DHE Neytiri (Avatar) bust paintup WIP

[Howlrunner]

This is the v1.0 bust that was sculpted by Daz71 of DHEffects. It's a little more exaggerated than his v2.0 bust, but in all honesty I really prefer this version.

Now, first things first, while I can paint up busts and am improving on skintones, I really am NOT any good at painting eyes. So I usually install glass eyes. That was the plan here too. In most busts it's easy to dremel out the eyes (as the resin is about 5mm) and insert the eyes from the inside, but I had a problem here - the neck is too thin to fit my hand up inside the head! So, to solve the problem, I decided to cut a circle out of the back of the head (that would later be covered by hair) large enough to fit my hand inside. In most busts this would be easy, and I started cutting, expecting the resin to be about 0.5-1cm thick.....

I ended up blunting two cutting wheels (and still hadn't cut right through), then I had to use a drill, anf then I had to use a jigsaw! This thing was SOLID. In the end I discovered the resin was actually about 3-4cm thick inside the head; what I thought would be a quick 5 minute job took me about an hour! :lol

I got 38mm glass eyes custom made for me by Tohickon taxidermy from a blu-ray screen-cap I sent them (great value at only $35). Here is one of them next to a normal 28mm human eye (not a great one):

And here's where I am in the paintup - still a way to go (all the darker stripes need added, as well as the bright spots), but I wanted to get a good variation in the base skintone first:

 

[Bubbaman]

Very cool for now !!! The eyes are great !!!

 

[G17RDY]

Yeah H, looking great so far.

Must of been a right pain cutting the top of the head, problem is you never really know when you start these things just how far you need to go.

I'm sure this is going to be tremendous, giving your past results with Chucky and Tiffany. Looking forward to more!

 

[frosty]

that looks great bud, i'm about to paint up one of these and was wondering about glass eyes, how much are they delivered over here to the uk?

 

[streetjudge79]

Great job so far! Do you have a link for the glass eyes? Those are great!

 

[Howlrunner]

Really need to get bak to this and get the stripes painted on....

The eyes I ordered were custom made to the blu-ray screen-cap that I sent. These ones were $35 for the pair plus $15 priority shipping to Scotland.

Orders for custom eyes can be placed here: Shop - Category Page

Fantastic customer service too. :thumbsup

 

[camper]

Looking Good so far!

I have one of these sitting in my studio steering at me from across the room! Unpainted of course, like so many of my personal pieces! LOL! I look forward to seeing your progress on her! Any ideas of how you will be handling the hair?

°Jeff

CAMPer

 

[Howlrunner]

Camper, I'm thinking possibly a pre-braided wig, cut up and glued on in strands, or possibly just a long haired wig that I'll braid myself.

Still not done any more work on Neytiri, but I've been asked to post up some pics of her with the glass eyes in place, so here they are:

Hope they help. :thumbsup

 

[Forestmoonstudio]

Thanks Mark...the eyes look GREAT! What screen cap did you send when you had the eyes made?

 

[Howlrunner]

This one: http://images.wikia.com/james-camerons-avatar/pl/images/d/d4/Neytiri_Profil.jpg :thumbsup

 

[Howlrunner]

So I'm FINALLY getting back around to working on this baby.

Got the stripes painted (challenging to say the least...):

And with the glass eyes temporarily in place:

And just because I really like the way the lighting turned out on these two:

Next up, drill out the ear hole and paint her luminescent dots....

 

[fettster]

Great paint up!

 

[made007]

great paint! who made the bust? ive never seen it before, how your goiing to do the hair?, keep the updates coming

 

[fettster]

Also, just a though.

Have you thought about drilling tiny holes and adding fibre optics for the freckles?

 

[Too Much Garlic]

Instead of fiber optics, use fluorescent glow in the dark paint.

 

[Trilogy]

She's starting to look beautiful.
Those eyes look wonderful and your paintwork is looking great too.

 

[Howlrunner]

great paint! who made the bust?

The very first sentence in this thread: "This is the v1.0 bust that was sculpted by Daz71 of DHEffects."

Interesting thought on using fibre optics Fettster, sure that would look pretty groovy, but no, I've already painted on the spots (yellowy cream) and blended them down. I then went over each one with glow-in-the-dark paint (the paint fades to pretty much invisible once dried). It looks pretty cool in the dark. :thumbsup I'll try to photograph it, but I imagine it'll be really hard to capture on camera.

So yeah, spots are all done, ear hole is drilled out and earring painted, lips painted darker along the join and eyelashes are 3/4 done (I've done 1 and a half eyes - I ran out of lashes for the bottom lid of one of them). As Neytiri's eyes are larger then human eyes it actually takes one and a half false lash strips to cover the top eyelid of each eye.

Will pick up more eyelashes this evening and get her finished and get some more pics up.

The hair is gonna be a braided/plaited (whichever it is that Neytiri has!) wig, glued down, with individual strands cut off and glues on individually along the wig edge to feather things in as much as possible.

Waiting on beads for the choker arriving, and trying to figure out how to make her feather necklace...

 

[Original]

Nice paint up and the eyes look great!

 

[made007]

Sorry, i missed that, i saw it now, im a little blind when im on my cell phone, great work

 

[Howlrunner]

And here's where she's up to now (camera sucks taking normal pics in the evening by bulb light, so here's a couple of arty shots):

Probably won't be any more updates for a while as the next job will be the hair....