Work in Progress: Alice from Queen's Gate

Just so you know what's in store for you next :D
I've been working on this on and off for the past few weeks.
I've tried adapting Valloejo Game Colors for use with the airbrush, but they don't seem to work very well with garage kit primers: some spots keep flaking off, which is very annoying considering I have to work with masking tape a lot, and it's not pleasante when you have patches of skin coming off every time you remove the tape after a paint layer.

I've used chalk powder to shade the hair, let me know what you think.

Eldar Biel-Tan Farseer

It's been a while, time to post something new.
This is a finished Eldar Farseer of the Biel-Tan craftworld, painted for a friend.

Enjoy!

The Dark Elf

And so it came to be, the first of my "new" generation of garage kits.
The Fox lady I completed a long while back was still all hand-brushed, but after I bought an airbrush I've been eager to test it on these large scale models. In time I will use it to do some WH40k tanks, but for now there's just a Rhino playing victim for my airbrush settings.

Most of the large surfaces, such as the skin, the skirt and the boots, were done with the airbrush; the rest of the details, like the bronze-colored parts, were painted in after with a normal brush.

Anyways, here it is. A dark elf out of Lineage II (haven't played the game so I'll have to believe that part), in a 1:6 scale, standing 26cm tall. I couldn't find any info on the sculptor, but there's a 1:8 PVC figure from Good Smile Company I believe this sculpt is based off (perhaps a recast even).

The cast on the skirt came incomplete, so only half of the details could be seen, whereas the other half was just a plain blank. Which means I had the pleasure of sculpting out what was missing :P

To top it off, a close up of the face and the eyes; the latter were hand-painted with a brush, along with the hair and the lips. Of course she has gloss on the lips and the nail polish, but the sealer I used to protect the figure kinda dimmed the effect (though it's still slightly noticeable).

The wooden base was bought as-is and it came painted in white. I drilled the pin holes so the elf could stand, but the leg pose was so odd I had to use putty to stabilize and prevent her from tipping over.

I hope you enjoyed this and will stay tuned for more.

Feel free to leave comments and feedback :)

Namechange!

As my presence around the web, between online gaming and whatnot, has become increasingly popular through my username, which is often Kielari, I am attempting to have a more united front, so as to make it easier for other people to find me outside online gaming and so on.
Also, as my Red Scorpions have been shelved at least for the time being (really not a fan of 6th edition 40k), and my focus having shifted more towards garage kits and small painting commissions, the siege marines I so proudly portrayed in the title are no longer of relevance.
The content will remain unchanged though, so if you are still interested in miniature and garage kit modeling, stay tuned. Sooner or later, some news is going to appear here :D

Hands On: Garage Kits from E2046

At some point during summer last year, while I was browsing through the community forums of a mmorpg called TERA, someone pointed out a website/webshop called E2046, which was selling a pre-painted version of two popular characters from the game.

Following the discussion, another user mentioned that E2046 used to be a scam site, selling low quality fakes instead of the advertised real deal. They even brought up examples. Unfortunately for them, there was no way they could prove that the products were indeed from this dubious website, so I decided to go and have a look myself.

It gave me an overall good first impression. They have tons of stuff, though you can still browse products that are out of stock (though they sometimes get a restock of something). The pictures all carry their watermark, the customer feedback looked genuine, garage kits even have pictures where they laid out the parts... In other words, it didn't seem like the scam site people were talking about. I browsed through some of their range of garage kits, and even found the GK version of the Castanic Berserker (one of the TERA popular figures), which everyone was ordering as pre-painted, and decided I would go for it. Buy the kit, assemble and paint it myself. The price and shipping costs were fair so, let's say I do get scammed and I find a pile of junk in my mailbox, I'd only be a pizza dinner short for that month.

The berserker wasn't in stock at the time, so I had to pre-order and wait for quite a long time (mainly because I bought other products and decided to have them all shipped at the same time). The wait however, was definitely worth it.

This is what the box looks like. Yellow, with their logo and the product ID code on the side. There is no way of telling what's inside, aside from the ID code on the label, so I took the shipping manifest and wrote the contents on each box. That's why there's handwriting on it.

Upon opening, I noticed that all the parts were individually packed and sealed, and that the whole batch was wrapped in bubble plastic. Very orderly and neat. Assembly instructions and reference color card were on top, so it's always the first thing you find when you lift the lid. All of the kits I ordered had the same packing quality and order, which says a lot.

The cast smells like your typical garage kit resin, but the quality is very high. The parts have a polished look, there were no bubbles at all, no cast faults, practically no mold lines... There is always some degree of cleaning that needs to take place, even if just for the mold leftovers, but this is absolutely the highest cast quality I have ever seen. It surpasses even the cast quality from Kallamity Models, which was so far unmatched.

 

There's also a good deal of clean detail on the parts. One or two (mainly the axe shaft) parts will need to be bent straight again, but I do hope the old hot water trick will serve for that.

Yes, that's a very big axe. The blade is bigger as the torso!

In conclusion, I am delighted and surprised. This was much better than I expected, and by far.
All the kits I ordered share the same high standards. I also had the pleasure of seeing the pre-painted version of this model, and it lives up to the picture too.
Now it's my turn; let's see how well I can get this one painted.