Figure Modeling Part 4 - Puttying and Priming

August 21, 2007 on 3:10 pm | In Resin Kits, Figures, Merchandise, Misc. Items |

I combined the post for puttying and priming, because usually you putty all that you can see, prime it, and then notice a whole slew of pinholes that you couldn’t see earlier so that you have to go through the whole process again.
Incidentally, if you’re anything like me, this is also the part that will make you want to take your model and chuck it out of the window.

Puttying  

Aside from one seam, most of the puttying I had to do simply involved pinholes. Pinholes are little holes (duh!) that can be an enourmous pain because they’re so tiny. I attempted to make them go away by using Bondo. Wielding a q-tip, which was probably not the best thing to apply it with (I had nothing else.), I smeared bondo all over the ones I could see. Then I waited an hour just to be sure that it was dry and sanded away.

Here he looks sort of like a murder victim:

For the seam, I used Tamiya putty on one side and smeared some oil on the other so that the putty wouldn’t adhere to it, too. I pushed them together and… noticed that this was going to be very frustrating. I used a basic putty because the hobby shop didn’t have the two part epoxy I had originally been looking for. Never again. This stuff is now going to be used for mecha model kits only. Eventually I fought with it enough so that it looks like it’ll have minimized the seam. It’s on his butt and he’s sitting in a chair, so it wasn’t too noticable to begin with and I’ve decided to not bother anymore.

Priming

After you think the kit is nice and ready to go, it’s time for priming! I used gray Krylon, because it’s supposed to bring out flaws more than white, and oh, it did. The arms were the only pieces without pinholes in them, and it seemed as though half of the ones I had filled earlier were back again! So then came the fun part of breaking out the Bondo again and doing the whole thing over.

Here he is fitted together again after I worked on the seam and had Bondo-ed and sanded everything a second time:

Once I deemed it ready enough to be painted, I applied a new coat of primer, this time white (because I don’t really feel like trying to paint white over gray).  Yeah. Right. White primer is about as successful at covering gray primer as white paint is.  I screwed up on the arm because of this (too much white primer at once); the rest was fine if I went with two coats instead of one.  I was impatient with the shirt and didn’t let it dry completely (I ignored wetting the sandpaper again while puttying, so I needed to get any dust off.). The water sort of repelled the primer and I had to sand it down a bit and apply even more.

I finally got it to look like this after fighting with it for a while:

In other words, it was completely horrible. I had to wait for the primer to dry completely (1 hour or so) before I could start fixing it up. I hate not being able to immediately fix a problem; meandering around the Internet while there’s something I know is not right sitting right in front of my face drives me absolutely insane.  I sculpted a little Boota so that I might keep my sanity and/or my model (There was the “ARGH I hate you and will throw you in the trash now; I hope you like it there you piece of crap!!” option which I momentarily considered.); it worked well so I would recommend this method to anyone who ever gets frustrated about anything.  Just sculpt a little Boota and you’ll be fine in no time!

Next up: Painting!