Monday, October 31, 2011

Microlady Slim type.

Okay, so this started out while I was taking an afternoon to work on some commissions. I had bought an Asuka figurine to use the head on the Microlady one I had until I realized that normal dress Asuka has the same hinged hairpiece as the plugsuit one.

 Since normal clothes Asuka ended up as Ibuki, and the hair was used to fix Plugsuit Asuka, that left me with the Figurine, and a spare P2 colors Sakura body (that used to hold the Ibuki head).

While I was checking out some Japanese Microman blogs, I came across a lot of  PVC figurines converted into articulated figures using microman parts. that did get me thinking, and came up with this while working:


"ANOREXIA!"

Granted I only used like... 20% of the original figurine, it's still pretty neat as another body type. There was lots of sanding done to make the abdomen match up with the chest, a ball jointed neck, some minor drilling on the shoulder joints so they'd hold. I'm still considering sanding down the arm by the swivel joint above the elbow to make her look thinner.


Overall i'm not exactly sure what I'll do with this, maybe turn it into a generic civilian body with plain tee and shorts or skirt, and use other heads on it. Man, if I had a fuckton of Microman Materialforce bodies I'd do more of these kinds of mods. 

Commissioned Figure Report: TFTM Megatron

Status: Finished

Timetable:

7/19/2011- Began painting face.

7/29/2011- Started on body.



8/31/2011-Body continued, gold detailing.



10/16/2011- Jet wing parts painting.


11/15/2011- Painting completed. 




Estimated time for completion:COMPLETED November 2011.


Details:

Drybrush repaint of TFTM Leader Class Megatron.

Commissioned Figure Report: Marvel Universe A-Bomb


Status: Unfinished.
 (Click to enlarge pics)

Timetable:

7/24/2011- Started laying down body sculpt.


10/21/2011- Started working on the face.



10/31/2011- Continued work on A-bomb's Face (detailing).



Estimated time for completion: End of December.

Details:

Marvel Universe Hulk base body, epoxy putty resculpt, new scratch-sculpted  head.

Sunday, October 30, 2011

plans plans plans


Okay, so I decided to trade Knight to a friend of mine to get back the Faiz he won in our exchange gift thing last christmas. I was planning to use the extra gear from the spare faiz to make Ecxeed Charge or "Ready" modes of the faiz gear, meaning the faiz shot, pointer and spare edge will have a faiz memory sculpted on,  and the spare faiz shot will be attached to a spare hand and the pointer will have an extension. Just as well the extra faiz phone will lack the memory on it and instead will have a sculpted slot.

What becomes of the spare faiz figure you may ask? well this is the time where I impelent a long-term custom project of accumulating about 5 more of these guys and start making a squad of Riotroopers. In the process I'll end up with a lot of excess faiz gear but I'm sure i'll have some use for them. 

Saturday, October 29, 2011

moar ninja


Well, at least I know the sculpt on the legs doesn't break up too much when they're posed. (whew!)


Also did some more work on her chest. 

Thursday, October 27, 2011

ninjuh


Here's Ibuki in her current state. I was able to work the sculpt around the articulation points well enough, and i'm pretty thankful i started with the most difficult parts on the figure, though the folds still need some work. her face cover is also removable. When the legs are finished I'll probably put this aside for a while.


Wednesday, October 26, 2011

card games


This took up my morning. Anyway last night I made a post about getting some image files of some rider cards from JEFusion, and I printed out a good sheet of the rouse cards as well as a set of advent cards for Ryuki  (when I buy him) and Knight. thanks to their size I was able to make several sets of each that I can use for spares or to give to some of my friends.




 Cutting and pasting the decks for my self though took a while, but it kinda paid off.



Printed these out of sturdy card paper, so they're not flimsy 




Even managed to find a use for this little medicine box...

The rouze cards seemed more intricate so I tried getting the size small enough to still look that they fit the scale of the figures but at the same time they'd still be distinguishable from one another.  The advent cards on the other hand are smaller and simpler:




(SWORD VENT)



These things were pretty fun to make, and got me motivated to look for book and magazine templates to print out as well... And make some joke advent and rouze cards.



Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Fusion Eagle

Got some card templates from JEFusion, and decided to use them for making cards for some of my riders.


Printed out some of Blade and Garren's first... several copies of em on one sheet. Man, it'll be a while before i finish cutting and pasting them all. 

New Toes


I got bored of Asuka rather quickly, lol. 

messy, messy palette


I am completely a noob when it comes to painting with a palette instead of  my regular paint pots.
Anyway, Deunan is pretty much finished, and just needs an inkwash, but man she's pretty aquamarine. I used only four main colors to paint up her body armor (three Vallejo and one Citadel), namely-
Vallejo:
Goblin Green
Dark Blue
Silver Grey
Citadel:
Chaos Black

You can see the shades I mixed up below, 

(those are different shades, I swear.)

And as for the flesh for the neck and fingers it was just light flesh and cadmium flesh mixed to match the plastic color of her face which was left unpainted.

I did this in under two nights and it felt like my paint was going to dry at any moment, which is why I'm motivated to buy or make my own Wet palette to preserve some of my  mixed colors because I ended up mixing colors twice and switching around the colors on parts of the body. I'm at least glad the paints I used can self-level themselves.

final pics will be up soonish. 

Monday, October 24, 2011

Knight Rider (no, not him): A review of S.I.C. KT Kamen Rider Knight

As always, click the pictures to open a bigger resolution of the image.
Usually I'd buy these things either by getting the main rider first, before the secondary guy or get them both, but in terms of the Ryuki series, Knight kinda won out and got bought first (but admittedly if they released Alternative Zero in this line then I'd be reviewing him instead of Knight, because of my partiality to insect themed riders).



So yeah, Knight. On the show he was a cool suit design and I liked his look over Ryuki's, and with the SIC redesign he really lives up to his name. 


The silver paint they used is hella shiny, almost chrome but not quite, and it's detailed by a blue ink wash that adds a bit of a blueish  glow to the armor under the right light. What's great is how the details are enhanced by it, most notably on the chest with its carefully engraved lines and sharp edges.

Another detail I thought was nice is the chainmail-like sculpt under the arms and lower torso which , I mentioned earlier, makes him more knightly and brings out the armor look better. You'll also see this kind of detail with the Blade series KT riders.


This is the part where I go "meh" though. His range of motion is hindered by his design, from the thigh armor's raised frills (or whatever you call them) to the pointed shoulder armor, what you see above is the limit of their lateral motion. The elbows, knees, torso and ankles are fine though. Overall? Decent but not all that dynamic.

Still, he's pretty nimble. I need to mention this though, the joints can get loose very quickly but if you have some future finish or wipe and shine at home it won't be a problem.

Accessories? Well he comes with Dark Visor and Wing Lancer, as well as two sets of hands; one for gripping his weapons and another pair of open hands to recreate his advent poses.


I seriously wished they included cards you could cut out from the packaging :\


Another example of how nice the silver paint they used was. Wing Lancer looks absolutely regal to me.


Dark visor is made in hard plastic and as such isn't warped from the packaging like say, Faiz's Faiz Edge, or in this case the Wing Lancer which is a bit curvy looking. Wing Lancer's handle though is hard plastic and if you're ham handed enough, it will break off. 

Knight is one of the more visually pleasing designs for me out there, and he's highly recommendable. The only thing that would make him better for me was if he had ball jointed wrists instead of straight pegs and of course, advent cards. 

He has a decent amount of accessories with two melee weapons, though it's not as diverse as Ryuki's it is still a good set of weapons. Of course he has some nice play value but he's best as a display piece if you don't intend to get Ryuki to partner him with Knight. If you can get him and you like his looks, do it (I got mine for 640php which is roughly $15), when you do you'll find that he's a very enjoyable figure.


on a side note, I wasn't fully satisfied with the range of motion on his head and I found out that this was because of two things. First, the socket for the balljoint is too shallow to fully accommodate the neck ball, and second, the ball post was pegged into the neck way too low. With pliers in hand I set about disassembling the neck joint:

 And then I drilled a hole in the head to make the socket go deeper and inserted the ball joint peg before inserting it into the neck.

The result is seen below:


Not really a big difference but it's satisfactory to me now.