Tutorial custom kiwami tamashii agito shining form!

hey all,

yes! Its yet another Kiwami customs!! ;p recently i am really happy making these guys coz they're small, they dont clutter up my desks when i custom them and its easier and faster to custom! hahaha! So yes Im back and this time its going to be: Kiwami Tamashii Agito Shining Form.

For those who are not aware of the kiwami line, its an offshoot of SIC only that its figure is a little below 4 inch instead of the standard 7 inch SIC figures. So they come a lot smaller but with good articulations and retained the details you see in bigger SICs.

For my Agito Shining Form, I used a kiwami Agito ground form to make this. And here we go:

Step 1 : As with all my customs, I always start off with sanding all the parts that requires resculpt or repaint. This let the paint or putty stick on the surface better. Before that, I used a hairdryer to take apart the figure for easier resculpt and later repaint.

Step 2 : I cut out those parts that needed resculpt:
- The chest and abdomen piece (you may decide to leave the chest along and not need to cut it. I did it so that i can have some linings beside the sculpted parts which is why i did it but after i completed the custom i realised those lines isnt really obvious anyway so you may skip this part if you want)
- A slice of the lower arms and legs. These parts needs to be resculpted to shining agito's pattern.
- Cut a part of the belt buckle out. See explanation below.

 

Step 3 : For the belt buckle, agito ground form is of a stylised squarish design. You need to turn it into a triangle shape of shining agito's. The shortcut of instead of a resculpt is to use the buckle already on agito ground form. What you gotta do is cut off the part i highlighted in red from the belt buckle. That part is incredibly small so please be very careful when you cut it to avoid cutting off the globe in the middle or missed cutting off those tiny vents that comes with the part. Cut it off like you see in the photo below.

 

Now, flip the cut off part and glue it back on the belt buckle45degree to the left and you will get a triangle! See photo below. Its that easy just need to be really careful when cutting it. The one on the right is the shining version.

 

Step 4 : Add putty on all the parts that require resculpt, see below photo. For the lower abdomen you will need to do layering by adding a first layer on it first and then 2 more to form a layered armor design.

For the chest area once the first putty layer has dried, add a new layer on top. This layer is the detailed sculpt layer for shining agito's mosaic layered chest. For this layer I used tamiya putty. You may still use hardware store putty if you like but for me its slightly better if i use tamiya putty because (1) the differences in color between layers makes it easier for me to see when i am carving the tamiya putty layer up and (2) the tamiya putty is easier to peel off compared to hardware putty. I added the layer and let it dry for half an hour or so to make it easier to cut and peel.

 

Now, to make shining agito's mosaic-like chest sculpt, I use my trusty blade again to cut shapes into the tamiya putty layer. At certain area I actually remove the tamiya putty layer altogether revealing the hardware putty layer beneath. I did this because I wanted a more 3-D sculpt on his chest. To peel the putty off, you simple use your blade to cut lines all around the area and then use the tip of your blade as a lever and push the tamiya putty out. If you push it fast enough the putty will come off very cleanly. If during the process of peeling/pushing you find that the putty is still sticky, stop and wait for another 15 - 20 minutes to allow the putty to dry somemore. I find that placing the putty under the sun or a fan makes the drying process faster so you can work on it faster. You will soon end up with something like the photo below. I used the excess tamiya putty to form the next armor layer for his lower abdomen. Once this layer dried, I added the final armor layer on his lower abdomen to form ribbed armor sculpt.

For the shoulder pads, I added a layer of putty at the edge of each pads as a basebefore i add more putty on it, see photo below. To form that shape on the shoulder pad, I let the putty i added on the shoulder pad to dry about 1 hr and then using a blade i cut the groove on the area where the putty meets the real shoulder pad, again see photo below.

 

 

Now once the putty on the shoulder pad dried, start adding more putty on it to form the shining agito shoulder pad shape. See photo below.

 for the lower arms and legs, I used a liner to draw the details i wanted to carve on it first before using my line engraver to carefully carve those fine details out. I made sure the lines are wide enough so that later when i color it it is more obvious and deep enough so that when i correct any overlapping paint, the color in the lines wont be affected.

While the putty on the body is being dried, I started working on making his head and swords. I need to replace the front portion of the head because the original agito head has red colored eyes and these red colors wont come off no matter how much color remover/ thinner i used to rub on it. Shining agito eyes are orange in color so I have no choice but to replicate another front head portion.

For those following my blog will know i use oyumaru resing to make duplicates. This is because i can't use two-part molds which is more previse and can make 3-D duplicates whereby oyumaru resin makes one-sided replicas due to (1) its very messy, expensive and time consuming and (2) the process is very smelly as i understand it, can't have that when i have two small monsters running around the house. So yea, using oyumaru resin (the process of how to use it can be found in my earlier postings) I replicated the head, see photos below. For shining agito's scimitar like sword, i used a agito trinity sword as a base. Using oyumaru resin i replicated the sword shape. Once the oyumaru resin dried and hardened i removed the base sword. I then dip the oyumaru resin back into hot water for a minute to loosen it up. I then quickly take the resin out and pull and push the straight sword shape into a scimitar shape. I then let the resin harden. See photo below. I then shape a line of wire into the shape of the scimitar to act as a skeleton base for it. The wire actually protects the sword from breaking apart if it was made purely from putty. The other advantage i have found later on is that a weapon that has a metal wire in it an be attached to any magnetic surface allowing it to have an alternative method of attaching the weapon on a figure or bike.

 As I have mentioned before, oyumaru resin can only replicate one side of the object. You can make a replicate of the other side of the object by repeating the process (I have done this successfully replicating a complete Diend gun, no sliding card holder though) but its hard for shining agito scimitar because i will need to make an exact oyumaru resin replicate of the other side of agito straight sword with theexact same curve as your first resin mold. If the curve is not exact you can't glue the 2 sides together with the exact angled curves meeting each other. So I was forced to sculpt the other side of both scimitar swords. I have yet to finish the sculpt as I got bored ;p

 

 

The photo below will show you the difference between the curved scimitar replicate and the straight original agito sword. Also you can see the duplicate agito head before paint layer.

 

Now, for the head, I used oyumaru resin to make a mold. Then I used transparent putty to create a head. Make sure you don't dump too much transparent putty onto the mold. This is because you will need the behind surface of your duplicate head to be as thin as possible so that when you paint metallic silver on the behind surface (seriously I dont know how to describe this properly, what i meant is the flat surface behind the front of the duplicate face) it is as near to the face surface as possible allowing light to shine on the metallic silver to give off light for his transparent orange eyes and red horns (again you can find the merits of making shiny transparent surface using metallic silver backgrounds in my last posting). Color the duplicate head with clear red for his horn and clear orange for his eyes. Let the metalli silver paint on the behind surface to dry first. Then cut off the original agito's face and replace it with the duplicate face. Use putty to shore up any cracks between the duplicate face and agito's remaining head. I broke the smaller horns while cutting up agito's face but no biggie, I reglue them back on. Before you glue the duplicate head in, take this opportunity to repaint the smaller horns with metallic silver first then a layer of clear red.

Two last bit of sculpting you need to do is to:

1) Add those 3 tiny triangles orbiting the orb on the middle of the beltbuckle. Just add small pieces of putties on the belt buckle, it doesnt need to be perfect triangles yet. Let them dry for say 1 hour and cut the putty into triangle shapes. And thats it, the sculpting part is done.
2) Add some sculpt on the arms to form some 3-D lines at the edge of agito's gloves.

Unfortunately, I totally forgot to take a photo of the pre-painted sculpted agito shining form figure so I can't show you how it looks like. I also totally forgot to take a photo of the figure after i repainted it metallic silver before the clear red :(

Anyway, the painting process is simple, just follow the steps below:
1) Sand all parts that needed painting.
2) Paint all surface that needed repaint with super metallic silver (I use Mr Color paint for this).Let everything dries
3) Paint clear red over those linings on the lower arm and leg anklets. Don't worry about overlapping paint, just repaint those overlaps with metallicsilver once the clear red dried
4) Paint clear red over metallic silver on the relevant parts (see photos below to see which parts required clear red paint. For agito's back, refer to the finished painted back in one of hte photos in the gallery below).
5) Use a liner or a washer (mostly washer due to kiwami's small size making it very hard for liners to reach into those tiny crevices) to make linings
6) Spray a layer of clear gloss overcoat to protect the repainted surface.
IMPORTANT:  Always let each layer of paint to dry first before adding the next. This avoid wrong color mixings and sticky surface syndrome when dried.

And that wraps up the tutorial :D Please enjoy the photo gallery below and feel free to ask any questions about the custom process, I'll try to answer them if i know how :) Until the next time!!