Star Wars Episode VII 12 inch Rey - Jakku

Just from sheer luck/fate/serendipity, I happened across the last 12 inch "Not Titans" Force Awakens Rey at my nearest Toys R' Us, after being 'gone' from the shelves for well over a year. Full price still, but cheaper than ordering online and waiting.

INITIAL FIGURE

Once again, a remarkable amount of work went into this mold. They didn't get stingy with details on her arm-wrap sleeves. Trust me when I say your average Marvel Titans comes nowhere near this level of intricacy. Like Cassian, you can tell right away that this is Daisy Ridley but cartoon-ized.

DISASSEMBLY AND PRIMING

Unfortunately, like all budget toys, QA won't catch everything. On the hair you can see the remnant of the tab where this head piece was once connected to the sprue. Took no time at all to X-Acto it off though. Same was found on her staff.

So this is after I dipped the face in dark chocolate. Kidding, this is after wiping the face away with acetone.

This picture takes some explaining. Her staff was coated in a completely different primer (Rust-Oleum Sandable Gray), while her whole head was primed with Krylon White.

Now you can see that the arms are also primed, but not the rest of the body. The reason for this is everything primed are parts that are made of PVC. If you didn't see my Cassian custom, I learned that raw/exposed PVC does NOT hold on to finisher at all. This time I needed all of that coated by something. Fortunately, I intended to repaint her arms and hands skin color anyway, so it all worked out.

BASE COLOR

This is with the new base colors laid down. I added the missing grey-brown for the pants; put down Antique White for the sleeves and shirt; and then added the olive green to the strap and boot soles. Unfortunately I think I made it a little too green, but fortunately the shoe polish phase helped re-adjust back to an olive-brown. I jumped the gun here as you can see I already added shadow to her back and arms. This proved to be a mistake as you'll see in a bit.

This is the head with a fresh coat of brown and flesh.

SHADOWING AND HIGHLIGHTS

This is after my initial sweep of the ol' Shoe Polish Trick. Now unfortunately, it did not lay down AT ALL like I expected; a lot of my paint as well as the original paint absorbed much more shoe polish than the other two figures. The only place it really worked was the sand brown body shawl-thinger. Everything else had to be corrected or repainted. The pants were especially disastrous.

So opting out of the Shoe Polish for the hair, I did a much more traditional wet wash of very very dark brown for the hair.

For the staff I've already done a dry brush of FolkArt Gunmetal and did a good Brown shoe polish rub all over the strap and handle.

Here you can see my 'patented' blush wash. Unfortunately the primer came down weirdly uneven on her left side so this face is very 'au naturale' on certain angles.

I did a much more subtle dry brush of FolkArt Metallic Bronze on the hair for that nice glinting effect. Daisy Ridley's hair definitely had no highlights during the film, so I had to make it accurate.

FLESHTONES AND FACE

I was extremely lucky to have run into this particular bottle of Anita's Craft Paint in Pumpkin orange for dirt cheap at a second hand store (despite being super cheap to begin with). A solid wash of Pumpkin/Flesh mix set in this subtle tan that Daisy Ridley has in all of her Jakku scenes.

Here's the face with said Pumpkin wash. This really interesting freckle/blemish effect came out. Definitely sells became a face that's been sun-beaten by trotting the desert for endless days.

Base color for the flesh and lips. I went way easier on the red here as my mixture for Cassian was definitely too pink, even for a blood-filled human being.

I think I finally found the right technique for eyebrows, as it definitely looks like a mess of hair here instead of a solid block of color.

The eyes for the white as well as some error corrections on the lips.

Now here's where I learned a new lesson about metallic paints: they don't blend exactly the way you expect. Daisy Ridley has hazel eyes, almost this weird pearlescent not green/not gold color. Now I initially figured that I can use Metallic Emerald as a base, then wash over that with a Metallic Antique Gold. Now before the dots of the eyes came down, it didn't look too bad. But as soon as those came down, the read of the irises went completely out the window. From far away and even in these pictures she looks ridiculously bug-eyed, as if Rey just got back from a cornea exam. But you can still make out the emerald green, but not enough to register as part of the irises.

Unfortunately this step is basically irreversible, as trying to erase black from white will still yield an unpleasant 'grey' presence in the eyes, forcing me to start over. BUT, starting over means redo-ing the pink wash and eyelashes which already looked good and so not worth redo-ing. So I left it there as a reminder of what to do next.

Also, this time, I did a highlight pass on the lips instead of the dark wash. Much more accurate this time around. However, I'll most likely use the dark wash again depending on the movie star.

DIRT AND WEAR

To represent the abundance of Jakku sand, I used a much browner color than I did for Cassian and Jyn, as Jakku and Jedha are not the same place (wink wink). A good dry brush all around, except this time I didn't go crazy on the boots. Jakku sand is apparently looser as in all of the screengrabs I can find there isn't actually that much sand sticking to her boots.

COMPLETED FIGURE

Honestly, not my best work out of the three so far, as I made mistakes that were very difficult to undo and involved more repaints than I have time for. With that said it still looks freakin' good.

I also learned a new lesson: do NOT use clogged aerosol cans. Her head came out to a perfect matte finish because I switched cans at that point. A brand new aerosol can behaves completely differently from a clogged/old one. Yes, you figured something so obvious would've hit me back when I did Jyn Erso, but nope.

More close ups of the staff and face.

Group shots with Cassian and Jyn. Too bad this team-up can't happen in the official timeline.
 

BEFORE AND AFTER

Despite being the weakest entry yet, it's still leaps and bounds in detail from its original state. It's actually kinda funny how both still look bug-eyed, but in different ways.

Of course, you can't have Rey without Finn, so he's up next, Star Wars-wise anyway. I'll likely put him on the back burner as he isn't very challenging. Plus I'm in love with the Justice League figures' posability, so I really want to see what they look like "as they really should" in much more dynamic poses than I can pull off with these Hasbro figures. Until next time!
-A.K.