Take a look at the preview for a breakdown of the parts and some background onthe kit itself. (Preview may be unavailable at this time)

As with allresin kits, construction starts with clean-up. Also typical of figure kits,painting is a constant process. For that reason, I have included it in with theconstruction steps. Back to clean-up. In this case, it meant sandingoff as much of the mold seams as possible and then giving the parts a nice washin luke-warm water with plenty of detergent. It also meant removing the smallmold blocks that were on the parts. Once that is done, the next thing to do isto give the parts a coat of primer. This does two things. It shows up any areasmissed and it also preps the parts for painting. 

As you can imagine, a number ofsmall pinholes appeared that were not there before the primer was applied. Ialso spotted some other seams that were missed earlier. In order to make iteasier to paint the large body of the figure, I drilled some holes in the heelsof the figure. Into these holes were inserted some short lengths of paper clip.Similar holes were made in a spare base that I had. This will allow me to paintthe entire figure as construction goes along. The pins were not glued in any wayas I knew that I'd need to handle the figure quite a bit during construction andthe base would just get in the way.

Once that was done, thepinholes and other glitches were filled with Mr. Surfacer 500. In addition tothe pinholes, there were some rather large holes on the inside of the feet andankles that needed several applications. This stretched out preparation to overa week as I gave each application of Mr. Surfacer and primer a good day to dry.

Finally,I was at a point where I could start cementing parts together.

The kit has long, flowing hair. Thisassembly is in three parts and attaches to the back of the head when done. Thereare some guide pins and slots to help with assembly. I glued the left mainsection of hair to the head assembly and then glued the other two hair sectionstogether. The two lone sections fit OK, but there was a step and gap that neededfilled. Again, several days were needed to get this right.

Backat the body of the kit, the right arm was glued in place. This had some chipstaken out of the resin at the attachment point so also needed severalapplications of filler to smooth out. The end result looks like something  you'dsee in a museum in Athens!

Once that arm was properly filled andsmoothed out. the left arm was attached. This side did not fit as well sorequired more work with filler and sandpaper to get an acceptable fit. The endresult was getting closer to being a complete figure. The primer that I used wasthinner than I would have liked, but I guess that is the point. It took multipleapplications to cover the darker filler that I had used. 

AfterI had applied enough primer to get it ready for painting, I applied severalcoats of paint using Badger Accuflex acrylic paint. I used the 'suntanned flesh'color. Once done, I took a look at the result and didn't like it. Too dark formy tastes. There were also some areas that had run and a few otherglitches. 

Some fix-it work, mostly with fine grades ofsandpaper, was done to the body to take care of the rough spots and oversprays.Then a normal flesh color, also Badger Accuflex, was sprayed in many very lightcoats. This seemed to do the trick in terms of lightening up the flesh tone andgetting it more to what I was looking for. 

While all ofthat sat around and cured for a while, I went to work on the other parts of thekit. Specifically the sword and the hair. Try as I might, I couldn't get thesword to be completely straight. A problem with these long, skinny resin bits.Wasn't sure what colors the sword would be painted in, but I did know that itwould be a metallic of some sort for most of it. To that end, the sword waspainted gloss black over the white primer coat. I then painted the sword using agreenish metallic color from Alclad II. The effect is quite interesting. Thiswas then masked off and the rest of the sword painted with dark aluminum,another Alclad II color. The two 'jewels' in the handle were painted clear redand green using Tamiya paint. The only color left to do is whatever I decide topaint the handle in, probably a leather color.

The figure's hairis to be a grey color in keeping with the color card that came with it. That isnot a problem for a military modeler as I have lots of greys. I chose TestorsModel Master Canadian Voodoo Grey enamel as the base color for the hair. It tookseveral sessions to finally get all of the hair sprayed in that particularcolor. The head was masked with Tamiya tape to prevent any grey overspray.

Oncethe hair was painted, the face got a bit of attention with the whites of theeyes painted it. Then the irises were painted, this time using asemi-transparent orange color. The pupils were done in black . Next the eyebrowswere painted in a dark brown and the area under the eyelid was done in blackusing a drafting pen. After that had dried, the two forward sections of hairwere attached using superglue. There is a bit of a gap in the forward sectionand it was filled, again using superglue. The hair was touched up using theVoodoo grey.

Now I've looked at a lot of figures, and they are generally overlyaccentuated with various washes. I know this is considered the norm, but Ireally don't like the effect so tend to not do the wash thing. Instead, I mixedsome of the normal color with some white and sprayed that lightened color on theareas that would normal take a highlight. This includes the cheeks, forehead,tops of shoulders, breasts and buttocks as well as knees, and other uppersurfaceareas. The parts that may be in shadowed was painted with suntanned flesh, alsoa Badger color. The shading is subtle and more of what I like. The areas inbetween the toes as well as the areas between the arm and body and the bellybutton were darkened using a Rapidograph pen

The next step was to attach the head to theneck. This was the worst fitting part of the model. No matter how I tried, Ijust couldn't get a good fit. Not sure just exactly how to go about correctingthat other than to attach the head to the neck prior to putting on the backsections of hair. Then those would probably not fit well and need fussing with.The final back section of hair was glued in place and the fit here was not asgood as I'd have liked, mainly because the head had been glued on and the hair interferedwith the body.

Last parts to be glued on were the sections ofhair just below the ears. These needed some ribbons on them. I went to a placethat sells ribbons and bought some red ones that I could cut. These were trimmedinto small sections and tied onto the appropriate areas on the figure. I'll haveto find something more flexible next time as I found the one I bought to be too stiff. Thesesections were glued in place. Then the resin section was glued in place with theribbon covering much of the join. The sword was a real tricky part of the kit.It seemed more like an afterthought as anything else. There seemed to be noproper way to attach it to the hands. Finally I ended up just placing in thefigure's hands in a pose that seemed to match what was on the artwork that camein the box. 

Last step was to mount the figure to a base. Ihad already drilled holes for the mountings in the feet and these were deepened.A good friend provided me with a nice cherry base and that was given severalcoats of Future to bringout the highlights in the wood (yes, Future works on wood, too). Holes weredrilled in it to fit the pins glued to the feet. A small name tag from Almer Awards was then stuck on, the figureinserted into the holes and it was done!

This was my first large scale resin figure, and one that has alot of skin. Despite my apprehension about painting all of that, the kit went alot better than I thought it would. Since then I have started on several otherresin figures and I can tell you that they are not all made the same. Some ofthem are downright terrible in terms of the quality of the molding. However,these were all cheapie kits selling for around $20-30. I guess that one gets forwhat one pays for.

If you are looking for a change from the norm and can handle thepainting that is required, I can heartily recommend one of these kits.

Review kit courtesy of me and my wallet. Thanks to Almer Awards for the name tag and to Kevin Powers for the base.

August 2001

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