Embracing my inner Sid Toy Story and commiting crimes on pony figures

Plans and preparations.

First thing I did was looking for the most fitting figurine. My choice fell on DJ Pon3, because of the mane. It’s not quite like what Aurora has, but certainly the closest. I also got a random pegasus figure, since I needed the wings now.

The plan was fairly simple. Paint the figure, paint the fine details (eyes, cutie mark, microplastics), add glasses made from some small rings, and an earring from an even smaller one!

Finding the right paints was fairly easy. Rings, however, were a doozy. One problem was that I had no figurine size reference, so, I didn’t know how small the rings had to be. Turns out small plastic rings are a somewhat of a novelty too! I ended up getting support rings for underwear, which are 1cm in diameter. But the smaller one, the one for the earring had eluded me till the day the figures had arrived, December 17.

A bit before that I went to a mall, and I saw some glitter, which instantly gave me the Idea to use it for the shine, instead of painting it.

After getting the paints I did a bit of a practice. Ended up getting some new brushes also. Tried mixing glitter with the paint, that didn’t work that well. Then I tried some model glue that was rotting away in a dark corner, and it had potential!

The horrors.

First thing I had to do was to get rid of the unicorn and add the wings. The “forehead cut” was so good that it actually made things worse, by leaving a flat spot on the resin. Luckily I quickly figured that I should use the ‘corn to make a lock of hair.

… Aand the model glue didn’t work on resin. Well, super glue it is.

One fear I had prior to this was that the wings might not work out at all, as the 2 figurines have completely different manes, one of which covered some of the body. That was for nothing, as this part turned out to be the smoothest one.

Looks a bit weird, but surely the paints will help out. Right?

The pains.

First color to be applied was the color of the fur. This one went pretty well! Next, the mane. I also got some painters tape to cover parts up when necessary. OK, this went well too! Now I need to remove the tape and oh god. So much of the darker purple on the fur. Guess I’ll just use some leftovers of the first color, of which... I have nearly none... And I’ve got no clue how to remake it, oops.

Then there are the eyes. Just a single one to paint, while the other one I decided to make closed, for my own convenience.

...Somehow I butched the easy one, but did decently on the hard one. I don't how I did this. Again, no fur paint. Cutie mark turned out... fine.

Plastics everywhere everywhere.

The way I wanted to the glitter was to use that model glue by applying it to the darker parts, and then put a brush full of glitter right away, as the glue dries instantly. The process it self wasn’t so bad, until I paid attention to my table. Glitter all over the place. Oh well.

The glasses were not so bad. The 1cm rings are a bit bigger than I wanted, but within reason.

Ah, yes, the earring. I never ended up finding a ring small enough to work. Buuut, I did notice that Christmas bulbs have small, partial rings. These could work! And using 2 halves seemed promising… until the super glue couldn’t do the thing it should do. I wasn’t gonna look for a third glue to use, so, I chose to not add the earring.

Finally, I did some matte coating for the sole purpose of making sure that the glitter on the figure cannot break away. That work only to an extent.

Done and done.

I wanted to take pictures for all of the process, bad ended up focusing on the painting and stuff. As such, most of what I can show was the end result, Which is:

Yeah, who would’ve thought that paint for the first time in years, with barely any experience to begin with would go badly.

So, what did I learn from this? Well:

• Don’t spare the paints, having the brighter purple one would’ve saved me soo much time.
• Have a better workspace for stuff like this than a tiny desk.
• Matte coating is not as powerful as I previously thought.
• On glitter: No nono never ever again in my fucking life. No

...

Looking at the end result a few days later, I honestly thinks it is not THAT bad. Not as bad as it could’ve been, that is. The highlight has to be the eye. It’s not… good, but, given the process, and the fact that I never painted a such fine detail on a scale so small… honestly it’s not too terrible.

I also think that the glitter is still the best option given that it is basically what those microplastics would look like outside of my own artsyle.