Diver Nami (ver. KOS-MOS) preview

Many years ago, I built a Super Fumina kit. And I felt I made so many mistakes on that kit, I had to turn in my Gunpla badge and put these kind of Mecha Musume kits away until the time was right.

i’M goNNa vIoLaTe yOu!

That awful skin tone, the paint scraping off everywhere, that rubbery skirt, and the crappy handpainting, ugh just take it away please!

Fast forward to 2018. I had finally made the move to lacquers and suddenly I had access to an amazing bunch of Flesh tone paints that just didn’t exist in any acrylic line. I was ready to make good on a promise to myself to finally build a Frame Arms Girl. However, my confidence was still kinda shot, and I still had no idea how to paint flesh tones. Luckily a fellow moderator directed me to a wonderful series of Tutorials by Leona’s Garage, which almost seems like the only indepth tutorial/resource on how to actually use these paints.

Anyway skin tones aside, the other main challenge was painting the eyes. Anyone who knows me well, knows how much I hate handpainting. Unlike Frame Arms girls, these Bandai Figurise kits normally do not include any waterslides for the eyes, so I had no choice but to paint them on. Luckily again, Leona had some good tutorials on how to do these.

The stage was set for a showdown with the Mecha Musume. All I needed test a test kit.

Have to keep the efficiency rating up pic.twitter.com/WxqioLEjEz

— YJ (@TheSaintISM) February 19, 2019

It was going to be the Diver Nami I picked up earlier this year, and I specifically chose this Figurise Kit because the Bandai engineering tends to be a bit more forgiving than the average Frame Arms girl. For this project I would be re-painting her into a KOS-MOS ver.4 colour scheme. Inidentally, that kit is also being reissued this December, so this would be good practice for it.

Leona’s tutorial helped greatly, though my first attempt was still a bit flat. I started by painting the shadows with Gaianotes Flesh Orange and then painting over with Flesh White, then adding a few blending layers of Flesh White again.

Skin still looks kinda dead, but it's miles better than the Devil Fumina pic.twitter.com/w6vxiyWBQq

— YJ (@TheSaintISM) August 17, 2019

It could’ve been just the bad lighting, but I decided to go back and try to fix it a little. I did a few light coats of Flesh pink on top:

I think I managed to breathe a little life back into the face. pic.twitter.com/M4CVBn4lJm

— YJ (@TheSaintISM) August 17, 2019

In the end it was the eyelashes in particular that bothered me, so I restripped and tried again. This time I laid down a base coat of Flesh White, then used Flesh pink for the shadowy areas, followed by a blending coat of Flesh, and finally another shadow layer of Flesh Orange. Yikes.

It was a bit of a clusterF and I didn’t really know what I was doing yet, but in the end it looked good enough. Good enough I felt to redeem myself for the Devil Fumina:

Some other notes, the Gold is Gaianotes EX-Gold over EX-Black. I wanted to experiment with various finishes on the same kit, s the arms and legs are also done in EX-Black, with no shading or top coat on top. The suit itself is semi-gloss, while the white parts on the arms and legs are flat.

I still have some parts like the ears and weapons to paint, but now on to the I’m ready for the real target.