Smart and Cute Elichika [GK by Cerberus Project]

Hi, everyone!

I want to share the story of how I made my first Love Live girl, Eli. I ended up choosing this kit by chance, back before I became disillusioned with E2046 and still enjoyed digging through their sales. I really wanted some girl from LL, and Eli was both in stock and on sale. Fate!

I love all the girls without exception, but my greatest loves are BiBi, the first-years, and the Aqours third-years :3

Eli might have sat around for who knows how long, just like so many kits already buried in my stash, if registration hadn’t opened for the garage-kit competition at BP. A perfect excuse to pick her up and paint her!

The reference. This card still hasn’t come home to me, though NicoMaki from this series have:

In vain—oh, how very much in vain—I took my time with her and didn’t lazily start the assembly until September 21. It seemed as though I had all the time in the world.

I checked the fit: she stood nicely, and the parts joined without any extra adjustment. I put magnets in the head and hat so they could be removed and put back on neatly.

Shall we paint? After a couple of weeks of leisurely sanding, I sprayed the body in my beloved Lascivus flesh tones with red post-shading.

Next came choosing a color for the panties; the last one is the final choice. The Australian SMS pearls are wonderful for all kinds of sparkly finishes

And then the screwups began. The first and biggest was Tamiya enamel Gold Leaf, which I’d spent ages hunting down and intended to use for making the gold stripes quickly and beautifully. It turned out to have poor coverage, and on top of that was based on the same solvent as ordinary solvent-based Tamiya paint, which immediately made it unsuitable for the job. The paint chipped too; apparently I hadn’t degreased the part well enough. Meh.

I had to strip everything, prime it again, and remask it. Mr. Finishing Surfacer 1500 is my one true love—just look at the beautiful surface it gives you, and it even feels lovely to the touch!

Masking with tape produced an excellent result:

I assembled what I had so I could admire the progress and get a small dose of satisfaction. That’s absolutely vital for me; I can’t wait until the very end to put everything together.

Then I started putting the base together. The idea of doing it this way was spontaneous: I wanted a mosaic, went to Leonardo, and this mirror caught my eye there.

Next, the tie. The number of WIPs is beginning to shrink)

Masking the skirt. I love this sort of thing, mmmmm…

The result, on the other hand, is pretty nice.

Another test fit:

Aaand repainting the hair, because I hadn’t sanded it enough and missed the color. The first photo shows the screwup; the rest show the redo:

The chain on Eli’s belt was a hellish blur. I didn’t bother trying to carve it out and replaced it with beads instead:

And then time and space began contracting at a frightening pace: there was only one day left before the exhibition! And all I had was this

The microphone shaft was so crooked that I simply had to throw it away; I used rods made for ship modelers instead.

The night before the exhibition was a heated one:

This is a hat. Just a hat. I repainted it three times because of a masking screwup :’)

But the biggest mistake was painting the eyes at four in the morning before the exhibition: three layers, with only one attempt at each.

I’ve really come to love a gloss topcoat on eyes, but I missed the mark here and the eyes “teared up” (last photo). Alas. I wanted to redo them later, but ultimately decided to leave them as they were. I don’t like dragging out rework when a project is already more or less finished. It marks a stage, and it’s experience.

And so, at half past seven in the morning, Eli was finished! There was even a little time left to sleep

I have almost no photos from the exhibition. I was having a very rough time and spent nearly all of it in the caring hands of Nastya, minami_desu, but overall my impressions were positive. Thank you to the organizers for putting on the exhibition and giving us the chance to take part—nothing gets you moving quite like a deadline One request for future exhibitions: please provide glass cabinets for garage kits, like the FGO display cases. That way people can get a better look from every angle and take closer photos too.

And now, lots of final photos of Eli:

What are idols for?

So that’s the sweet little girl I ended up with :3

That’s all—thank you to everyone who stopped by!