I got the famous cheap Canon f/1.8 50mm lens today, although I haven’t had a chance to do much with it yet. I’ve heard that it’s a pretty good portrait lens though, so my hopes are high.
Instead of taking pictures, I spent most of the evening wrestling with Meiya, and not in a good way. As I mentioned in my review of this figure, Hobbyfan screwed up her arm positioning so that her sword doesn’t line up properly. It bugs me to have a nice figure with such an obvious error, so I figured I’d tear off and re-position her arm. As I found out, that’s much easier said then done; her shoulderguard and hand make it near impossible to saw through the joint, and I discovered that my Dremel is busted. I resorted to using a hobby knife to cut through it; I was really tempted to try batoning the blade but I guess that wouldn’t have worked all that well. After cutting maybe half of the way through, I pried the arm off with a can opener. Let me tell you, the can and bottle openers on Victorinox tools are some of the most useful things around. I don’t think I’ve actually ever used them for their intended purposes, but they are outstanding small pry bars.
I think I can position her arm so that the sword is reasonably straight, but as one can see, doing so leaves a conspicuous and hideous gap between her arm and armpit. Sigh. I do have some modelling putty around here, but having never used it before, I have no clue what to do with it. I’ll also have to paint over the putty as well as the damage I inflicted on Meiya’s paint job. I hope the results turn out okay.
As everyone in the figure collecting hobby knows, the summer Wonder Festival recently ended. Lots of good stuff was shown, but Good Smile Company didn’t unveil any new Sora Kake Girl figures. Come on GSC, where’s the Itsuki figure? Don’t let your sponsorship of the show go to waste.
Hobbyfan eh? so I guess that she’s a prepainted resin kit.
Pretty brave thing to do, breaking the arm off to reposition it.
You might want to put a small metal bar in between the parts to act as a pin and help hold the parts together. And if your putty is anything like mine, you should have 2 separate putty bars. just break an equal amount off both and mash them together. Then liberally slap it in between the gap, Use a modelling knife or something to get rid of the excess and let the putty harden.
Can’t help you with the paint tho…
Yeah, she was discounted by something near 50%; the prepainted figure cost wasn’t much higher than the cost of the unassembled recast kit.
Good idea about pinning the limb, it’s a real pain trying to get the arm to fit since it has to be in the right position to hold the sword handle. The existing holes seem to be very shallow so I might need to find a pin vise or similar.
I’m using cheap putty (Testors Contour Putty, which doesn’t seem to be well-regarded). I hope it’s good enough for this; it seems to flake off very easily and I’m not sure what it looks like when painted. I guess I should test that out prior to painting the joint.
hmm, not familiar with that one, but if you can mold it into a smooth finish and let it harden, it shouldn’t crumble.
It might have not been adhering properly, I suppose. I’m not particularly experienced with building model kits so this is all brand new to me. Seems like a fun hobby though.
It’s not for everybody. Doing a full figure takes time and patience. It can sometimes be hard to bring yourself back to work on the kit too if it’s being really annoying and difficult *cough*Knightofgold*cough* So I can understand why people prefer to simply get a PVC figure instead.
But the sense of satisfaction and euphoria you get when you do finish the job just can’t be compared to anything else. It definitely beats a simple unboxing, that’s for sure!
Yeah, I’d like to give it a shot sometime, but I don’t really have the space to do it now – I understand that building these things involves using lots of messy and potentially unhealthy chemicals, and I’m seeing how cutting and filing down putty and resin can leave fragments and powder all over the place.
I got Meiya’s arm back on but I did a really awful job puttying over the joint. Maybe I’ll try to file down the worst of it and apply a bit more putty to even it out, but at this point, I’m pretty happy that the sword is reasonably straight.
wow, that’s one helluva surgery. hope you get her fixed up alright.
i’m tempted to get a 50mm also… mostly for the speed. was at a party recently and a friend of mine had the canon 50mm 1.4/f … he was practically taking pics in the dark with it, it was amazing!
Fixed up she is. Fixed up alright … ehh, I dunno about that XD The damage is conspicuous if you’re looking for it but oh well; it’s good enough for government work, as they say.
I’m still learning how to take pictures with this lens. It’s a good bit different than the kit lens in that I have to be several feet away from the figure to get it in the frame, and it seems to be more difficult to accurately focus. I’ll probably re-shoot Meiya this week and see how the pictures turn out (I might re-shoot some of my less-popular figures too, since nobody will notice if my pictures aren’t very good <.< )
You have guts!
Attempting to fix her would give me nightmares ^^;;
It was definitely a learning experience XD Fortunately her armpit is turned away from her best viewing angle so it’s not quite so easy to see the repairs.