Rasia: Clothes

I put some shading and a first round of highlights on Rasia's green pants and headband today.

I shaded with purple, of course! It definitely needs a round or two or lighter highlights.

Rasia: Hair, Clothes. Marcus: Loincloth

I finished up Rasia's hair, and started the base coat on her pants and head band.

I don't usually do much shading of hair. I just base coat it in the darkest color that I want and then highlight up, maybe putting in a little bit of darker shadow in any really deeply shadowed areas. However, for her, since she has such a stylized look anyway I decided to do a little more with her hair. I've added more shadow than usual, and I've done it in purple to add some hue contrast as well.

Let's talk a bit about her eyes. The way she's posed, she's definitely looking to the side, not straight ahead. So, I put her irises in the corners of her eyes so she'd clearly be looking the way her face is pointing. Here's a close up.

I also got some work in on Marucs, shading and highlighting the red cloth.

I shaded it with he same blue I used in the shadows on his skin.

Sadly, somewhere along the line Marcus lost one of the tynes on his trident:

I have a spare, so I could try to replace the whole head of the trident. That seems fraught with danger, though, so I think it's more likely that I'm going to leave it as-is and paint it as battle damage.

Rasia: Skin, Hair

Today I finished Rasia's skin and face, and started on her hair. Hmm...I might go back and give her some makeup. I don't normally, but she seems like she might be an eye shadow kind of lady.

Marcus: Loincloth. Rasia: Skin

I've been sick all week, so today was the first day I felt up to painting at all. I don't feel up to working on anything serious, though, so I grabbed something from the pre-primed box of old figures, fuzzy primer and all. This is Rasia.

I'm not going to speed paint her, but I'm not going to spend a ton of time on her, either. I think this sculpt has a number of flaws. Her right arm is noticeably thinner than her left, and has no musculature to it. She has a serious case of melon breasts (breasts that look like she has a couple melons taped to her chest). I'm not sure how she's actually meaning to use the sword that's going behind her back. In any case, the concept is neat, but the implementation leaves a little to be desired. Regardless, she'll be my project for the next couple days.

I did get a little more done on Marcus a few days ago, but was unable to get pictures at the time. It was just a base coat on his loincloth and headband.

Marcus: Skin, Face, Hair

Since I have to make a base for the cowboy before proceeding on him (that work has started), I went back to Marcus today. I highlighted the skin and did his face details and hair.

He is turning into an excellent example of a figure that looks good at table distance, and not so much close up. I'm not so fond of the blue shading around his eyes. Makes him look like he has makeup. But the highlights have helped the skin quite a bit.

In any case, I feel like I'm making good progress.

Cowboy: Finally, paint!

I've finally finished prep on the cowboy. I puttied the other joint on his arm, but he didn't look different at all so I didn't get pictures for that step. Then I went in with brush on sealer and went over rough spots to smooth them out, and then primer. That was a back and forth - sealer, primer, clean up some bumps, sealer, primer, and so on.

Then, finally, I started on paint. I've decided to go Hispanic with this guy, so I'm giving him a darker, redder skin tone. I found some pictures to work off of. That was not as easy as it might seem. I looked for pictures of a couple actors, and found a lot of variation in apparent skin tone based on the lighting of the shot. In any case, it looked like the color I picked is within a reasonable range based on the pictures I was looking at, so I'm going with it. It doesn't look quite as red in person as it does in these pictures.

I ran into another problem as I was putting on the base coat for his skin. My usual method of holding the figure while painting him isn't working for this guy. He's heavy, so the poster tack that the pegs in his feet are stuck into just don't hold him. He wobbles about quite a lot, and sometimes one of the pegs will just pull out of the poster tack entirely, if I'm holding him at too much of an angle.

I think I'm going to have to build his base and attach him to it, and then go back to painting. If I put him on a wood block, then I can hold the block and since he'll be glued in place it should be stable.

That does mean I'll have to do that part before I can continue painting him. Sigh.

Cowboy: Assembly Part 4, Marcus: Shading Skin 3

Today I got some putty on the Cowboy's coat join and glued on his other arm.

I also used some of the putty I had left to smooth over some of the worst rough spots I made from filing and cutting mold lines, flash, and such off the figure. We shall see if that was a good idea or not.

I need to putty the joint of his gun arm and put some pins in his feet next time. After that, he'll be ready for paint! Or, he'll be ready for the brush-on sealer that I'm going to use to smooth the remaining rough spots, and then primer. That will likely be a multi-stage project by itself, since putting primer on tends to bring out lines and rough spots you missed before. So, I will probably end up going through a few iterations of sealer, primer, then clean-up with a knife or file, or maybe just more sealer.

I also worked some on softening the shadows on Marcus here. I definitely still have some work to do on neatening up his face.

Honestly, I'm just not feeling this guy right now, so I'm having a hard time being excited about getting everything just right. It's kinda too bad, as this is an expensive figure that I'm about to do mediocre work on. But I'll probably just push through to get him finished and then focus on something else that I do feel more motivated to work on.