February 11, 2013

Garrus Vakarian Play Arts Kai repaint finished

The repaint on Garrus went rather easily. I worked through several highlights then worked in shading using Army Painter Dark Tone (the new Devlin Mud) to define his facial features and the horns from the face plates. A good wash over his neck and plates on the back too. Then the tricky bit of smoothing it all out then adding in the tattoos. Considering the ease of finding reference it wasn't too hard. I'm just unsure if he should have been more warm toned, pics range from very tan coloured to almost white grey. I kept him grey but tried to keep it at the warm side using Menoth highlight rather than straight white.

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and here he is back together and looking pretty good

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February 8, 2013

Mass Effect Play Arts Kai repaint - WIP

About a month ago I picked up the Play Arts Kai version of Garrus from Mass Effect 3, the guy was such a constant through the series along with Tali and Liarra that I caved and had to get the huge figure. Since he's the tallest of the characters I figured he'd be close enough in scale to go with my Bishoujo Liara and upcoming figure of Fem Shepard. The sculpt is great but the 1st wave of figures kinda suffered from pretty bad paint jobs particularly in the face area, you know the 1st place you notice.



you can see his face has basically been drybrushed grey over black. The rest of him looks fine but standing next to my much better painted Bishoujo Liara it bugged me every time I looked at him.

In comparison Bioware recently announced this bust of Garrus


The colouring is much softer and lighter on the face, which made me pull the trigger and have a go at repainting mine.

Step one was the worrying move of pulling his head off! I probably should have heated up the pvc to soften it but with a bit of effort I got it off. Then came lots of sanding, more sanding and scrubbing with a steal brush to get off the thick sloppy paint job, smooth out his pockmarked skin and to make his hair/spikey things a bit pointier at the back.

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looks pretty rough after the scrub huh

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this is after the 1st base coat. Lots of work to go

Hey Shaggy NEW LOOTS!

I succumbed to Hasslefree's Snowed In sale and finally bought myself their Scooby Gangs that I've been wanting since I bought Betrayal at House on the Hill. So I got the regular version

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and the all tooled up zombie hunter versions as well. I really have to get a couple copies of Armorcast van now, one normal and one post apoc.

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I also took the opportunity to grab some resins that they stock such as the Borderlands loot crates and a rather small Tardis that looks a bit warped  :(

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I also got the rather nice version of Ebob's Good and the Ugly plus a donkey to go with my cowboys collection

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and I totally forgot I even ordered the RAFM versions of Hit Girl and Big Daddy from Kick Ass, now I regret not getting Kick Ass himself from Hasslefree, oh well next time.

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oh and just to prove I am painting stuff, this lot is all on the table being worked on a bit at a time

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I did the skin basing and wash on all of them together.