Custom Kiwami Tamashii Dark Decade! or Negative Decade as some would like to call it

I bought a whole bunch of Kiwamis just last sunday and hey whats better to celebrate it then to make customs out of em ;p I didnt really know what to do with the Kiwami Decade i got until my friend who sold me those kiwamis suggested i do a negative Decade which appear in some game and the Negative Decade was suppose to be the real Decade while the one running around in the kamen rider universe is the doppleganger. I have no idea what all that means but hey  a dark decade sounds interesting.

So I scoured the internet for samples but couldnt find a kiwami dark decade although i found a couple of normal SIC Dark Decade customs which were really helpful in letting me understand which colors goes where. And so here goes:

First off use a hairdryer on the KT decade to loosen the joints and pull them all out. First thing i tried was to try to remove those green colors from the eyes coz if you cant remove those its game over man. Luckily it works. Using color remover i got most of the clear green off leaving a pair of clear eyes for recolor later.

Next, sand the entire body as much as possible to remove as much paint so that it wont have too much layers of paint on it and to allow my own paint to stay on better. Kiwamis are rather small i dont want too many paint layers on them.

Now do a quick wash with water over the sanded figure. Let it dry. Once dry add a coat of metallic silver on those areas you need to paint gold or dark iron. This woud be my primer layer. It gives better shine for subsequent layers of paint.

 

Let the silver layer dry. Then add clear blue paint over the eyes and the orb on his belt. Dont worry about overlapping paint its gonna happen a lot when you repaint a kiwami. Those overlapping blue will be taken care of as you add more dark iron or silver over them.

Alright, before you start with the next layer, have a look at those shoulder pads. Use a line engraver and carefully cut thin lines like in the photo shown below (the dotted red line area). Do it for both shoulder pads. This is to identify the gold lining part from the silver later on.

Once everything dries, start adding a coat of mixed brass and metallic yellow (30% metallic yellow) on those parts suppose to be looking gold. I personally prefer this mix than gold paint for some reason it seem shinier. You probably need to do a couple of coats in certain areas to make sure the brass/metallic yellow shows. Again dont worry about overlapping paint coz it will be taken care of later. Let everything dry. For figure painting, always remember its 3D, so remember to paint those small surfaces that is in the upper and lower areas of parts that juts out. For example those small surfaces that is between the double gold line sculpt on the shoulder pads.

For the body, I repaint metallic dark iron over the black to make it shine better. Same goes for the lower torso and the front of the belt surrounding the blue orb and parts of the legs and arms.

Now for the inner parts of the legs and arms, I mixed dark iron and silver to get a dark silver color . Paint this over the inner parts of the legs and inner arms. This time u gotta take care not to overlap since its the final layer. This layer will cover any brass/yellow paint that has overlapped. Do two light coats if you can. Let everything dry.

I touched up on the parts of the head that is suppose to be black with metallic dark iron. There we are almost done. Also I used a very thin dark iron paint (with like 60% thinner) to paint certain silver areas to look like they are shadows or burnt iron. You can see an example on the small surface on the right shoulder pad just below the brass/yellow line below. This give an impression of airbrushed areas.

See photo below. Let everything dry.

 

At this stage ill say you could actually stop right there and u already got a pretty good kiwami Dark Decade. You can see from the photo below how far you have came:

 

But hey if you dont push the limits you will never know how high you will go ;p so here we go. The final part was to give it more details by doing panel linings on his legs and arms and even his body.

 

Here comes the next part that i was initially not sure if it will work or not when i first started off.  For kiwamis, they are way too small to use any marker pens to line them so i used a washer paint. I tried it and even the washer itself was hard and it splotched as certain lines on the kiwami were really tiny. So when the panel linings dried, I cover those overlapping black paint with the same color as the surface the lines was on. For example, if the lines were on a silver surface, i use silver to cover those overrun black paint. I did panel linings on his legs and upper arm. I tried to panel line parts of his dark iron body but it didnt really show after it dried. After all this, cover the entire body with an overcoat to protect the paint.

 

I also painted those black colors on the head more properly and added the gold dot on his forehead. Voila its done. Took 2 nights to recolor it. For a small figure its a lot of trouble ;p Finally here's the finished product gallery: