I recently replaced my Shion bust by Kotobukiya/Shunya Yamashita. She had several flaws including a broken sword and busted pinky finger on her left hand. So, instead of junking the old one, I decided to turn her into Spiral from the X-men. I have to say, I'm really happy with how she turned out. I'm not usually happy with my art, but I've been wanting a Spiral bust forever, so this makes me very happy.
The extra arms are from Big Lots "Barbie" dolls and then plastic two-part epoxied in place using their original pegs to fit in drilled holes in her back and then I covered them in Aves. I used heat to bend them (i.e. over an electric stove coil) and kinda melted some of the fingers, and also forgot to score the Aves with the metal segment lines before it hardened, so some rookie mistakes all around. But I think I salvaged it as best as I could.
The sword with the skull and ornate detail is from a Purgatori action figure, the small "katana" is from a Quora Disney Infinity figure (that my husband also got me to mod into a Jubilee) and I covered that one in Aves to beef it up. And I crafted the scimitar and dagger/knife from scratch using copper jewelry wire, toothpicks, and Aves. I used glass and metal jewelry beads for some of the accents and sculpted the fur around the base to mimic the fur on her boots using a silicone brush that I adore.
My husband got me a Paasche airbrush kit for our anniversary and this was my first usage of it too. I used it to lay the base layers of pearl white for the hair and fur/fringe on the base, the skin tone, and the silver for all the metal parts. It is difficult to get used to, I'm not very good, but it did help speed things up despite my many set backs with it. The rest is just hand brushed and she's sealed with a matte finish. I had the painting done in two days, which I did not think would happen. Enthusiasm is a great motivator.
I toyed with adding gloss to the metal parts, but I feel like I might be overdoing it, so I'm going to leave her matte. Let me know what you guys think. I know she's not perfect by any means, but she makes me happy.
This is the progress shot, starting from a stock shot of the original since I apparently didn't take pics from the very beginning, which I'm ticked about.
