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Started |
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May 10th, 2003 / ~ 16:00 |
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Finished |
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June 6th, 2003 |
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Base |
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Dr Blight |
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Parts |
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- |
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Materials |
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Revell colors, water colors, |
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Points of |
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3 |
Character & Intent
Ariel, eternal balance guardian. Her place was with the
pillar of balance, but when she was murdered and her
beloved Nupraptor, the guardian of the pillar of the mind
went insane and infected the entire circle of nine with his
madness, her spirit ended up trapped between life and
death, forever bound to the decaying pillars. Damned to
torturous unlife for millenia like the world which was hers
to watch, since Kain refused the sacrifice.
Okay, people not familiar with the "Legacy of Kain"
series will collectively be raising their eyebrows by now,
while fans know the entire story (and likely most of it's
dialogue) by heart - So let's just move on.
I always liked the overall design of the character and
it's obvious that she's highly unlikely to ever receive an
official action figure - Picturebook circumstances for a
custom.
I am not really (or should that be "really not" ?) satisfied
with the final result here. Her face is not quite on-model,
her hair is a catastrophe, and her lower body - or the lack
thereof - didn't come out nearly as good as I imagined it to.
On the other hand, I'm fairly happy with the skeletal part
of her face and and the overal appearance of her torso, so
I can still say this custom is far from being a complete failure.
Creation
The work on this project started out with the removal of blight's legs.
At least it would have if I had been smart. Instead, I first applied some
dremeled some costume detailing (mainly the gloves) off, slimmed her
waist down and applied "Das Pronto" on her breasts so the overal
shape of the body would show better through the cloth later on.
Following that, I put some serious dremeling to her face, not only
to create the skull side, but also to adjust the facial structure to
fit the character a bit better. The teeth of the skull were cut with
a knife and re-enforced with a pencil.
Then I used boil&pop to remove the legs, like I should have
done first... The way I finally did it was royal pain in the rec-
tum since I had to keep the water from dissolving my prior
sculpting work. It was a bit like bathing a gremlin.
Next off, I driled some holes into the lower torso and inserted
some cut Q-tips into the openings. Not because I feared it could
be that time of the month, but to give her something to stand on.
You see, as a ghost, Ariel doesn't have any legs - Naturally
a problem with a figure that has to stand around. Fortunately, her
clothes are torn to shreds where her legs resided pre-mortem, so
I decided to use those shreds as makeshift stands. Those particular
strands have to be pretty solid, so I used three Q-tips wrapped
into her clothing material. Oh yeah, her dress... That was the next step.
For the tattered rags Ariel is condemned to wear for all eternity
(yeah, sucks for fashionable females to be dead), I once again
used cut strips from the very same tshirt I already ruined for
Raziel's clothing. (How's that for series continuity
?)
Trust me, applying those wasn't as easy as it sounds, it was
a rather messy process that left my hands covered in countless
crusty remains of stinking glue.
The faded yellow consists of nothing more than ordinary
water color. Afterwards, I added a thick layer of clear laque.
Not mainly to protect the color, but to stiffen the strands and
keep them in a flow-like pose that way.
The hair kept me busy for quite a while, since I needed a way
to give her long hair and yet keep the articulation of the head
- And Blight's action feature, which consisted of a moveable
part of her hair that can cover her disfugerement - It fit Ariel
very well, so I was hell-bent on keeping it functional.
The strands of hair in the front of Ariel are cuts from the
Tarzan figure I used for Raziel (Yeah, him again...), attached
with hot glue. And hot glue was also what I used for the hair
in the back... I just poured that stuff over a small piece of toi-
let paper and hoped for the best. Well, the best didn't happen
- Only the best I can do.
The rest was no more than a paint job - A difficult one that
I revised and tweaked many times before I was satisfied,
but still a paint job.
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