Figure repaints of Skye's little siblings

More photos of the finished figures are here at my site and here at deviantart, and in this post you can find a more detailed look at the process of painting them.

Sunny

Unlike the others, Sunny isn't made out of a JP/W figure (she's got feathers and non-pronated wrists, after all), and was instead a Safari Ltd. minifigure of Sinornithosaurus millenii, which was a tiny enough species of dromaeosaurid it's about to scale with the adult JP/W raptor figures, even if the figure is intended to be an adult instead of a baby of a bigger species like the character is.

Before painting, I fixed the figure's warped leg (after trying hot water at first, just having the figure sit on the plastic mold Skye was packaged with for a week seems to be what worked in the end). It's still a bit twisted inwards, but all I needed was for the figure to be able to stand without always having one foot propped up on something. Perhaps Sunny's leg is just like that.

The figure is nicely feathered, but I wanted more fluff on the wings and face, and added them with epoxy putty (already fully cured in this photo - when sculpting with the material, it's recommended to wear nitrile or equally protective gloves).

First coat of yellow to cover the putty, and pink to the inside of the mouth.

Drying the first coat of paint on the featherless parts. The teeth are painted here, too, but they got grey on them so I redid them later.

The second and third coats of yellow came out pretty orange, but the grey colour of the putty and the vertical stripes on the back and neck are now covered. I wanted Sunny's patterns to match the theme of a lengthwise stripe on each flank that both of her parents have, and the three stripes the figure already had would have made things look too crowded, I think.

There was also a small bit of excess plastic on the tail fan from the factory mold, and I just cut that off.

One more coat of yellow to make it yellower, and another coat of grey on the unfeathered parts. I painted the claws, and gave her the patterns I prefer.

I think the yellow oval on the center of the back between stripes works as a repeat of the similar pattern on the tail fan, and other than the lengthwise stripes being a family resemblance thing, together with the colours the design reminds me of baby ratites. And in what way does this kid's colouring resemble her parents at all (besides red eyes and grey skin)? Well, the darker colour is brown and not black, but maybe it'll get darker as she grows, in which case it's Indo's colours, but reversed.

Also touched up the white underbelly a bit, since it was barely visible unless you flip the figure upside down. Now it covers the butt and extends up the neck a bit.

I added a bit of darker pink to the back of the mouth to suggest a throat opening. I started the eyes by covering the area they take with a darker, cooler red, then dotted in the black pupil (Sunny's are round like on a bird), and added some lighter, warmer red as a highlight. After adding tiny shine dots of white paint to the eyes, Sunny is done!

Starlight

This child was a Takara Tomy minifigure of the Indoraptor, which I picked both because it's very pretty for such a small figure, and because it seems to be the only Indoraptor mini that doesn't have sculpted-in quills. Whether or not Starlight is eventually going to grow quills, she doesn't have any as a baby.

This figure didn't need much changing, it even already had a lighter grey underbelly, and beautifully painted little teeth.

I painted the claws dark brown, and covered up the yellow stripe with black before painting a new one. Starlight is basically the rainforest variation of Jurassic World Evolution Indoraptors, which is my favorite one in the game, but of course a blue-green stripe is also a nice combination of her parents' stripe colours.

The eyes are gold paint, which was surprisingly difficult to paint pupils onto, because its surface is so glossy when it dries. I managed, but note for possible future gold-eyed figures.

I painted the stripe with paint labeled as turquoise, and figured we're done, but taking photos of the figure made me realize the stripe is too blue, so I added green. I used Delta as reference a bit since she had the same problem initially. According to the occasional online test I've taken, the colours between green and blue are the hardest for me to tell apart, so maybe that has something to do with how this seems to be a thing when I paint blue-green dinos.

How the stripe looked before adding green ↑
and how it looks after:

 Yeah, that's the shade I wanted.

Dawn

He was a Takara Tomy JW minifigure of Blue, from the same set as Starlight. I feel like the figure has kind of big arms for a Velociraptor, probably because it's meant to be a pencil stand, but it works well for Dawn being part Indoraptor.

I sculpted tiny opposable tumbs onto the hands with epoxy putty (probably ruining the pencil stand function):

Then I covered up the white outline of the blue stripe (for once a Blue figure I get actually already has the outline, and then I go and do this? how ungrateful of me!), and painted a light underbelly (+the inside of the palms) and dark brown claws. The grey putty already blends in pretty well, but I painted the thumbs, too, to make them look less like add-ons.

Here Dawn's already got some of the darker patterns, and the base colour of his eyes (the same warm red I used as the highlight on Sunny's eyes):

Then I added pupils, and drew lines of gold paint around them:

After a bit of dark grey to the right brow arch, to cover the bit of the blue stripe that's peeking from under the eye markings, I can mostly leave Dawn's cute face alone while I twirl him around painting the rest of his stripes.

Dawn's design is influenced by, besides elements already on the figure and what his parents look like, my idea about his dad's colouring not necessarily being typical for his species and horizontal stripes like Dawn's possibly being that instead, and also the design of one of the JP3 raptor figures, which has a grey and blue-based colour scheme. That figure is an adult male, while Dawn is still a baby, but he might develop orange display markings like the ones that figure has when older.

Dawn's got some shiny markings already, though. I went over the blue stripe with two different blues (one of them the turquoise I at first used for Starlight's stripe), both straight out of the bottle and mixed together, to make a gradient. And I also stuck a few specks of blue and opalescent glitter to the wet paint.

The glitter on the left is multicolour, I just fished out a couple of blue bits. I used the blue glitter on the darker blue parts and the opalescent glitter on the turquoise parts of the stripe. Glitter gets everywhere if you're not careful (and even if you are), so I did my best to only take out of the container the specks I put on the figure, with a toothpick touched on a damp paper towel for them to stick to one at a time.

The glitter is held on the figure only by the paint, so I carefully painted a little over the specks' corners, to keep them in place a little more strongly when the paint dries. Using some kind of sealant of the stripe is something I might do eventually, but the glitter's stayed put so far even though Dawn has gotten knocked over quite a bit during the photoshoot for the finished figures.

Dusk

This was the only figure in the bunch that's already a baby, namely the baby Blue that comes in a set with an Owen (whom I don't think I've actually taken out of the package, because I don't need an Owen, so if anybody else does, he's all yours).

Dusk's figure is smaller and more baby-proportioned than the others, which is why the character, too, is a particularly tiny and tottery hatchling, fitting in well as the runt of the clutch. The figure doesn't exactly not have pronated wrists, but is holding them palms-inwards enough I can pretend.

After covering up those blue stripes.

Drying the black gradients on the limbs and tail. (Ladybugs not to scale. Dusk is so tiny I figured I should clarify that.)

Spots and stripes, also in horizontal patterns like Dawn's. I didn't paint the claws a separate colour, since Indo's claws are black, too.

Speaking of features Dusk inherited from his dad: crooked teeth. Extra smol version - it's just dots of off-white applied with my smallest detail brush along the mouth line.

Adding the gradient sunset-rainbow stripe, with gold paint at the end near the eye. Starlight's stripe is a mix of Blue and Indo's stripe colours, while Dusk's stripe is the entire spectrum between blue and yellow, if you broke the colour wheel at green and spread it into a line of everything but green. In pastel.

Dusk is not very camoflaged like a baby animal would usually be, but then again he's also kind of an unusual animal to begin with, and the way his parents turned out in their in-universe creation is also in many ways impractical and wouldn't be caused by natural evolution. As I'm sure I've said before, the Indoraptor's design is ridiculous, even if it's a ridiculous I happen to like, so I reserve the right to make his children at least a little bit gaudy and weird. Also I like the idea of putting colours that wouldn't be out of place on a G1 My Little Pony on the offspring of a creature very nearly coloured like a gamer chair.

Finally, I made Dusk fluffy. The plumage is still baby down at this point, we'll see what this birb's skin decides to sprout as he gets older. I spread clear glue along the spine, the tops of the thighs and upper arms, around the tip of the tail, on the top of the head, and a little bit on the chest, and stuck fuzz I cut from a dark brown pipe cleaner onto the glue with tweezers. (The big scissors in the photo are my fabric scissors and not the ones I used to cut the pipe cleaner, they just happened to be within reach and were a good size to make sure Dusk doesn't fall over while being worked on.) I attached the fluff in two layers, first directly to the figure, and then after that had dried, some additions here and there, glued to the first layer of fluff to make it even fluffier.

After letting the glue dry and then carefully petting away the loose strands that didn't stick to the glue enough and would just get shed later anyway, Dusk is also done.