recast, I soon regretted even getting started. Since this figure was generally a failure, thus making it a bit painful to recall, I'm not going to say too much about it. But I will get straight into the lessons I learned while doing it:

Lesson 21: I'll say it again: Don't buy Thai recasts from Ebay. Just don't. For twice the price, just use E2046 : it's 10x the quality.

Lesson 22: Hot glue cannot replace putty. You can not put hot glue in a gap and make it look decent.

Lesson 23: Using thick layers of paint to puff up certain grooves or areas is really really hard, time consuming, and will never look right. If you don't have any putty, don't even try.

In other words, unless your cast is perfect, THERES NO SUBSTITUTE FOR PUTTY.

I do intend to go back at some future time, to fix the worst of the flaws in her, namely the arms and legs, with some putty. I'll add the 'after' pictures here if I ever get around to doing it.

EDIT (3/12/2015):!!!!
She broke!!!
As I was getting her ready for her pics, she fell and broke into lots and lots of pieces. On the bright side, she was pretty crappy anyway, but still... that was a lot of effort... I can fix it for the most part, but it will have to wait for a long time from now when I feel like it.


EDIT (5/11/2017):
I finally feel like putting her together again. I however, do not feel like making a lot of effort. I just want to put the pieces back, take some pics, and be done with it. The pics you see in this post are the result. You'll notice some crevices, paint mismatching, and hairline fractures. Oh, and missing hair. Oh well, that's how it is.

Ranka Lee - 15th figure

The first thing I want to say about this figure, was that I didn't much like it's color scheme. I thought it could be improved upon. And maybe it can, but I certainly think I failed to do so. Last time when I changed the colors of a figure, I used Photoshop to change the colors around till I found a set that I liked. This time, I was feeling lazy, and decided I would just do the colors however I felt like.

Lesson 51: Don't paint the colors however you feel like at the time. Use Photoshop to find a combination you like, if you're dissatisfied with the original, and stick to the plan.


So, that being said, some of the reason the colors are what they are, is because I decided to change the colors when I was already 33% done. I had already done the hat, head, skin, part of the shoes, and jacket. I was willing to repaint the shoes, but the jacket was going to have to stay purple. I really didn't like the dark colors with Ranka, so I decided on pink and yellow. Why? because I felt like it on a whim. So I did her stalkings and shoes yellow. I also did her gown yellow as well, but decided to add pink and purple to blend the colors of the top of the figure with the colors of the bottom of the figure. After that, all the other colors are pretty much just randomly chosen. It actually turned out better than I thought it would, on the whole.

The shoes turned out to be tricky. There isn't a mm of straight line to pain, so I decided to use the black masking putty. But that was also really hard! because I couldn't see the edge of the line properly, I had to paint twice to get the paint line at the right place. And due to the dark purple being the original color of the shoes, I had a hard time changing that to very light colors like yellow and pink. They were actually very hard.

Lesson 52: Painting light colors over existing dark colors is HARD. Don't do it. I know you knew that already, but DON'T ATTEMPT IT.

Two defects with the figure are the shoe laces and the clear casts (gown and treble clef sign). The gown was actually terrible. It has bubbles and scratches and cloudy all throughout. I had no choice but to make it opaque to hide the flaws. Even then, I only made the underside opaque in the hopes that it still looked good. In the end, there are just too many flaws - there's no reasonable way to make the gown look nice. So I made if colorful and sparkly. Not bad, but I can't look at it without cringing.

All the itty bitty accessories were also very difficult to do. My hands were way to big to handle them - I had to use tweezers and alligator clips to hold them throughout the process. It was a pain. I think in the future, I'll watch out for figures like that and avoid them. I'm also avoiding figures with clear pieces, or rather, I'll just assume the clear pieces will be so crappy that I'll have to pain over them like a normal piece anyway. I've YET to have a figure with decent clear pieces from E2046.com.

The parts of this figure didn't fit together all that well. Most required extensive shifting and reshaping. Honestly, this figure was a pain in the butt and didn't really turn out so great. I'm happy to be done with it so I can move on to more rewarding figures. This figure was done over the course of a whole year, so I'm sure it'll be forever more my most lengthy project.

Intermission - and a move

I can't believe it's already been over a year since my last post. Soooooo much has happened, which I'm sure you (and by "you", I mean Googlebot, since that's my only visitor) don't really care much about. I did do one figure in May 2016 that I apparently didn't write about: Maria Naruse!! It's a wonderful and difficult figure that took me a long time - look forward to seeing it in my next post. I don't know how much I can remember about it, so I'm not sure I'll be able to write too much in the post.

BUT, did you know, there is actually a reason I'm writing this post, other than to announce how lazy I've been. I had to move, and therefor I had to move my 70 figures! And I learned many things! what to do and certainly what not to do.

As a note, I moved overseas, which meant a cargo shipment. Cargo shipments mean hot temperatures. It also meant that my items would likely be handled very roughly, and needed lots of padding. If you're not moving long distances or if you handling the figures yourself, then most of my lessons won't apply to you.

I immediately discovered that shipping the figures "whole" would be very expensive. Basically, it's very inefficient use of space, and would cost twice as much. So to be as efficient as possible, I took the ones that could come apart, apart. That means I have lots of small pieces, and I even decided to break/cut some of the hair or accessories off some of the figures that were still just too large. It took a lot of time to take them apart, and it took a lot of time to put them back together. I did this to save money, so I can't say that I regret it, but it did take a long time.


Lesson 45: Separating the pieces that will come apart for shipment is a good idea. Taking a few pieces off that aren't supposed to come off, just for the sake of efficiency, is ok, but don't go crazy.

I also had a hard time to determine the best way to ship them. Mostly, I just put them in boxes within boxes. I had lots lying around, so I used them. The method seemed to work well. But there were so many of them, I couldn't use things like bubble wrap or popcorn, because that would 1) risk breaking the figures, 2) be a pain in the butt, 3) cost a good amount.  My solution was to just use toilet paper!

I bought lots of rolls of Charmin, and had a good ol' time just wrapping the figures like a mummy. Took for freakin ever! But the result is that I had 0 breakages. Worth it!

HOWEVER!!!! On the figures that I had painted, I discovered that when the finish gets hot, it also reverts to a liquid!! The satin/matte finish didn't really have that much of a problem, only a little bit on the pieces that apparently got more hot than others. But the glossy finish!!! it was like TAR to the toilet paper's feathers! It was fixable though, thank goodness, because several of my figures looked like ghosts.


Lesson 46: If on a budget, toilet paper is a good, cheap thing to wrap the figures in. Kind of.... it CAN be a good thing to use, if you use it correctly. Wrap things in saran wrap first! (maybe, thats kind of just a guess, I can't guarantee saran wrap won't have it's own problems). I'm guessing nothing can really solved the problem of the glossy finish melting... maybe just put them in a ziplock bag, so the parts are in 'air' and don't really touch the plastic that much.

Lesson 47: If you do use toilet paper, you really don't need to go crazy. Some places will need padding, but the rest of the figure can be well protected with just 2 layers of t.p.


Like I said though, the tar and feathers were fixable. Water on a cotton swap, gently rubbing the toilet paper lint off the figures, worked. But it took lots of cotton swabs and lots of time. Plus, it doesn't repair everything. The glossy finish did melt, therefore it did get impression in it. It's one of those things that if you look at the finish dead on, you can't see it, but if you look from the side, it's obvious. Thank goodness I had satin varnish (Americana DuraClear brand)! I just used the cotton swabs to apply the varnish to the affected areas, and it effectively smoothed it over to a degree that makes it much harder to see the heat damage. It's not 100%, but I'll accept 99% healed.


Lesson 48: Varnish can repair minor damage to a glossy or semi-glossy finish. Applying with a cotton swab worked well.

But all my figures are here, safe and sound, on the other side of the world. No problems, no damage, probably due to all my precautions.