E2046 1/4 Ada Wong

The Japanese game, biohazard, was first created at around 1993 and released on the titular Sony PlayStation console back in 1996. It’s the world’s first so called “survival-horror” game that became popular. It eventually spawn, now 8 direct sequels and a bunch of spin-offs. The story takes place in a small mid-west American town called “Raccoon City” (HA), just your normal small to mid-size American city with a population of less than 50,000…..Everything seemed normal until one day, town folks ended up dead, some of whom looked like they’ve been eaten! So the local city department sent in their special unit called S.T.A.R.S or Special Tactical And Rescue Service to investigate. This unit contains eventually some of the better well know characters of the entire universe such as Jill Valentine (Mrs. “Jill Sandwich”), Christ Redfield and the titular bad guy Albert Wesker. While on investigation, Team 1’s helicopter crashed, sending Team 2 to the rescue. While investigating, they were attacked by some very vicious, very off dogs. The team escapes into what looks like an abandoned mansion in the middle of nowhere. Upon entering, they quickly discovered the mansion was completely amiss. There were puzzles, booby traps everywhere. Not only that, it was quickly discovered the entire place was overrun by zombies and other nonsensical creatures. With the team trapped within, they quickly discovered the entire house was a front that led to a huge underground research center owned by the nefarious Umbrella Corporation. In this base, the seemingly innocuous pharmaceutical company was conducting research into biological weapons and one of which they developed was the T-Virus that turned anyone infected into the undead and other creatures into deadly B.O.W’s or Biological Organic Weapons such as the artificially created “Hunters” and the “Lickers” based on human genome spliced with T-virus enhanced DNA. The baddest creature would be the “Tyrant” class super creature bred for battle. This serves as the end game boss creature.

After the success of the first game, a demand for a sequel became very evident. Resident Evil 2 was released back in 1998, for its 30 year anniversary, a complete remake was released in 2019. It features heroes Claire Redfield, the sister to Chris and rookie cop Leon Kennedy. Through Leon’s adventure, he would be a rather mysterious figure known as Ada Wong. A spy with a supermodel body, charms to boot….And a penchant of luring men in and then stab them in the back. Throughout his adventures, Leon got twisted and turned by Ada, who was out to capture the T-Virus for a rival chemical company. In the end, it seemed she sacrificed herself to save Leon life, or so Leon thought.

In Resident Evil 4, Leon, now a secret service agent working for the President, was sent to Spain to search for the whereabouts of the missing President’s daughter, all the leads pointed to a small Spanish village of Pueblo. Once arrived, Leon instantly noticed something was amiss. Further adventures and searches turned out not only the President’s daughter Ashley “equipped with ballistics” Grahams, but a familiar femme fatale face from Leon’s past…Ada did not die at the endo of RE2. Throughout his adventures, Ada seemed to have turned before finally showing her true colors by double crossing him. Ada finally met her comeuppance in RE 6, where she is killed unceremoniously trying to steal the new T-virus out of an infested Washington D.C. Throughout the series, she has become a very popular dark, but not dark enough sort of pseudo-semi-villain of the RE series, not truly evil, only doing whatever it takes to the highest bidder.

I actually got this kit from E2046 last year. I preordered it two years earlier but it took over a year before E2046 got enough orders, then get the molds in to produce the kit. I also paid a boatload, around $330 total for it, the kit, itself was almost $200, plus tax, plus the airmail fee…..Since the kit, like my Megan kit, is too heavy to be air shipped, I was forced to use SpeedPak, which cost me another $80 before it arrived in October of last year.

Upon opening the package, one is greeted by several large sized resin piece. The pieces are not many. The biggest and heaviest is her base. Again, don’t understand why E2046 included a large bottom piece that will never be seen once you cement them onto the bottom of the base. The base is more than strong enough to hold its own. I saved it as a base for future projects. Her main body is separated into three major pieces, her dress and her two legs. The legs are joint on her panty joint and the seam is small but still there but since it’s mostly hidden, you can get away with it. Her arms, upper body and head are separate, so is her hair. The other two big pieces are the steel girder that go on the concrete base to allow her to pose onto the base along with a broken off zombie hand. The smaller pieces mainly deal with her grappling hook pistol leg brace, and her sniper rifle. Two small clear pieces are also included for the sniper scope on top. DO NOT toss these as I almost did before I caught myself!

The kit also contains some multi-media parts. The biggest is the long pipe to simulate the sniper gun barrel. There is also a sheet of lace for her arm band and a solid lace strip for her neck. Finally, it took a bit to figure this one out but a sheet of what looks like tan faux leather is included. Took a bit to figure out this is the leg strap for her grappling hook pistol holster. No, it’s not a pistol, but a grappling hook gun like Batman’s batgrappling hook. Those who played the games know this.

A sheet with two pair of eyes are included. These eyes are weird in that they look upward since Ada here is looking through the eyepiece of a sniper scope. One thing is missing are all of her flower prints on her dress. Hopefully, E2046 can rectify this later on. Other than the heavy weight of the kit, the rest is normal.

Not much going on! Again, with resin kits like this, things are just beyond simple. I simply superglued her legs together, that’s it. And then the two metal girders. Other than that, main assembly complete.

As expected, the vast majority of this kit is all about painting, airbrushing, and your skills in wet and dry brushing.

First things first, have to track down the correct color for her dress. Finally, Vallejo’s scarlet red seemed to be a close match. But I instantly messed it up by diluting it with lacquer thinner, which absolutely slush it to junk! I had to get a second bottle and then had to wet brush it with cherry red to off set it and fill in the mess. Took me four days to get her dress down enough where the colors don’t clash and blended well enough that at least on camera, you can’t tell the mess up. It was hell to say the least. One thing missing on her dress though, and fans of RE 4 will instantly know this, are a lack of her flower prints on the dress. E2046 did not provide a decal sheet for the flower prints and I can’t find any suitable replacements. Hope they cured this problem with follow up versions.

Next, all fleshy bits were sprayed with Testor’s Flat Flesh, Base. Again, since Testor’s is now basically truly defunct, I only spared one coat…Sigh, gotta save the rest for future projects, I’ll do the rest of flesh painting with Apple Barrel or Vallejo paints. After that is dried, I brushed on the central panty liner with semi-gloss black. The tricky bit was the panty liner between her crouch since they hug tightly around her thighs. I first used a very thin brush with a bit of flat black to mark down the black edge, no, I did not use tape. The edge is so convoluted mix of compound curves and steep vertical to horizontal transitions, getting tape to stick is haphazard at best so I just eyeballed it. After the edge is dry, I used a slightly thicker brush to carefully fill the rest. Luckily, most of her buttock are hidden by the dress so you have a little leeway. After dried, I set that aside to work on her face.

With her face, I used the Flesh base as a start, then worked in Testor’s Flesh, Warm and some Apple Barrel sun kiss peach, Flesh base, shadow where needed. I painted her lips red and added shadows to her brows and lashes. Next is painting her eyeballs white before adding the eye decals. Here, I ran into a slight unfixable problem. The eye decals are great, and you get two pairs if you mess one up but the way they are designed and printed, and due to the contour of her face and the curvature of her eyeballs, once you put the eye decals on, it cause them to slightly go weird. From the side view, on camera, it look like the eyeballs are split, when you look head on, they look alright. You just have to look at her face “dead on” to see where her eyes are pointed. Don’t know how you can fix this but hopefully, again, E2046 fixed this in the later version.

I then finished painting the rest. Gunmetal for the metal barrel. Forest Green for the gun stock, semi-gloss black for the scope etc. The tricky part is the faux leather sheet. I figured out that you supposed to cut them down to size and design two leg wraps for her grappling pistol holster. I painted them flat black, then cut them based on the leg holster and the cut outs on her right leg.

The hardest part of the exercise is the base. It’s multi-dimensional and need multiple colors with multiple passes to get it right. I first sprayed the base with gunship grey. It’s a little dark but offers the correct shading for the base color. The metal girder, including the one hidden in the base itself, I sprayed and painted with Tamiya Gunmetal. Next, was two weeks worth of washes and dry brushing. I first used Apple Barrel Pewter grey to lighten the base, this required three coatings, then sequentially lighter colors before concluding with light ghost grey and dark ghost grey. These colors though, I had to use sparingly cause again, Testors is now defunct. After that, I used Tamiya Earth, flat brown, and Apple Barrel various dust and dirt colors to sequentially add dirt and mud to the base. For the metal girder, after the initial gunmetal spray, I went in with burnt metal, a very light flat black wash, then some Tamiya Red Brown and Mission Models light rust and dark rust. The last bit on the base is the zombie hand. I didn’t color it. Undead flesh is white and the base resin white is perfect. For the various scars, fallen off chunks of flesh, I painted those in bright red, then after dried, used various Apple Barrel purple to wash the wounds off before sealing it with a coat of flat black to denote festered and decomposing flesh. With that done, it’s time to bring everything together.

First, Ada herself. I assembled her heels to her feet…Always make me smirk a bit since in all the movies and games, main female leads always seems to run around with 3 inch heels….Wonder how their feet feel after spending the whole adventure in those…Anyways…After that, I inserted her legs into her dress. The fit is extremely tight. So tight in fact, I elected not to super glue her lower into her dress for ease of transportation to shows.

Her head is now superglued to the upper body along with her arms. Don’t worry about the seams. After her hair went on, I carefully took her two different laces and for the one with the pattern, carefully cut them down to size so they will wrap around her arm seams, thus, hiding them. I turned the joint to the inside to not show them. For the single none patterned lace, I wrap it around her neck joint. Now, there is a clear piece that looks like a broach so I colored it with purple from the inside sine it’s clear and gold on the outside before supergluing it onto the lace wrap to hold it down. It’s still a little floppy so I then carefully fold them and pat them down with a drop of superglue so it looked a bit more natural. After that is dried, I cut the neck wrap to size before inserting the upper body to the dress and superglued it down. Now, there is a little resin strap. This is her dress neck strap that goes around her neck. Unfortunately, after using a hair drier to heat it up and wrap it around Ada’s neck, the strap was 4mm too short on one side, forcing me to use AB epoxy putty to fix. Nothing special but again, hope E2046 notice this problem and fix it.

After the main lead has dried out, I assemble her weapon. The metal barrel doesn’t really fit that well into the stock so it forced me to putty it up and repaint. The scope, I carefully inserted to the two clear eye pieces into the scope, then put the scope onto the rifle. Had to use a hair drier to force her hands open. After inserting the rifle through, forced them shut again. It took a bit of adjustment so the rifle line up with her eye. This is important cause the eye decals are a bit off and you need her right eye to line up with the scope or else they would look even weirder.

After that was done, I removed her lower body. First, I carefully inserted both her leg straps into one side of the holster. After checking the fit, I carefully inserted her holster into the slot, then dapping slight amount of superglue here and there along the “trenches”, I wrapped the leather straps around her leg. Finally, with a pair of tweezers and a hobby knife, I inserted the other end through the holster before supergluing the strap onto the holster. Ada done! Well, almost….In one of the smaller zip lock bag, there is a very thin black colored string. Checking the pictures, I realized this denotes her shoe straps. Sighing, I carefully measure out the measurements and superglued them onto her shoes and across her feet. Now truly done, I set her aside to work on the base.

The base is simple. Again, the steel girders insertion point is deep and tight enough that I decided not to superglue them on for ease of transportation. Same with the zombie hand. I can get it just to cling onto the girder base without falling off so I left it as it is. After assembling, I decided to take it downstairs for a few more washes of dust, dirt and some more rusts here and there to add more color to it. Assembling is easy, getting Ada onto it wasn’t nearly as easy. This is because there are two plugs on the bottom of her feet. The right foot one goes into a hole on the concrete base, the left goes into a hole on top of the girder. Both are big, deep and tight so much so, I had to trim them down a little in order to fit in properly. However, I did not want to trim them too loose cause again, I want Ada to come off her base if the time comes. It took a while of cajoling and careful pushing and then trimming to finally get her to stick easily (enough that is) onto the base without the worry of her falling off or snapping the plugs. Model finally done!

Man, is she HUGE! At ¼ scale, she’s no slouch but on top of that base? That’s when her size becomes really apparent. And she looks all sorts of different than the other female figures out there, I mean, a pretty lady with a very big sniper rifle and a look that says, “DO NOT mess with me”! This fits Ada Wong’s personality to a T to say the least! A great model, highly recommended.

Donald Zhou

16 December 2022

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