The Unofficial Airfix Modellers' Forum

I'm always on the look out for modern civillian figures, and that means I sometimes run into unexpected treasures. At some point, the hunt led me to the site of AtelierIT, a small Japanese producer of resin figures. Most of their products turned out to be of no use to me, and some were definitely NSFW, but they also had this incredibly life-like figure. She, too, is mostly useless for any of my longer term plans, but I just couldn't resist.



Forum rules state that "strange, doe-eyed Japanes schoolgirls" belong under Sci-Fi and Whiffery, and she ticks two out of four boxes, so I didn't really know what to do with her here. However, I make the rules in this GB, and I say we forgive her for those two ticks and call her a figure

I'll have to find her something to sit on, but otherwise this is going to be straight OOB.

That looks a sweet model. When I first saw it I thought it would make a great Suzie Quatro.

all the best.

Greg

Gregers wrote:When I first saw it I thought it would make a great Suzie Quatro.

Being something of an ignoramus in these things I had to look that up, but yeah, she seems the sort to be pictured like this. Other than the pose, you'd have to change everything though, including the face. Everything about Suzie Quatro's face is round, while this girl has a more elliptical face and 'almond eyes'. In larger scales like this, the face has to be very close, or it becomes "average girl imitating Suzie Quatro" instead.
This head would be much closer, but is way too large, so you'd have to find a big mannequin or academy figure to stick it on, and scratch build the clothing (or stick the head on one of the expensive, generally NSFW figures in this scale, and get a leather catsuit pre-installed).
One of my subject's sister kits might be close enough in a smaller and more affordable scale and could be converted with the right amount of sleight of hand (ignore the goofy pose and bespectacled portraits).

Perhaps our resident whatever-to-rockstar-conversion specialist has some ideas on this; I'm barely getting started on conversions myself at the moment, so all this is mostly guesswork

For this build, I'll stick to cute but normal kid though.

rob_van_riel wrote:

Gregers wrote:When I first saw it I thought it would make a great Suzie Quatro.

Perhaps our resident whatever-to-rockstar-conversion specialist has some ideas on this; I'm barely getting started on conversions myself at the moment, so all this is mostly guesswork

Who? me?! Actually, I was reminded of a Linda Ronstadt album cover when I saw it

Purplethistle wrote:Who? me?! Actually, I was reminded of a Linda Ronstadt album cover when I saw it

Yep, you
That cover is indeed very close.

After some serious blitzing, I've completed construction to the point where painting should start. That is to say, I joined up the legs.

Due to the way the girl is doubled over on herself, it's almost impossible to access many parts for painting once fully assembled. Fortunately, fit is quite good, and the parts breakdown is entirely along panel lines (panels of cloth in this case, but still). I seems to me the sensible sequence is to first paint up the skin, shorts and torso, then join torso and legs (and fill/fudge the join), and finally paint up the sleeves and join the arms to the torso, followed by more fill/fudge work along those joins.

Even on closer examination, detail remains excellent, right down to the patterns on the soles of her shoes.

Since the paintwork starts with skin, which I'll be doing in oils, I expect I'll be doing very little but boring groundwork until the weekend after next; I need a large continuous block of time to do this right. I might get some work in on the base earlier though; we'll see.

A good thing too I didn't plan to do too much work on this figure this past weekend, since a long overdue bit of computer maintenance got quite out of hand and swallowed a whole day. I only got the base coat onto the skin just now
I guess that, unlike my poor Germans, this one is still on schedule

She has her first coat of artist's oils on; a lighter mixture than I'd usually use for well tanned soldiers, and with rather less Sienna in it, as Asians aren't all that pink.



The rest of the skin goes on later today, once this coat has cured a bit.

It took a while, but I got her skin on.



So far, I'm happy. I'll take a fresh look tomorrow evening, but I don't really expect to find anything needing correction. The arms are painted as well, of course, but they were too tricky to pose at this stage.

European skin is hard enough, even when you're normally surrounded by examples, but East Asians are different. I just hope the Chinese lady at the office didn't notice I paid just a bit more attention to her face lately, or she might have gotten all sorts of wrong ideas

So far so good Rob! The skin tones look pretty darned good from here!

iggie wrote:So far so good Rob! The skin tones look pretty darned good from here!

Thanks.

I've always (well, ok, the past 35 years) felt that with figures, if you can get the skin, and especially the face right, you're halfway there, but that if you get those wrong, nothing can save you. That results in three phases when doing figures: "let's hope I don't mess up the face later", doing the skin and face, "whatever you do, don't mess up the face now".
Doing the face first cuts the first phase down to nothing, but extends the final, most scary phase to the entire build, but it also means you can work on the face with total disregard for the surrounding areas, and that freedom helps a bit.

Terrific work with the oil paints. A technique I've yet to try on figures.

Great job so far.

The little lady is starting to come alive.



I'll have to put a little more work into the joins between the parts than I'd hoped, but nothing I can't handle.

That’s a very natural pose they have sculptured