Rosehip 1/8 scale garage kit by Atelier Hiro

About time I work on this.

I acquired this kit in 2021 May. Yes, it has been over a year. Why am I working on this now?

Well, when I got this kit and opened up to inspect, I found some flaws. Physically, the kit was mostly… fine, but its surface was weirdly smooth to a point that I didn’t feel any paint would stick. It was repealing water like a wax paper. Yes, I did clean it with warm soap water; didn’t work.

I could always try but chose not to because, at that time, I foresaw disasters. Then completely forgot about it until recently while I was doing a regular cleanup of my storage unit.

Well, I am working on this kit now.

You may be able to notice how shiny the pieces are. These are really smooth and even harder to hold in your hands. They just repeal pretty much everything on contact.

I’ve run into similar issues with other garage kits over years but certainly not as prevalent as this one is displaying. What this ultimately means ….

Yeahhh…., the paint is not sticking. I barely touched it in order to glue her boots onto her legs, and its paint is already falling apart. I can just airbrush over again, but it is going to fall part, again. The only way to …, let’s say, reinforce the paint is by varnishing which is basically a super-thin layer of transparent rubber. Even then I’d be extra careful about handling this.

There are also two major faults in the kit.

The fault on her hip is not a big deal since her skirt will cover it anyway. The fault on her boot, though, is somewhat serious. I’ve attempted to repair the fault on her boot but it didn’t go anywhere because whatever I put on, the oily surface repealed it.

The kit also has two bonus 1/35 scale figures of Roseship and Assam. I’ve worked on a bigger scale version of these before. It was a non-scale kit by [Nightmare creates]. You can see the build log for it at HERE. I will link to one of pictures down below.

I won’t be working on those 1/35 scale figures simply because I hate working with 1/35 scale. I will avoid them if I can. So, I am avoiding working on them.

Let’s move on.

Okay, it looks as if I am almost done and it is technically. But this is where the real hard part begins.

If you take a notice of her pose as well as the way her feet are set, you can probably tell that there is no way that this figure is going to be standing up for long.

And that’s right. To make the matter worse, as mentioned numerous times, the resin is slippery AF. Nothing is really sticking to the bottom of her feet. I’ve barely managed to make her stand like so in the photo to take a picture.

Meanwhile, her head has turned out okay-ish.

It could have been better but I am not complaining at this point. It’s a kind of a miracle that the head has come out the way it is.

Now, back to the figure balance. I see two ways to deal with it. One way to do it is by drilling holes into her boots and secure them by using a pair of rods. It is probably too late for this method.

The other is having some sort of a brace that fits front of her boot and then secure the brace down to the base. This requires some weight added to the base or a bigger base; basically more weight to anchor down the figure and lower its center of weight.

Above is what I’ve come up with. This is the only sane way to secure the figure without going nuclear. I just superglued it. What the brace does is that it allows the figure to be detached if required. It is a better way than, let’s say, just glue the foot onto the base. Or drill a hole and use a rod.

This is the easiest way in my book. Now that the figure is secured, I can finally work on doing the final assembly without fear of it falling sideways.

And this is it. As you can see, the figure is never going to be able to stand still on its own. The brace is required.

Working on this figure was a shitty job. Paint was just peeling off left and right whenever I touched the figure. At one point, I wore cotton gloves just to be able to handle pieces to assemble. The figure seen in pictures has yet to be varnished.

Because I use airbrush in my garage, it means taking the figure downstairs. I was afraid that the paint might peel off while taking it down. Therefore, I took pictures before applying varnish.

Applying varnish should help. Alas, I do not expect this figure or its paint to last long.

All in all, it has turned out okayish. I was going to shade her hair but, in the end, I skipped that part since the pink paint was peeling off as I handled the head. I was busy repairing at which point I realized I should not apply shading.

Rosehip may seem a bit too tall here. That is because she is 1/8 scale. The others are 1/9 scale.

Oh, well. Finally, this kit is out of my way. Until next time.