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I picked up the Nina Dolono kit at a convention several years ago, long before ever having heard of either the character or her creator, Nirasawa. The artist's designs tend toward the stylized organic, and can be seen in many of his pieces which have been released through Fewture. Based on my subsequent purchase of their Nina Darkness and Guillotina kits, I think it's safe to say that this piece was a recast. I try to avoid purchasing recasts, as I think it's important to support the folks who take the time and effort to produce garage kit, but often it's difficult to tell what is and is not an original. Rule of thumb is if you find a kit significantly less expensive than any place else you've seen it, you're looking at a recast. OK, off the soap box...
This Nina Dolono is a softer rendition of the character -- Nina Darkness and Nina Gillman have much more realistic and delicate features. This one is much more generalized and cartoonish. Not that it's a bad thing, it actuall looks pretty good. Very little assembly or modifications were required, as the kit was cast in about 3 pieces, not including the base. There's a small chain hanging from the "sword" she's holding. Other than that, the entire kit was cast in a cream colored resin that carved and cleaned up fairly easily.
I painted the basic skin tone first, followed by a barely browned down hue for shadows, then a slightly lighter color for highlights. Since the piece looks very anime-like, I decided to keep the painted contrasts fairly low. After masking off the skin areas with liquid latex, I airbrushed a dark gray for her spidersuit. This was followed by light gray highlights, and a thin black ink wash. The wash settled into the recesses and cracks in her suit, but left a bit of a gloss shine in those areas. I killed the shine with a pass of dullcote, then drybrushed a light gray on selected highlights. Hair was hand painted brown, followed by a brown ink wash. Facial details were painted with a liner brush, though the eyes and "N" on her forehead were done with a rapidograph.
