01.14.2007 » Concepts / Intro

I need a mental health kit while working on the Pandora and this one just happened to arrive a few days ago. It's the SEG-888 Hornet Monocycle from the Junk Tank Rock series. It's a resin recast of the original since the JTR guys don't sell outside of Japan. I nice little kit that I got from RM-GarageKits... cleanly cast and took only an hour or 2 of clean-up to ready for primer.

The kit itself is fairly small measuring in at about 2" long. I placed it onto a small base and will have the base be very muddy to do some nice tire tracks and weathering. Color-wise I'll likely be painting it in a RLM Gray (kind of a military grey-green) with white accents. I cleaned the resin using Purple Power then primed it with Duplicolor dark gray sandable primer. I noticed a few things that need cleaned up (some I purposly waited till after priming just so they'd be easier to see) then another coat of primer then paint. Here's a few pics of it held together with stickytack:

01.15.2007 » Alclad Metals

Now that the primer is cured, I applied the Alclad 2 lacquer metals. I did these first since they're a lacquer and I don't want to spray lacquers over acrylics... bad things occasionally happen there. For these I started with spraying Stainless Steel over the dark gray primer. Then touches of Jet Exhaust and Pale Burnt Metal were added. Gives it a live worn look.

01.17.2007 » Masking and Painting

After the metals were sufficiently cured I masked them roughly and painted some light gray highlights on the bike.

When THAT had cured I went on to refined and detailed masking to paint the green. Normally this would involve lots of tape, but bhop on the forums showed off a great liquid masking product from Windsor Newton. Colorless art masking fluid. It's meant for use with watercolors and paper but works great for modeling as it masks nice and comes off very easily without damaging the undercoats of paint. Basically you paint it on with a brush then clean the brush in soapy water. It goes on whitish, but dries clear as you can see in the next image on the wheel armor and the nose of the bike:

After spraying, let the next coat cure fully before taking off the mask. This stuff works best I think in conjunction with tape as it has a tendency to be difficult to remove from grill and high-detail surfaces. for the engine parts, I painted the mask around the edges and filled in the rest with tape. I sprayed the bike a leftover military green from a prior project (not sure which one, maybe the PG Zaku, but it was a decent color for this) and later removed all the masking. After painting the tire by hand with German Gray, I epoxied on a few of the smaller bits and will now procede to weathering and painting the figure.

01.18.2007 » Figure Painting

I've been working on the figure as well. I painted the face a few days ago with an African skin tone and have been waiting for the oils to dry. They're now dry so I hand-painted the rest of the figure. I did a woodland-type camo based on the woodland digital scheme I found by googling. I still need to do some highlights, small details and such to the rider, but the main work on him is done. I like that he has these leather-like pads on his shoulders, elbows, ass, and knees. I gave the bike a coat of satin future and will start the weathering tomorrow.

01.20.2007 » Filter, Discoloration, Wash, and Water

Over the past few days I've given the bike a filter of bright green oils, a wash of muchy brown-green oils, and then the discoloration technique described in my Type74 build-up. The technique with the oil-dabs. I also started on the base which will be muddy terrain with many large puddles. Why? Because I've been wanting to try some water splashes and this seemed like the perfect project for that. The Hornet will be running through a muddy puddle causing a wake and that "V" type splash. To make the structure of the splash I started with some clear package plastic heated over a candle and formed it into the desired shape. This took a little time and patience. Next I'll start painting the muddy water and adding the ripples and texture with Clear Acrylic Gel Medium.

01.22.2007 » Monobike Nearly Completed

The bike is ALMOST completed now. All I have left to do is add the pilots arms and handles, then add the mud. The mud needs to wait until the base is ready for it too however. This way I only need to make one batch of the stuff. You can see though that I glossed up the wheels and surrounding areas to simulate wetness. This will be further simulated and given more volume once the mud is ready. Here's a few prog-pics: