Years ago I acquired several of the ARII Macross 15th Anniversary kits. The kits included bonus figures of the various main characters. Not having the knowledge, skills, or tools at the time I tossed them in a box for future efforts. With my recent experiences in painting miniatures it felt like a good time to pull one of them out and give it a try.
The subject is Lynn Minmei who is the sweetheart of main character Rick Hunter (or Hikaru Ichijo in the original anime).
This particular model is from the episodes where she participated in a beauty contest. it’s a low quality mold without much detail, plenty of mold lines and a lot of ejector pin marks.
My skill with putty is still low so it’s a pretty sloppy job and didn’t shape as nicely as I’d hoped. Perhaps something like Apoxi Sculpt would have worked better.
After priming it though it seems like the fills did their job pretty well.
Started laying down the flesh tone. Used Vallejo MC matte flesh with a little white mixed ino it to lighten it slightly.
Having not painted a person like this before my main goal isn’t to create a perfect paint job, but a reasonably convincing skin effect. This is as far as I’ve gotten and right now the paint is curing before doing anything more.
Would appreciate input from the group on how to best capture shadows and highlights on a figure like this. Is it better to start with a wash for the shadows and are there any recommended color mixes to achieve it?
I was thinking of maybe some hue of brown and red mixed together. I only have acrylic paints. No artist oils.
But, it would have to be almost clear. A wee bit of dark tan Washed almost completely away to bring out the deep muscle detail which would be easy. Women are much smoother than men in this series. Then go with a wipe on Mist of four parts white one part pink! This too will pass. Then paint the Suit with whatever color you want. Darken the shadowed areas, again with feathered washes. Simply a darker shade of the main suit. Under the breasts and elswhere shade gently and Don’t go overboard! The main thing to remember She’s Human.
The Sunshine would make the top of her feet, shoulders and upper chest and back lighter by a very subtle bit. Also the top of the arm on her hip.The inside upper portion, hand too! and the upper forward arm and hand on top of her hip! Don’t forget to paint her nails. Toe and Hands! Is that some kind of pattern on her right hip ? Or, more filler!
I wasn’t sure how to proceed but this is a great roadmap to follow! Hope I’ll be able to give at least some of this a try tonight.
She’s wearing shoes so I’m thankfully saved from having to detail tiny toes.
As for the blob on her hip. It’s part of the swimsuit. I think it’s supposed to be some sort of tassle. If that had been putty I’d been cleaning her down to plastic for a third time to take care of that, or trying to shape it into a clutch.
Was thinking of doing the swimsuit in some shade of blue and the tassles in gold. That may change depending upon how her skin looks in the end. Wouldn’t want it to clash.
Well, I’ve only done a few and by far my Indian Princess is my best. I altered her face just a teensy bitof creme in it.I modeled My First Wife in Tribal Gear!. She was about the color of Tea with just a teensy creme in it. So she was easy. But getting the shades and shadows right is a trial and error thing. Don’t give up, Just change the wash!
Now remember a little can be too much, so watch the amount and where!
Not sure there’s any advice I can give you other than looking around YouTube for tutorials on figure painting. When I started I had to figure out from looking at still illustrations in magazines and books how to do it- watching someone in real time in a video is a big improvement.
And then it’s just a matter of screwing around till you find something that works for you. From what you’ve posted before I don’t think you’ll have any problems at all!
Is she a resin kit or styrene? What scale or size?
I think I have a Lynn figure from Max Factory in the stash, a 1/20 styrene kit. She’s in the silk dress as in your one illustration.
I’ll second Gamera’s advice, there are YouTube tutorials, but also, you can look at a lot of illustrations. Painting an anime figure is a specialty style within the broader hobby of painting figures. Most of the techniques are the same, as far as shading and highlights go, but particularly painting the eyes is almost unique to anime style. And just paint, and see what works for you.
There’s a really good modeler and painter, Cody Kwok, whose website is https://codyscoop.com/ You might enjoy having a look at his work for ideas and inspiration. He paints a lot of anime and manga characters, and his work is outstanding.
I look forward to seeing your progress on this one!
Yeah, I tried doing a pinwash to add some shadows but all it did was migrate to all of the imperfections in the casting. Very unflattering. I ended up cleaning it all off.
Tried out the thinned white+pink. I didn’t have pink so I dipped the tip of a 4.0 brush into scarlett and then swirled it into the white and I think that was perfect.
The mix was like magic! Airbrushed it onto the model and anywhere it touched the original fleshtone was instantly transformed. The camera doesn’t do it justice. it’s picking up all the grey reflected from the matt.
You wouldn’t believe I covered the entire figure with that white+pink mix.
Thanks for the vote of confidence, it means a lot. You get a few successes under your belt and you start worrying more about about your failures, “what if my next model isn’t as good?!”. Managing those fears I am finding is a big part of not stagnating in the hobby.
I’ve read many articles and suggestions on painting figures. Most focus on the face and tend to be male centric. i think there’s sufficient differences that the methods would differ slightly when doing a female figure.
Your suggestion of watching a video of someone painting it real time is one of those “doh” moments for me. That’s exactly what I did when I started painting miniatures. I’ll start digging into that.
She’s made from styrene. The figure came as a bonus with a kit that was 1/100. Being a bonus fig no scale was included. I measured the figure and she’s about 2.5" tall and the character in the series was very short. I’d figure she’s somewhere between 1/20 and 1/25.
I took a quick look at Cody Kwok’s website. Holy Cow! That is some amazing work! Don’t know if I’ll ever get there but you’re right. Lots of reference and inspiration to be had. Thanks for calling out their site!
No apologies needed. I haven’t done Anime figures either. Nor is my intent isn’t to evoke that genre. I choose this figure because it looked like it would be good practice to learn how to light and shadow human skin. Your suggestions I think are exactly where I was trying to go and am looking forward to trying them all out.
In the process of painting it became apparent I made the skin too light too early and left no room for highlights. Which made her look very flat. Before taking it back to plastic I blocked in the colors I’d chosen for her hair and swimsuit to verify they could work.
This is what she looked like before she got a bath in Isopropyl.
What you had looked pretty darn good Phoenix. I think I’d just have repainted the skin but a fresh start doesn’t hurt either.
Have you looked at Archer Fine Transfers for the eyes? Their eye decals are really good, I used them for my cyborg figure and was really happy with the results. The 54mm ones I’ve not had the best of luck with- they’re just too small but the slightly larger ones should work well with your figure. Seems they’re not accepting orders till the 12th due to a recent stock blow-out sale though.
I had some decent success with painting a face which is what encouraged me to try a full figure.
You’re right about this being a challenging subject. The smoothness of the character means the paint job will be what creates the shape and definition. This realization came after the failure of my first attempt.
Been watching various videos to develop ideas of what can be tried. Also working to keep my personal expectations in line with current level of ability. Looking forward to finding out how far I can take it.
There were many reasons I took it back to plastic. The two big ones were I was losing what detail there was in the model, and the second was the primer created a pebbly texture on the model that I didn’t like. I upped the amount of flow improver mixed with the primer and that helped a lot. The second attempt is much smoother.
The eyes you selected looked great! I had not considered transfers. I knew there were many figure kits that included them but didn’t think to look for stand alone options. My original plan was to practice on some scratch sheet styrene, but I like knowing there are other options available to me.
Archer Fine Transfers is going out of business and are having an inventory liquidation sale. So as soon as they’re taking orders again, order 'em while you can.
Thanks Baron- I was wondering about the sale. It did really look like a going-out-of-business sale. I’m going to miss their stuff, I’ve always found it to really good quality.
Phoenix: Most of their stuff is dry transfers but these are decals- so you can slide them around till you get them where you want them.
Haven’t been idle with this but there hasn’t been much to post.
I’ve been messing around with colors and shading methods. Rather than paint and then clean off the figure I figured it would be more expedient to paint one side of an old CD flat flesh and then use it as test bed for colors I’d mixed for shading. It’s let me do a lot of testing without having to reset the model. Also, discovered a a whole bunch of colors that don’t work! [:D]
It also highlighted that I don’t have any skill with blending or feathering the edges of paint yet.
Good news is I think I have couple of colors I can mix up for shadows and shading. Going to paint up another CD and see if I can improve my technique before taking another go at painting Minmei.
