Ulyana Post! (Everlasting Summer)

Hi, kitties!

Today I’m going to tell you about my first attempt at customizing a garage kit.

I had this idea of making all the girls from the Russian visual novel Everlasting Summer. (It’s far from perfect in many respects, but it brought such touching, warm memories back from the depths—and what more does someone need to connect with it when she spent her entire childhood, from age seven to sixteen, doing one or two summer sessions at camp every year? )

I chose the subject on the principle of “which existing figure looks the most like her, and which one will come in stock first.” Two arrived: Renge (Non Non Biyori) for Ulyana, and Ruri (???) for Lena. Both were listed as 1/8, but Ruri turned out to be substantially smaller than Renge and was consigned to the “cut up for parts if needed” category.

Comparing the heads. Lena could have turned out pretty well.

Renge’s body isn’t exactly right for Ulyana either: a first-grader versus a 12? 14?-year-old girl. But for my first attempt, I decided to overlook that.

Here’s what I started with, along with the model for the custom.

Anyone who has read the novel surely remembers Ulyana’s personality, but I still want to leave her simple little theme here :3

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Settling on a face was difficult, but I found a compromise.

About the pigtails. I suddenly got it into my head to enter the contest on E2046, and with very little time left, I couldn’t make them properly. I should also have approached sculpting them more thoughtfully and probably used something other than the only material available to me at the time: Tamiya two-part epoxy putty, topped with another Tamiya putty (the white liquid one—which, by the way, turned out to be fantastic stuff). This one goes into the experience bank.

I did more sanding and reshaping this time than I did last time, but as you can see in the photos, it still wasn’t enough

A little of the process!

I fell in love with the skirt color and the skin tone. Now if only I could learn to control the airbrush...

The finished Ulyana underwent one eye modification after painting.

First version

Final version

360

Details

Ulyana inherited a cast-off mode from Renge

And now, a brief moment of Soviet advertising.

So that’s the girl I ended up with. Working on her was an absolute pleasure, and I even feel like she turned out recognizable and true to character :)

Thank you all for your attention!