I’m really looking forward to this side project, and I thought I’d share it with you guys.
I am a HUGE Dragon Ball fan, and when I was in Tokyo I did my rounds in the toy shops and picked up a bunch of Dragon Ball miniatures (well, toys really) in the hopes of painting them one day. Well that day has finally come and Master Roshi is the first. I got him in the monochrome color because it was cheaper, and since I knew I was going to paint him, I really didn’t care if he was all grey. Priming was a bitch, the plastic did not like to take the paint, but after many coats, it finally stuck. I forgot to take a picture before priming, but here he is all primed up and ready to paint.
And this is the color scheme I’m going to copy.
In the end, this mini is going to go in our pet shrine (don’t ask, I come from good hippy stock), so I want to paint it to my highest level. I want to keep the cartoony feel, but also want to make Roshi’s skin and his turtle shell look very real (with liver spots on the skin and real depth of colors in the turtle shell).
I’m in no hurry to get it done, and with all my other projects, I don’t know how long it’ll take me, but I will share pictures as I make progress on him.
He seems to be a nice size as well. Good luck with the project.
I’ve been using toys, scrap etc for many projects and sometimes the paint won’t stick. Here’s the best solution I’ve found so far:
- Paint the entire model with pva/wood glue before priming. Or you can even mix some paint in the glue, a get it done right away. The glue will stick and it’s easy to paint on.
He seems to be a nice size as well. Good luck with the project.
I've been using toys, scrap etc for many projects and sometimes the paint won't stick. Here's the best solution I've found so far:
- Paint the entire model with pva/wood glue before priming. Or you can even mix some paint in the glue, a get it done right away. The glue will stick and it's easy to paint on.
Bloodbeard
Adding glue is an interesting idea. Although, I'm always worried about losing detail with my base coat, how much does the glue add to this? You can already see on primed Roshi, that the top of his glasses are blending into his forehead - and while I can re-create the definition with my paint - I hate losing those on-model details. Although again, it would be really nice for all those very unseen places on the mini where I just need it to be black and don't care about the detail.
For a PVC figure like this, they tend to be very hydrophobic. Reaper Miniatures’ Brown Liner also works as a great primer coat. It holds on well and doesn’t seem to flake off. This was found when some folks on the Reaper forums were painting their first Bones figures (initial discovery was by Buglips the Goblin over there, IIRC).
Got some paint on him last night. Just the first layer of orange. I plan on doing another one or two more layers of the orange to get it as smooth as a baby’s butt (I know that’s a normal expression, but it feels weird to write it). As I always do, I leave a lot of the black undercoat showing to define the different spaces. It makes the mini look more cartoony, which is right up good ol’ Master Roshi’s alley.
When I used to run a comics/gaming store (20+ years ago), Dragonball figures and toys were the hardest thing to keep in stock. Always flew off the shelves…if we could’ve kept it properly on order and in stock, I’d have been a millionaire selling it.
I got all of Master Roshi base coated. I did a lot of layers on his skin and shirt to get a really smooth surface to do the rest on.
I did the many layers on the skin so I can do some details like below, to really make him look old. Even though he looks cartoony, I want his skin, shirt and shell to look very realistic.
Wow, he is coming along really nicely. I’m curious to see his skin all painted up (I suck at painting complex skin tones), but your past history makes me quite confident that you’ll pull it off perfectly :hat off
If it gets too big, that’s just painting, and who would want to do that?
Slavemaster Hod
Well, in my youth I did enjoy spray painting wall size disparaging comments on the walls at my high school :)
