HAP's Lava Ape

This originally appeared in The Modeler's Resource, Issue #17 as a two-page article, with full color photos.

by Jerry Buchanan

So, you think that Japanese anime kits are all the same? Well, if you think that anime kits are basically cutsey, big-eyed girl kits, guess again. This time around, we will see how a simple anime character can be taken to new heights in kit form.

Our main focus this time will be on a character created by legendary artist Go Nagai, called Cutey Honey. To bring you up to speed on Honey Chan, she was a 'shonen' (boys) manga character in a TV series that was broadcast in Japan during the 1970's. It was later brought back as six OAV (Original Animation Videos) during 1994. She is now a 'shoujo' (girls) character in the Cutey Honey Flash series. This series is geared more toward females because the characters are cuter and there is more romance.

The honorable Cutey Honey is a Warrior of Love. She is also an android with the ability to change her appearance and matching powers by shouting the words, "Honey Flash!" In the process of her transformations, her clothes shred and are reformed around her nude body. Now do you see why it was an anime series for guys? She is considered to be a Magical Girl in the same vein as the Sailor Moon series but she wears a skin-tight spandex suit instead of the standard Magical Girl skirt.

"Flash" forward to pinup artist extraordinaire, Hajime "Sexy Robot" Sorayama. His interpretation of Cutey Honey in one of his paintings was used as the basis for he Volks Cutey Honey resin kit. This kit was produced in 1:4 scale and 1:8 scale. The one I am building is the 1:4 scale kit. It comes in a well-packed box and consists of seven resin pieces, two white metal pieces, a piece of wire for pinning parts together and a length of chain that connects her collar to the base. This is an elegant kit that commands your attention. She seems to be in that 'freshly' transformed' state preparing to duke it out with some bad guy. With her head back, eyes closed and knees hyper-extended, this kit is a study in sensuality. Since Sorayama is the king of rendering chrome surfaces, this Cutey Honey will need to have a highly reflective spandex suit. To achieve this effect, I will be using Rustoleum(TM) Chrome spray paint and Tamiya Clear Red and Clear Yellow paints.

First, the kit needs to be assembled. Each piece had a sprue to cut off and seamlines that needed to be sanded down. Volks uses high quality resin so sanding is a snap. There are also no seams to hide or putty except for one around her waist. Why they did not cast the body in one piece is beyond me. After that waist seam was puttied and sanded, each piece was pinned and primed with Floquil figure primer. The head and arms will be glued on after the kit is painted.

I mixed up my skin tones and sprayed and sealed all skin areas first. U used a little more blush shade (skin color + red oxide) than normal because she is a redhead and I wanted her skin to be more on the pinkish side. To paint her hair, I masked her face and neck with latex and airbrushed her hair with Liquitex Napthol Red. When her hair was dry and sealed with Testors Dullcote, I mixed a little yellow and white into the red and drybrushed her hair. This gave the hair pink highlights but I wanted her hair to look like an anime character's hair and not real hair. Her eyebrows were carefully painted with a dark chocolate brown and her eyelids were painted black. There was no guesswork involved in painting because the eyebrows and eyelashes are sculpted. I used a brush to wash in her eye shadow which was taken from my blush shade of airbrush paint. For her mouth, I mixed up burgandy and a drop of black ink for the basecoat. Her teeth were given a basecoat of tan and each tooth was painted in with ivory. For a final coat on the lips, I mixed up napthol red and yellow to make an organe-ish color and painted each lip without going out to the edges. This will leave a dark outline around the lips and really make them stand out. For a final touch, I painted her mole with the same chocolate brown that I used for her eyebrows.

Now for the fun part. The best way that I could come up with a realistic chrome finish was to use Rustoleum chrome spray paint. You can find this stuff anywhere and it is not expensive. However, this paint can be extremely 'touchy.' By this, I mean that you can look at this stuff funny and it will get messed up. So, based on my mistakes, here are some dos and do nots:

1. DO NOT use latex to mask off chrome areas. I experimented on a scrap piece of resin and the latex lifted the chrome finish right off leaving a dull steel look. This also goes for any kind of Tamiya gloss finish. I thought I could at least mask off the clear red paint but the latex took that finish off too.

2. DO NOT handle chrome painted areas with your bare hands for extended periods of time. Use latex gloves if you must handle painted pieces. If you do not, you will have fingerprints galore on the finish.

3. DO seal areas that you do not want chrome paint on thoroughly. By this, I mean if you are going to seal the skin areas with latex so that you can spray the suit chrome color, use at least 2 coats of latex. The chrome paint reacts to the latext and will melt it to the surface if the latex is not thick enough.

4. DO clean and prime areas to be painted thoroughly. Even with primer, I had places on the kit where the chrome paint would not stick. My guess is the resin was exuding some oil or something that would not let the paint stick, or perhaps it was oil from my hands. At any rate, this is not detrimental, but you will have to put down more coats of chrome to finally cover the affected area.

Now that I have sufficiently scared everyone off, do not be intimated. With this chrome/clear technique, you can achieve amazing finishes. You just have to be a bit more careful to get great results. Now, on to the spandex! I masked her skin areas off and let those dry. I then applied another coat of latex over the previous coat to ensure maximum protection. I then sprayed her upper torso, boots and gloves with chrome. After about thirty minutes, I peeled the latex off because I do not like to leave it on for extended periods of time. Because of the thicker layer of latex, you have to be heavy-handed when peeling it off. In order to let the paint cure, I let the parts set overnight. The next day, I touched up the rough edges around her suit with Testors Chrome enamel paint. The rough edges were caused by lifting the latex.

For the colored areas, I masked off the skin areas and airbrushed Tamiya Clear Red on the upper 'V' of her suit along with the armband and collar. You must get a heavy coat of this paint down to get a glossy surface and not a sandy, oversprayed look. Just be careful not to spray enough to cause drips. I used Tamiya Clear Yellow to spray the boots and gloves. By using this technique you create a brilliant gold color and a great candy apple red color.

Once the clear red and yellow had time to cure, it was time to paint her legs and midsection with the Rustoleum chrome. I only need to mask the areas painted with the clear Tamiya colors. Because latex reacts violently with Tamiya clear paint, I used masking tape to mask off her boots and 'V' area on her suit. To make the tape less tacky, I stuck it to my Pomeranian and lifted it off about a dozen times. If you do not have a dog, jeans will do. After I was sure the tape would not be sticky enough to lift the paint, I applied it to the areas to be masked and used an X-acto knife to trim off the excess. I then wrapped the rest of the exposed areas with clear plastic wrap so that they would not get chrome paint on them. After the kit was sufficiently masked, I sprayed the majority of her suit chrome and let it dry for about an hour before lifting the mask. When lifting the tape, be very careful because if you bump the freshly painted chrome area, you will ruin the finish. The tape did in fact lift some of the clear red and yellow paints, so I touched up these areas by dabbing in the clear colors with a small paintbrush. Lastly, I used a fine tipped brush to paint a black border around her red 'V' to give a little more separation from the chrome. Her rapier blade was sprayed with the Rustoleum chrome and glued into the handle. The head and arms were attached last with 5-minute epoxy. The 'manhole cover' base was sprayed with Testors Gunmetal Metallic and the chain was superglued to her neck and the base.

When you are finished with this kit, you will have a very striking character that will tower above the rest. It will also blind people in bright sunlight should you decide to use the chrome/clear technique described above! Volks did an excellent job translating Sorayama's painting into three dimensions. They should be commended for giving anime lovers some really classy kits to add to their collections.