1/5 Honami
Commissioned kit. This kit sadly took soooo many years to complete due to a lot of issues and life. A lot of it had to do with the kit cast quality. S-Mist can make some really great sculptures, but sadly the casting practices were very very bad. This is also coming from my BFF Leonas Workshop that worked on a 1/3 scale S-Mist sculpt & casted kit. So we BOTH had our work cut out for us for each kit. Heck, I even asked her for advice when I came to visit her many years ago when we had a kit building party with also Gareki Phoenix! I feel really horrible it took so long, a lot was overall working on such a huge kit, moving from place to place, had mishaps of pieces breaking, finding more surface defects, painting parts then dropping them and watching them shatter, taking breaks from those mishaps but also working so much at my job, taking care of family, mental heath arareness, people passing away, etc. There is still a lot I wish I could have done better but overall I am content with the result. I just hope in the end my client will be happy in the end, even though it has been so long! Also apologies in advance on the final photos, I was in a tad bit of a rush and my lighting setup was not properly working even with new bulbs, so I only had overheadlights and a bar light with photoshop to restore some original lighting and color to in real life appearance ^^;;;
Modifications include:
- Cutting her physical right leg off from the main body for easy access painting between her legs and mounting the panties as one piece; since it came in two pieces. Figured if I cant seamline cover the leg with putty and extreme sand polishing, I can cover the seamline with her bikini straps.
- A lot of the parts on her top half were magnetized but perminantly mounted in place once completed due to the fact some parts were hard to pin due to complex angling of parts sitting just right.
- The skirt was also in 2 pieces, at last minute to clean up the seamlines where they were easily visible once assembled, I mounted both pieces together as one, cut her torso in half so I could slip on the skirt that way.
- Since the Honami figure is based off of a particular illustration, the illustration also included various vegetable plushies. I 3d sculpted those as well, but in the end we decided not to include them in my clients commission specs.
- I also sculpted the school emblem myself and 3d printed them in 2 sizes. One for her shoulder and another for sticky tak-ing it to the photo frame.
- The panties, aka "bikini" bottoms were divided into many parts, a lot were very fragile. The bikini base was in two parts and there were 3-4 strings as well. Due to the cast, a lot of the breakages were due to airbubbles in the resin and or the strings were just too small to mount using my smallest miro wire that I had on hand. So I opted to measure, 3d sculpt and print new bows and strings.
- The eyes and nails we went basic and left the eye not glossed and the nails a flat color upon request.
- Overall Honami is mounted on a very specific sized photo frame and under neath of her has thin sheet of foam and fabric laying ontop. I had to maticulously fold and wrinkle the fabric to have a particular Dakimakura vibe to it, so some areas fabric glue was used to bond some fold ontop of another, expecially around the photo frame edges. The figure could be mounted on a wall, but for safety purposes I found a metal easle at Hobby Lobby and included it with the figure as a temporary solution until her owner finds a suitable one to their liking.
Original Kit Box & Reference
