This article was originally posted on MFC
If you frequent articles on MFC you may remember my article a while back on my Chino Kafuu restoration/repaint, today I present you with an even more ambitious repaint endeavor: Pajama Baby Rei! I received her in the same package as Chino after winning her on eBay for $10.02 USD (can't forget that 2 cents!) and like Chino, the damage to her paint job was not visible in the listing photos. From the start, before even considering painting Chino, I figured I’d repaint Rei since she was just so damaged. Assessing the damage, she was incredibly scuffed up, her hair and dress had huge gaps where it looked like the plastic had pulled away from itself with age. The paint was numerous shades lighter than it should've been and as a result made the shading look super wonky. Her legs were carrot orange and the sheets on the base looked like they’d been unwashed for years :P. The blanket on the base she's holding also disconnected, taking her thumb with it, but this proved to be beneficial because it meant I could take her off the base!
To start with, I puttied the gaps in her hair and dress with Testors Contour Putty, which was chosen for this project solely because it was what was at my local Hobby Lobby. I’ve never worked with putty before but I think it turned out pretty well, especially for a first try! I wish I had pics of just the putty from before priming but alas. While I was at it I also carefully shaved down some seam lines with a razor. I could've been more aggressive with this step since they’re still pretty visible but I was a bit more conservative since it was my first time.
Then onto the painting, the dress was pretty straightforward. Matte white layer then metallic pearl like the alternative (and objectively better) colorway this figure comes in. Lesson learned, make sure transparent metallic layers are even or else you’ll end up with some splotchy darker parts that you probably can't reverse without wiping off most of the paint to get an even layer again DX. After that I painted the ribbon red and added some more ribbon detailing to the bodice and sleeves- I’m so happy with the way this looks and I really think it ties the dress together nicely! For the hair I painted a base color and gradually lightened the paint to make a subtle highlight ring around her entire head, the hair is probably the part I’m proudest of. Her legs were the biggest problem. I wanted to repaint all of her skin to a lighter shade than the original since I think it's a bit dark for Rei, but that would involve dealing with the face so I ended up just redoing the legs as close as possible to the arms and face. The color matching was a pain and it's not perfect but it’s decently coherent so I don't particularly care anymore XD. Somewhere in there I gave her cute painted nails, matching red lipstick, and brightened the red in her eyes too! The red of her nails and lips looks so cute with the red ribbon. Rei’s hair + red + white is the perfect color combo.
Base time! I primed it white and then… put her on the shelf for 2 months to gather dust :D. I finally picked her back up while listening to an online lecture last week, painting is the perfect activity to do while half-assing your first week of online uni B). I aggressively blew the dust off her with a compressed air duster and started at it again. Another coat or two of white and I slathered (what a terrible word, I'm using it just because it's so terrible) a matching layer of pearl acrylic on the white sheets. The blanket was originally supposed to be a lighter blue but I decided it looked nicest nearly the same color as her hair. The pillow was originally planned to be red but I ended up matching it to the blanket in the end. I think it would've looked fine either way but this saved me some color mixing effort. The shading on the blanket is frankly crude but I do not care! It's not even visible from the front anyway.
And that brings us to now, when she’s all finished! I’m so happy with the way she turned out and obviously super eager to talk about it.
