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.