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Rei Ayanami iron beads WIP

I’m working on an iron beads work of Rei from Evangelion with Nano Beads. She’s proving to be difficult! The source has irregularly shaped pixels. This non-uniformity is really forcing me to fudge and guess a lot, making this time consuming. I’m using 1/4 size Nano Beads rather than the full-size Perler Beads, which also makes things difficult due to their tiny size. I’ve run out of the blues and skin tones, so I’ll have to wait for my shipment from Yodobashi Camera I ordered tonight to arrive before I can proceed much further. Here is the original sprite I found on Pinterest:

At this point, I’m unsure if I want to stop at Rei’s head or go ahead and do the rest of her. Her boobs are so pretty, it’d be a shame not to.

This is the original, non-pixelized image. Someone must have run this image through a pixelization filter to get the image above.

The first one I saw was of Asuka Langley, apparently by the same artist. However this one too is not true sprites as the pixel sizes are not uniform. If you zoom in you’ll know what I mean.

Update 1, Dec. 5th. I’ve had to order the fleshtone and blue colors for her hair. They’ll arrive tomorrow.

Update 2, Dec. 6th. Last night I finished most of her hair. Her skintone should be easy. Just dump the beads and nudge them onto the pegs. I’ve decided to go ahead and do the whole image. I’ve sort of gotten used to the pixels being wonky. I’m able to improvise more and not worry so much about complete accuracy because it’s impossible anyway.

Update 3, Dec. 7th. Her face is now complete!

Update 4, Dec. 8th. I have to wait for more peg boards to arrive now before I can continue…

Update 5, Dec. 10th. Almost there… Now I’ve had to order more Gray colored Nano Beads as well as one more peg board. They’ll arrive Tuesday perhaps.

Update 6, Dec. 12th. I finished the beads! Next will be ironing. I hope it goes well. Not in the mood for that tonight.

Update 7, Dec. 16th. I finished Rei at last! Unfortunately there was a bit of a mishap on the right side where her shoulder is (and a little where her breast is), but I was able to salvage and rescue the project.

And here she is on my wall. Neat.

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My new Sega towels from Shimamura

I went back to Shimamura a few days later and found Sega towels on sale! They were all discounted from their regular price. For each of the Megadrive, Saturn and Dreamcast, I bought hand towels, face towels, and bath towels. The hand and face towels are a two towel set.

Here are the hand towels:

Here are the face towels:

And here are the bath towels:

BONUS! Here is a set of Urusei Yatsura’s Lum-chan face towels I also bought:

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Working on painting Asuka’s eyes

Painting eyes is the most nerve-wracking part of building garage kits. One can do an excellent paint job and assembly on a garage kit (aka GK, or gareki in Japanese), but if the eyes look weird, it’ll ruin the entire figure. You’ve gotta paint the eyes well, otherwise it’s crap and the whole build is no good.

I’m using Delta Ceramcoat acrylic paints, which are typical craft store paints. White, Black, and Mediterranean. I added some white to Mediterranean to add highlights to her irises. I didn’t notice imperfections in the molded surface of her face until I started painting. I tried to imitate Sadamoto’s art style. His distinct eyes are always great. I’m probably going to upload this build’s videos directly to Odysee rather than YouTube.

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Arii 1:100 scale Macross Super Valkyrie VF-1S plamo box scan

Arii’s 1:100 scale model of Roy Fokker’s VF-1S. Well, actually Hikaru is piloting it at this point in the story. It’s rather nice box art, but notice that the thruster pod in the center is facing the wrong direction! Oops. The decals for this kit do not seem to be usable. I am thinking I might build this up as Jetfire from Transformers instead. I have plenty of Autobot emblem decals to use.

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Spy Family coffee

I dunno whether to call the show “Spy Family” or “Spy x Family.” I’Ve seen a lot of Suntory Coffee Boss Spy Family products at drug stores lately. The top picture is peanut-flavored café au lait. I bought this box, but I have yet to try it. I’ll show this in the next Japanese snacks video I upload to my YT and Odysee channels.

Unfortunately, the Spy Family movie won’t be out until December! By that time, it will have been a year since the 2nd season on TV ended. They’re making us wait a whole year.

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Arii’s old 1:100 Heavy Missile Regult battle pod plamo from Macross complete

I had posted a scan of the box art in an earlier post.

I completed the old 1:100 Arii Heavy Missile Regult plamo this week. Surface detail is in some ways better than the old Imai kit, with how there is molded detail for the lights on the head for this smaller Arii kit, whereas Imai’s larger Regult model only provides decals to represent those lights. As it is though, proportions on the missile pods is off and makes the model look a bit awkward because they are too large. I drilled out the cannons because those parts instead had protruding ends rather than resembling actual gun barrells. I used Wave’s H-Eyes parts for lenses and Kotobukiya’s M.S.G. verniers for the thrusters. This kit has molded detail for the lights on the feet, but they protrude way too much. I cut them off and used Wave’s lenses instead. The mono eye is simply molded into the face of the pod, so I first painted it silver and then clear red to give it more of a lens look.

I used Mr. Color 323 Light blue and 311 Gray for the white parts. The gray was a mixture of 32 Dark Gray and 72 Intermediate Blue. the decals were still usable after all these years. They were a bit yellowed, but I taped them to my window for several days to bleach them. They went on fairly well. I have a pre-order for the 1:72 Hasegawa version of this kit, which will be released after the first of September.

The proportions on the Regult itself seem fine, but Arii made the missile pods a bit too tall. It makes the model look a bit awkward. Also, there is no ball socket articulation with the cannons. They must be glued into place. I might add a bit of weathering to this. One thing I need to do is repair the knee joint. I had to replace the broken piece with brass rod, but the 2-part epoxy putty I used turned out to be soft because I didn’t make it the proper ratio. I might try polyester putty instead.

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“There nothing more noble than prayer. There is nothing more humble than prayer.”

“Please, show us mercy and forgive us. Don’t let the way ahead be one of darkness. As we stumble down the path of our sinful history, let there always be one shining star to show the way.”

Royal Space Force was a masterpiece movie that was woefully underappreciated. Plus the soundtrack was composed by Ryuichi Sakamoto, who recently passed away. Shiro becomes the first man into space, and there as he is enveloped in peace and tranquility, he finds solace with God and understands the message of salvation he had been struggling with throughout the movie.