Kakashi Hatake statue, The Paint Master

We are excited to share our painter Katsushige Akeyama’s masterful paint work!

Before starting mass production, we provide a high quality resin casting for Akeyama to create the paint master.

The paint master is an important step in the process. Every detail must be accounted for because the factory will use this as a sample to paint the rest of the production pieces.

■Clean Up
The painter’s work starts by inspecting and cleaning up the resin casting, removing any seam lines and filling in any holes, gaps or chips.

The painter uses sandpaper to polish the piece and putty to fill in any gaps.

As you can see there are many steps and tools that go into making the piece paint ready.

Also at this time, the painter will test fit the parts and make sure everything is tight and ready for the next step.

■Priming
Before painting, the painter will prime the sculpture.

The primer color depends on the character, for example a flesh color will use a brighter pastel base tone.

■Masking
In the next stages, we mask off areas we don’t want covered with paint, using masking tape.

You can see the many different stages used to paint and detail the head.

Then, finish.

■Red paint
It’s easy for the color red to be affected by the base color since it cannot hide the base much, therefor we use pink as our base color, helping us achieve a beautiful finish.

■Dry brushing, Shadow effect and Washes
To bring out even more detail in the statue we apply shading, creating a shadow effect. We also dry brush a lighter color shade on raised areas of the sculpture and apply a thinned down wash which gets into all the hidden details of the piece.