How to Turn a Pile of Trash into a Real Heroine—or Even Two! [GK]

Hi, everyone!

I haven't written anything in ages, though I've kept steadily working on kits—between my last post about BiBi and this one, I painted a whole two (or three?) kits! I also repainted a couple of older ones and restored another couple that had lost face (quite literally, in one kit's case) to a presentable state. Productivity! Or escapism? … So perhaps this post, which I've been taking an indecently long time to write, will kick off a series about my garage-kit goings-on

So, the title of this post isn't an accident: the kits I'm going to talk about—especially the first one—demotivated me so badly that I picked away at it for about two years and finally finished it this summer. With the second pile of trash, though, I somehow pulled myself together and completed it in two weeks. FLCL kits had always seemed like an impossible dream to me, and when I managed to get both girls fresh from WF with G_rave's help in February 2019, I thought, just wait till I paint these! Then I opened them, and inside…

…was a pile of badly fitting trash full of bubbles and what looked like somebody's hair embedded in the resin =_= I mean, I understand that garage kits are a lottery, and perhaps it wasn't really that terrible, but I guess my expectations and reality were simply too far apart? Hard to say.

The sculptor's vision for the kits looks like this:

I started with Haruko. I'd sand a bit, test-fit a bit, abandon her, then start again. I took her along on various trips so I could tinker with her there. The spark still refused to catch, but the work was moving forward! Slowly but surely. I put every part on magnets; it takes longer than pinning them, but everything comes together so beautifully…and comes apart again. I love that.

I carefully cut out the goggles and filled them with clear epoxy resin so they would look pretty!

This is what I did with the hair. It may not be canon, but I really wanted to do it this way.

At this stage, everything together looks like this:

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I decided to get a little fancy with the eyes and, instead of painting them as usual with enamels, sprayed them in nitro lacquer. They came out thin and neat, and I'm pleased. Now I just need to learn how to paint smooth transitions at this scale.

Putting it all together.

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And then I entered an endless cycle of suffering with the guitar. At first I wanted to give it real strings, but they turned out to be too thick, so I had to use thin rods instead

Another half a year or so later, I finally reached the home stretch with the splashes (which don't really look like splashes, if we're being honest, but oh well )

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That was followed by another three-month break, after which I decided to paint something quickly. Looking through what I had, I chose Hidomi. Sure, she's a pile of trash too, but she's just a girl in 私服 (shifuku, casual clothes)—what could possibly go wrong?

Well, for example, you could throw out a couple of parts with the trash and then have to sculpt replacements

Next, I really wanted to add purple, even purple-brown, highlights to the hair. Unfortunately, I overdid the darkening, so now you can only make out the highlights in person and in photos taken under certain lighting.

After that, everything moved along fairly quickly.

I didn't fuss over the eyes this time; I painted them in two layers with enamels.

And I decided to have a little fun with the base by coating it in SMS Galaxy—a paint I haven't yet found another opportunity to try, even though I love sparkly, color-shifting things

And now, the finished girls!

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So, that's about it!

Thank you all for reading; wishing everyone kindness and cats!