Resin print

1. Wash the print with 90%+ isopropyl alcohol and a soft brush to remove uncured resin. Rinse with water and let it dry for at least 30 minutes. Work in a ventilated room.
2. Cure it under a UV lamp, following your resin's instructions.
3. Cut the supports and smooth the stubs with 400-grit sandpaper or a hobby knife.

PLA print (filament)

1. Sand large surfaces with 120 grit, then 200, then 400. From 200 up, wet-sand. Keep coarse grit away from corners and fine details.
2. Apply a coat of filler primer (primer that fills). Sand again. Repeat until you can no longer feel the print lines under your finger.
3. Fill any small holes left with spot putty, then sand again.

Primer: white

For 2D use white primer. Anime colours are saturated (orange, yellow, light blue) and cover poorly over grey or black. DBZ repaint painters say that over grey they needed many coats of orange and yellow. Spray from 25–30 cm in short passes, then let it dry for at least an hour, ideally overnight.

Planning trick: after priming, put the figurine under a single lamp, from the direction you want the light to come from, and take photos from several angles. The photos show you exactly where shadows and highlights fall when you paint the colour blocks.

• Realistic: smooth shift from shadow to light, many tones, wash.
• 2D with transitions: 3 clear tones, but the shadow edge is slightly softened. Black outline.
• Pure 2D: 2–3 colour blocks with hard edges, no blending, plus a thick black outline. The eye reads it as a drawing.

1. A single light direction, chosen at the start (usually from above, front-left). All the shadows on the figurine must be on the same side.
2. The shadow is the same colour, just darker. Orange gets a dark orange shadow, not grey or black. For livelier shadows, push it slightly towards red or purple.
3. Hard edges, no blending. No wash and no softening (in pure 2D). Every colour block ends abruptly.
4. 3 tones per surface: shadow, base, highlight. At most 5. Each new tone covers a smaller area than the one before.
5. Saturated colours and high contrast. Pick colours that read from a distance, not colours that are realistic.
6. The black outline comes last and it's thicker than you think. Lines that are too thin disappear from a distance.

“Same hue” shadow, with examples

Top row: correct shadow (same hue, darker). Bottom row: shadow made with black, which looks dirty.

Skin in 3 tones

Shadow

base + a little red-brown so it stays warm. Don't add black.

Base

a clean, light skin tone, slightly more saturated than in realistic painting.

Highlight

base + white or a very light skin tone, only in bands on the cheekbones, nose, shoulders, pectorals.

On the face, anime shadows have simple shapes: a band under the hair on the forehead (the shadow cast by the hair), a crescent on the side of the face opposite the light and a patch under the chin on the neck. The nose only gets a small triangle of shadow.

1. Base flat over all the hair.
2. Shadow: on each strand, the half facing away from the light. Plus a large shadow at the root, where the hair meets the head.
3. Highlight: a narrow band on the lit side of each strand, or a horizontal band running across all of them (the typical anime “shine” bands).
4. White dots on 2–3 tips, then black outline on every strand.

Black hair: don't paint it pure black, because the shadow would no longer show. Use black mixed with a little blue as the base, pure black as the shadow and light blue as the highlight. Golden-blond hair: yellow as the base, golden orange as the shadow, pale yellow, almost white, as the highlight.

• Every fold has a lit side and a shaded side. In 2D the shadow is an elongated triangle, pointing towards where the fold starts (elbow, belt, armpit).
• The belt, collar and cuffs cast a shadow on the cloth underneath: a thin dark band right below them.
• A loose fighting gi has few, large folds. Don't shade every small sculpted crease; pick the big ones.
• White clothes: the shadow is bluish or purplish grey, not neutral grey. Pure white is only the highlight.

What to draw the lines with

• Black paint slightly thinned so it flows from the brush tip: Vallejo Model Color Black 70.950 or Army Painter Matt Black.
• Black ink (e.g. Vallejo Game Color Black Ink): flows more easily and gives blacker lines. After ink you must apply matt varnish, because ink is glossy.
• Detail brush 0, 00 or finer, with a very good tip. For long edges, an angled flat brush helps. Rest your hand on the table or your little finger on the figurine.

Where the lines go

1. The outer outline of each part: head, hair, neck, hands, clothes. The thickest line.
2. Where two materials meet: skin and cloth, hair and forehead, belt and cloth.
3. In recesses: deep folds, between fingers, under the pectorals. Thinner lines.
4. Hatching (optional): 3–4 parallel diagonal dashes in large shadow areas, for a comic-book look.

Don't outline every detail. Too many lines make the figurine busy and dirty. Draw the line thicker on the shaded side and thinner on the lit side: that's how ink looks in a drawing.

Anime eyes, step by step

1. The white of the eye in an off-white (e.g. Vallejo Model Color Ivory 70.918).
2. The iris: a large oval touching the top line of the eye, in the eye colour.
3. A black pupil in the iris and a shadow on the top of the iris (the eyelid's shadow).
4. A thick black top line (eyelid and lashes), a thin bottom line or just a dash. A small white dot in the iris, in the same place in both eyes.

1. Paint exactly as in pure 2D: base, hard shadow, hard highlight.
2. Mix an intermediate tone on the palette, 50/50 between shadow and base. Apply it as a narrow band right on the shadow edge.
3. Do the same between base and highlight.
4. Optional: a very thin glaze of the shadow tone over the edge between blocks, to smooth it.
5. The black outline stays, just slightly thinner than in pure 2D.

The rule that doesn't change: still no wash over the whole surface. Wash runs everywhere, dirties the flat colours and ruins the drawn look.

The full order for a whole figurine

1. Print prep and white primer.
2. All the base coats, from the inside out: skin, then clothes, then hair.
3. All the shadows, material by material.
4. All the highlights, then the white dots.
5. The eyes.
6. The black outline, top to bottom, so your hand doesn't touch it once it's done.
7. Matt varnish over everything (required if you used ink).

Why this order: with flat colours, if you go over an edge you simply cover it with the neighbouring colour. The outline at the end hides any uneven edge between blocks.