Ika Musume

figma #123, Ika Musume

 and my Custom Ika beach set

produced by Max Factory

made of ABS, PVC

sold for 3333 jpy

 released 2012/04/24

It wasn’t until posting about the beach set I made that I realized I never actually put up a review for this fig, so I figured I’d edit it in.

Gotta say, I’m really glade they did a figma of this character, I wouldn’t have guessed that they would.

 

One really neat thing about this fig I’m sure everyone would be quick to notice is the long poseable tenticals she comes with.

 

As neat as it is, I do worry a bit about using it too much and braking the wire inside.

This is a all around awesome figure, and I appreciate that the dress is flexible unlike some older figma with solid dresses.

I’ll also be going over the custom beach set I made for my ika figma over the last few days.

 

So the other day I was at a Michel’s craft store looking for project materials and such when I found this, thought it would be perfect for the beach I had been thinking of doing. It cost about $4, too bad I don’t live near a beach.

 

 

So after a few minutes of thinking about the design, I cut some blocks out of some foam poster board stuff I got, simple enough really, the material is a lot easier to work with than the crap I made the street corner out of my my fate/zero fig in the previous post.

 

The images I printed out were also easy enough, the pic I used was just a screen cap from the ika ending credits which i cropped to fit.

The printed images are stuck in place just using some dollar store glue sticks.

 

So once I made sure to glue up all the edges good so no sand would leak out, I filled her up.

 

So this is how the finished product looked.

 

obviously it’s a bit small. I don’t exactly have a lot of free space on hand in my room.

 

and yeah it’s pretty obvious the sand didn’t match the background image very well.

So after showing the pic to some people who agreed the thing was too small and looked odd becuase of the different colored sands, I decided to remake the whole darn thing.

This time around I made it twice as wide. free space be damned.

 

On the second try, I also gave it a decorative trim. also used a different image which I think looks a lot better, of course I gave it some editing at the bottom so the sand would blend better.

Accidently printed out too much of the sand texture, so I figured I’d build a sand castle out of it. but then it hit me that the foam stuff would be a better base to use than just the paper alone, so I got to carving and gluing.

 

while this was a bit more complicated than the main set up, it’s kinda funny that this didn’t take nearly as long to do.

 

I didn’t really care how crummy it looked at this point becuase this was something that would be better off not being perfect.

 

after I got the basic model for the castle made, I sprayed it down with some clear paint I had, and while the surface was wet I sprinkled sand onto the castle, I did this repeatedly until it was completely covered.

 

Not half bad I think.

oh and bellow are the images I printed out for this in case you’d like to try building something like this yourself.

between the sand and  boards, the materials shouldn’t cost more than $7 to make one of your own, or even less if you use cardboard and gather up your own sand.