To make it easier so that I dont need to type a lot, lets refer kiwami Ultimate Rising Kuuga (your base body) as KURK and kiwami ultimate kuuga (what you wanna make) as KUK.
And now the fun part starts. Start visualising how you want your KUK to be like and then go about cutting those parts of the KURK that is no longer necessary. Essentially the whole exercise is to "downgrade" your KURK into KUK, something I have never done before, its like a reverse custom :)
Refer to the photo below for the parts i cut from KURK:
Ok lets stop here for a bit coz this is where its crucial. How to redesign the lower abdomen for KUK. As you know the KURK's lower abdomen's most significant feature is that two wierd oval shape thingie on it. It looks ok on a kiwami but imagine if its a full size SIC. Even worst, imagine it if its human sized. That would looked real odd. I can't help imagining its the eyes for a blow-up sex doll!! Seriously!... Of course i'm just being theoretical. I dont have a blow up doll in my cupboard heh... Especially not one with wierd alien-looking eyes. Nope no siree o_o"
So its off with those wierd oval shapes plus a chunk of his lower abdome. I cut off the lowest parts of the abdomen piece to reveal his abs beneath. Then I resculpted the part where the oval shapes used to be to make it look more SIC KUK-like. I must say i didnt do a very satisfactory job out of it as this design i made made him look slightly fat :/ I did a first layer of armor nearer to the centre of the abdomen piece and let it dry. Then I layer it with flaps of armor near to the outer part of the abdomen piece to form a layered armor sculpt. I then used my line engraver to add some linings on the sculpt.
Now that the abdomen's done. I moved on to the shoulder pad, lower arms and upper legs. For the shoulder pads and lower arms, I added some putties on those parts i have cut to smoothen the surface first. I let these dry. Then I rolled up some putties into a very thin rope and let it dry for less than an hour to make it easier to handle (the time required depends on what kind of putty you used. There are some fast drying ones that require only 15 minutes of drying before its easier to handle). Next i cut the thin rope putties into several pieces and start rolling them into thinner rope putties (see those lines i made on his lower arms and shoulder pads). I placed this rope putties gently on the shoulder pads and lower arms to form 3-D lines. Let these dry too. Lastly, I used my line engraver to carve more details onto the shoulder pads and lower arms.
For the thighs, i just added some putties on the parts i cut to smoothen the surface. Once they dried, I used my line engraver to carve details into them too. We are almost done.
Last piece of resculpt would be the head. I cut off those tiny horns near the mouth plate and cut down more on the giant horns on the side of his head to form smaller horns. Do this for both red and black eye head as i understand KUK too have red and black eye version.
There, resculpt is done. Bad news is, this is actually the easy part. The hard part lies in the repaint mainly due to those very thin lines of blue and gold you need to form to bring out the details on an almost full black figure.
First thing i did was to paint the figure full matt black. Let this dry. You might need to paint a couple of layers to make sure the figure is really black.
Next, use metallic blue to paint in those indented lines all over his body. Dont worry about overlapping paint, kiwamis are too small for anyone to not actually overlap their paints. Make sure those creviced lines are filled with metallic blue. Let these paint dry.
Next is the fun part. You will now use matt black paint to cover all overlapping metallic blue. Make sure those metallic blue lines are very thin to make them less apparent. For wider areas you can use normal painting technigue. For areas whereby the surface are tiny and there are criss crossing metallic blue creviced line, you can use dry brushing technique to paint the surface black without painting the creviced lines black. Or just use a really small brush to do it.
Lastly, use a small brush to paint those tiny gold lines. The way to do it is to brush your brush across those lines in a 90 degree angle from the lines. Do it gently. This way the paint from the side of your brush will get caught on the lines on the body. Make sure your brush is quite dry to avoid excessive gold paint sticking to the lines of the body. If you overlap the gold paint, no biggie, just overlap them later with matt black again.
Now here comes the most difficult part of the custom; painting those kuuga symbols on the back of each of KURK's palms. Their palms are so small its very hard to form those tiny symbols. Use the smallest brush you have to make them. I dont have any guaranteed tips to paint them except that you need a lot of patience and a steady hand ;p Couple of those palms i need to redo them 3 times.
You now have a nice Kiwami Tamashii Kuuga Ultimate custom figure :) Hope you enjoy this tutorial and the rest of the gallery below! See you again!
Just something I wanted to add for the uninitiated. The Kiwami line is NOT the same size as normal SIC 7 inche line. Kiwami measures about just a little below 4 inches. Here's a comparison between KUK and GI Joe's Snake Eyes. I mean everyone knows GI Joe figures comes in only 1 size around 3.75 inche so it should make a good comparison IMHO.
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