4 posts tagged “evangelion”
Oh gods... I don't know what to say. I've been trying not to think about the new Eva movies coming out. Could another try at telling the story make it as good as it was always supposed to be? I deeply believe that the limited budget, deadlines, public atmosphere, and near-insanity of the staff made the show a transcendent masterpiece. What will happen now?
My good friend Chris convinced me that it wasn't all that bad, and that I should take a break and give it another go some other time. He managed to get me excited about building again, so it was on my mind for a while and today I picked up some nice milky flat white paint from Tamiya and came back to the kit.
This time I mixed the paint very carefully and gradually. Instead of tipping some of the red paint directly out of the pot, I dipped a stirrer in and just used the amount that stuck. The ugly, uneven, orangey red already on Ayanami's arms and legs turned out to get covered up quite nicely by the new pinkish beige color. As it turned out, the new pale color looked great with the old saturated color showing through from underneath. I ended up having to mix in a touch more red to match up the areas that hadn't gotten the ugly color and the areas that had the ugly color showing through.
I did my best to evenly coat all of the skin bits with a consistent color, but it'll be hard to tell until it's all dry and I can look at it in sunlight. A few times during the spraying, after I'd gotten into the groove and was feeling confident about the color, the airbrush did this weird sputtering thing and splashed some big drops of water and paint onto the model. I was able to get most of it smoothed out, but I think I'll soon have an appointment with some very fine sandpaper. :\
Two authentic Japanese futons arrived in the (express) mail this morning. These were a (surprising and inexplicable) gift, and probably cost more to mail than they did to buy. I won't complain, though; they are nice, comfortable, and reminiscent of days in Japan. :D
The repair of my car door will cost $65 (if I just want the bent metal molding replaced), or $710 (if I also want the tiny little dent removed). I was quite happy to just ask for the molding. That's a small price to pay for the knowledge that I'm better off parking in the street from now on.
My new Sega Surf Wave wireless PS2 controller exhibits none of the insane behavior of the previous one. Now I can truly say that it's the best controller of any kind that I've ever used.
Five new books arrived from Amazon, including the new Dawkins. It's taking a lot of resolution to avoid reading them all at once.
I was going to sit down and cancel my order for Amie Grand's Goth-Loli Rei garage kit, which has been on back-order at HLJ for months, when I got an e-mail that it had shipped! This is the same day that I worked on my Dokusho Suru Rei kit for the first time in over a month. Her shoes cleaned up quite nicely with fine sandpaper, and now they have a fresh coat of paint. Next up is airbrushing the skin; it'll be a challenge.
Atelier Iris: Grand Fantasm is fun and rewarding. But I'm worried about the characters. The Azoth of Destiny had such warmth and positivity, while so many people in this game are mean, insecure, cruel, dishonest, or chauvinistic. Iris and Ana are the only purely nice characters who come to mind. Even the main character Edge is kind of a jerk, especially to Iris herself. I kind of miss Felt and Viese. :\
A while back I somehow got into building garage kits. My first one, Goth-Loli Rei by Atomic Bom, turned out all right, but I realized it was actually a recast bootleg kit. I wasn't planning on building any more after her, but I felt guilty for buying a bootleg kit, and ordered a real one as penance. This time it was Dokusho Suru Rei, a kit by New Line. I like to take my time with this kind of thing (it took me about 2 years to build my Sakura Taisen Koubu-Kai plastic model) so she's been in progress since about April.
A lot of the work is pretty much invisible. I spent a long time washing, cutting, filing, sanding, Dremeling, priming, drilling, and pinning the pieces. A ton of effort has to go into making the rough pieces presentable enough for painting and assembly.
Getting to the point when I could paint was a long process. I ordered the airbrush, waited for it to arrive, started thinking about air compressors, ended up getting a free compressor from James at work, went paint shopping, ordered some other paints from HLJ, did a ton of research, bought some more paints, bought some thinner and alcohol, bought more paint, finally hooked up the airbrush and practiced. Then tonight I went ahead and put some color on Ayanami. I chose the hair because it would be a single solid color, and I already had some paint that was just about the right color.
It got dark as I was working, so I had to act quickly, and eventually I brought a lamp out to the balcony so that I could continue. The first coat I put on, Hobby Color Aqueous Sky Blue, was actually too dark, and I went over it again with a mixture of Sky Blue and White. It's hard to tell in this photo, and in real life, how the color turned out. I'll have to wait until the sun comes up tomorrow...
