Here's what I'm working on. This is a commission piece, who so happens to be a good friend, so like no pressure there. I always try to do my best, and I think I'm even more anal working on a kit for someone else. Even a perfect stranger. I had done a Mystery Science Theatre 3000 kit for someone once, who told me he had a party when the kit arrived finished. They ordered pizza, watched a bunch of MST3K's, and the kit was the center piece. It's stuff like that which makes it worth it when you send your babies out into the world. But I digress...

 

Here's the pieces.

 

Everyone has their favorite method for removing mold lines. Dremel tools, sandpaper, more types of putty to choose from than you can imagine. They all have their place, and for this project I decided to use a trick I learned from Don Ference. I didn't learn it well, however, because I forgot to use medium viscosity superglue mixed with white enamel. The instant stuff mixed with the enamel just turned chunky too fast. The idea is to tint the superglue so you can see your work better. You can see the tool I use (compliments of Matt Clemons) to apply the glue.

I ended up running the superglue along the mold line, and then dipping the tool into some enamel paint and run that along top of the superglue. Letting it dry, I sanded it directly. If you let this stuff set up overnight, you'll be back to using the dremel tool, or belt sander. (!)

Hi-Tech.

Pencil, and sewing needle with the tip of the eye clipped off. Wear your saftey goggles.

After sanding everything down, I started to drill holes everywhere I wanted to pin the kit. I've worked on this kit before, so I have the benefit of knowing what dosen't work, or learing eaiser ways of doing things over the years. Here, I hold the two pieces together, and drill straight through the leg and into the other piece, getting perfect alignment. I think I'll wait untill I glue the two pieces together, run a pin through, and then putty up the hole and touch up the paint. I'm going to have to putty around the hair next to the leg, and a few other areas as well after assembly.

I promise no jokes about them being screwed.

whoops.

Decking screws for priming, and handling while painting. They will be removed and pins put in place when I glue the pieces together.

After the inital light coat of primer, I look for any flaws I have to fix. I want this particular kit to be perfectly smooth. Well, you have to be careful not to wet sand with an SOS pad untill its like glass or it won't take paint, but...

I'll sand these areas down more, add some putty or superglue where needed, rinse, and primer again.

Like I said, I want them real smooth, maybe more so than your standard kit, so I'm going to take my time with the sanding process. Using light coats, and sanding with fine sanding foams to get a good even and smooth surface. Sanding foams are infinatly better than paper because they conform to the surface. We wouldn't want to flatten out any of these curves now, would we?

 

 

Allright..... Got them primed and ready to paint. So that means....

You guessed it! Time to mix some paint. If you use as much paint as I do, and hate thinning paint for airbrushing as much as I do, get one of these shake mixers. You might also want to get a "light dimmer" as you can see on the right that you can plug it into, to slow it down a bit. For sure, you will want to play around with this a bit with water or something to get the hang of it, so you dont splatter yourself and the kitchen with paint. I like to work by the sink so I can rinse the cup and mixer easy between colors. This for me saves my hands from cramping up, and gets me mass quantities of paint FAST.

 

I know, I know....I should be using the bottle paints. But I have so much of this tube stuff, and it works for me. And, with the mixer it mixes great. You can also see the winsheild washer fluid, I mean airbrush thinner. Make sure you get the summer formula. That is, if you live somewhere that gets snow. The winter formula stuff has anti-freeze in it. It is toxic, so you can't drink it, and it also dosen't seem to mix or spray as well. I was forced to use it once, and didn't have any luck with it. You can use it straight out of the bottle, or cut it with some water. Use the distilled for filtered drinking water to keep everything clean.

Hard to see in the pic, but just pour some paint turds in, and then just enough thinner to not quite cover the paint up. Start with just a little, and add more thinner if you need too.

Make sure you git that mixing thing all the way on the bottom. It might make an awfull sound, but better than having it spinning around on the surface of your paint and thinner, and splattering it all over yourself. So, don't use it like it was meant to be used. Also, if your using the dimmer, have it turned all the way down, and slowly bring it up to speed.

 

Disclaimer: Using the dimmer may burn out the motor on the shake machine. I don't know....

Also, using the shake machine after mixing paint for mixing ice cream afterwards is not only ill-advised, but stoopid.

Nice and thick. Sometimes, I mix my paint thicker than I like for spraying. Especially when I'm mixing up a bunch of a skin color. It's kind of like making a "concentrate" which I can thin eaiser later, and add more color (aka white) for varying tones.

 

Magic! I've got my basecoat, a hi-lite and shading color all mixed up in about the time it took for my tea to be ready!

Note: Make friends with people with babies. Clean out the baby food jars when you get them, however. I found a few with mold growing on the inside lids. Maybe a good idea to store them with the lid off too....

 

No, this isn't the pre-paint. But this is about what you would get. My job, is going to be to kick the pre-paint's ASS. Even if they are nice, they won't get the attention that one of us would give our kits. Trying to keep the cartoony look, I'm going to add some subtle shading and hilights now that I've suffered through the basecoating. (Isn't red sometimes a bitch to get an even basecoat with?) I think I got the surface a little TOO smooth.

Red can just be tricky to paint, period. But Its all about knowing your colors. You cant add white and hilight with pink. Girls or no, that just looks wrong.

But I'll get into that with the next update.