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My third and latest garage kit (GK) is Asuna from Sword Art Online in her equipment from the guild Knights of the Blood in Aincrad. I love Asuna but this GK was a royal pain.
First off, white is the most unforgiving color. It takes many coats of paint to feel really white. I am a messy painter so it is really hard to keep it pristinely white. Cross contamination from my hands was a big issue. Also, many dust specs and fibers are noticeable in the dried paint. I have not figured out how to avoid dust sticking to paint to some degree but it usually isn't noticeable on other colors. I do not want to work with white clothing in the future, aside from the already purchased Saber (will be shown at a later date.)
Besides there being 60+ pieces (too many), many being really small, Asuna has many dark colors like silver and red as highlights to the white uniform. Painting freehand has been a real challenge, and as a newbie to get straight lines is almost impossible. I bought paint pens to try to help, but that only worked for larger areas. Any mistake is blatantly noticeable and really hard to cover up with white.
The paint pens I bought are Extra Fine Sharpie Oil-Based Paint Pens. The pens worked really well for small and quick touch ups, but not as well as for what I hoped, which was painting precise and small areas. The were small crevices that even the pens couldn't reach. The tip is more like a pen than a marker tip. Think felt tip, but the tip is hard plastic. Using the pens for extended periods means you have to push the tip down, into the body of the pen to get more paint. But not too hard/long or paint will spill out and make a mess.
This was my first kit that didn't come with a base. Thanks to a cheap dremel, pinning the figure to the base was not a problem. Paining it however was. This is the first base I made using wood so there were some difficulties possibly because it was wood and not resin but also because it was cheap wood. A while back I purchased about 6 wood bases of different shapes and sizes from an online craft store called Sunshine Discount Crafts.
The first problem was priming to wood. It seemed to soak up paint like a sponge, so the airbrush and usual priming paint was making little progress. Thanks to amazon, 2 days later I had a $3.89 can of Rust Oleum 280715 American Accents Ultra Cover 2X White Primer Spray Paint, which actually worked really well. I assume that all wood will react the same to the airbrush vs spray paint, but a real drawback of buying cheap wood was how hard it was to cover up the defects of the wood. Sanding made little difference; next time it might be a good idea to putty and sand the wood before painting, but at that point, it is better to just buy more expensive bases that might not need that treatment. I have one so I am curious to try it on a future model.
Liquitex Soft Body is the white paint I bought for the last kit, after the Badger Spectra-Tex ran out. I was happy with the set of Badger paints, minus the white. It was the only color that was super goopey and collected to the bottom. Shaking didn't work and needed manual stirring. It was a pain so back to amazon to find a new white. I settled on Liquitex knowing I had to thin it for an airbrush, I admit to not doing enough research. I only ever used it mixing with other paints until this model. Mixed it is okay, but straight white is not good for airbrush mainly because it is so hard to clean from the airbrush. It also sprays real slow, possibly because I use a .2mm nozzle or a low psi, neither of which I felt like switching because I like the way it is set right now.
This was my first time using Bob Smith 151 Insta-Set 2oz Accelerator for fast drying superglue. I saw Adam Savage using it in a Tested.com YouTube video building a replica rifle from a movie. I've used the baking soda trick, but this stuff is awesome. Almost instant drying when joining 2 pieces, one with glue on it, the other with accelerator. The only downside is it makes it even easier to glue your fingers to things. I lost some skin the this stuff on more than one occasion. I think if it came with a brush along with the spray cap it would be easier to use.
The one thing I feel I really nailed on this figure was the hair color. Asuna's hair, in the books, is described as chestnut brown. I don't really know what this means, because in real life, chestnuts are really dark, but in the anime, her hair is a dark orange. The first pass of her hair was a very vibrant orange, and it might have stayed that way but when sealing with a future/tamiya flat coat, there was too much tamiya and it left a white discoloration forcing me to repaint. Luckily I did, because the next coat was dark and used a lot of brown nailing her look.
Overall, I am disappointed with this build, not because it looks bad, but because I know I could do better. From, assembly in the wrong order, to repainting, to glue drips, to sloppy paint lines, I wish I had done a better job with my favorite character. On the upside, I have another Asuna kit, only about 20 pieces, to tackle and improve on in the future.
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