I've started working on Pandora's crew a bunch. I love these models. The poses are so much stronger, the detail is fantastic, and in a lot of cases they've cleaned up the look of the models as well.
First up is Pandora herself. I wanted the skin-tone for her to be dusky, but also slightly creepy. I mixed my first brown layer with a bit of purple, and highlighted up from there, so she seems just slightly off in a way that's hard to put your finger on.
Then, I highlighted up to my proper skin tone, before giving her makeup. Green eyeshadow and lipstick adds to the unsettling quality of her skin and look. I'm debating how to do her clothes, though, so she ended up sitting for a while, with me debating tones, detail level, patterns...
Next I decided to work on Candy. Her skin treatment was similar, but I went far paler overall. With her dress I wanted to be not the goth black of her new look, nor the bright pink of before per se. My fiancee came up with the idea of a plum dress, which worked marvelously. I was also lucky enough to find an illustration of a dress that is almost exactly hers!
I wanted to do the white lacy frill around it, so first I painted that lower hem of her dress in grey (as with the wide collar) and then carefully painted an almost-white grey over top that, before accentuating the highlight sections:
Starting with just the basic pattern as you go around will let stuff dry, and allow you to touch up as needed.
(Sorry for photo blurriness) eventually I had a nice lacey pattern. I'll likely go back and really accentuate the lines once I know I'm done the rest, and am not worrying about stuff rubbing off.
The gloves were painted before I realized in her illustrations they're not supposed to be, but I prefer the look of her having nice cute white lace gloves. The wrist bangles will still be a good dark black though.
Also around this time the new Teddy came out, and I had to get one to accompany Kade. The new model is head and shoulders above the old one. Both in physical size and design. My one issue is something that is also 'wrong' with the Pandora spirits as well, and is an issue it seems with a lot of model makers. I'm tempted to call it the Miley Syndrome. Why does everything have to have tongues sticking out?! It's not terrifying, it's not even truly creepy, it's just goofy! On the Teddy, the old model's row of needle-fangs was just all danger. Whenever I see one with a giant snake of a tongue sticking out, I just picture them chomping accidentally on it!
That said, the new plastic would also provide much more (and much easier) conversion opportunity for those who want multiple Teddies; wholly separate head, head in two parts right along the jawline, and arms that are actually split at the shoulder combine to make this a model with great potential for modifcation.
My final photo for this version is the Teddy in dry-run assemble. I'll have to fill in a bunch of mold lines, and convert the mouth so his tongue is properly inside, but otherwise it's a sweet model.
No comments:
Post a Comment