A.T.K. Girl Azure Dragon

This is A.T.K. Girl Qinglong or Azure Dragon from Eastern Model. 

 Man, these Chinese kits are getting more and more impressive. 

I have had a lot of bad luck with Chinese model kits in the past. I was introduced to Eastern Model kits and I have to say they are getting better and better. It's still not perfect, or as good as Kotobukiya or Bandai. but still great enough that I can recommend it without any issues.

Let's start with box art. 

There is a high quilty glossy artwork on the front. Her beautiful pictures really grab your eyes, inspiring you to pick this one up. 

The box is big, with pictures to present the extra parts and what the kit would look like once done. 

The kit was filled with lots of plastic. 

It had alot of clear parts. The casting of clear plastic was good with no bubbles. Still, my previous experience tells me that these are going to be brittle. 

This kit has this great-looking stand, with a printed logo on the base. This base is a great addition, but the brittle plastic works against it here as the tight-fitting joints usually end up breaking. 

Few extra parts. Clear plastic tube for the flying thingie, and the wire for her tail. 

A lot of extra parts in the bag. The hands were already snipped out of their sprues. The hair part is made of hard rubber-like material.  

And the manual. Same picture in the front, with simple design. 

Inside was a high-quality photo of her finished kit. The kit in this picture is a very clean-looking kit, but I can tell you that it's going to be hard to get that clean-looking kit. 

The parts list. 

It has one water slide decals for her eyes. 

And this. I guess it's there to make the tail section easier to build. But no. This part was annoying. 

This kit was a pain in the ass to build, but here is the finished kit built straight out of the box without the decals. I did clean up a lot of parts, but I left a few sections out because I will be painting them. 
 

It looks good, but there were a lot of panel gaps here and there. Some places had weirdly placed nub locations, so cleaning them was either hard, or it affected how the parts fit. Each part needed to be cleaned carefully. And the flesh marks. Wow, there were a lot of flesh marks. There were also a few parts here and there, where it wasn't molded properly, so I had to either reshape them or remake them.

Still, the parts fit properly. I didn't have to trim any pegs or relocate parts. The instruction was clear and easy to follow. There were a lot of small parts which were pain, but it was doable. 

The parts are sculpted beautifully. You can see it in her stomach. There are some awkward shapes and here and there, and the proportion is off just slightly, which seems to be common with Chinese kits. I can't really place my finger on it, but her hip joint is off, and it looks weird when posing in straight standing.  But overall it still looks good, and I can't really complain.  

Oh. One thing I want to complain about is her shoulder joint. The torso is designed in such a way, she is holding her arms out and cannot put them close. 

Here is what she looks like with her armor on. 

Her busy design really pops out here. The dark color armor with contrasting light skin color really brings her out. That being said, the busy design is also her downfall, as she is hard to pose. Everything likes to get in the way and most of the time, parts like to pop out. That backpack is a disaster in that regard. It's too small, so the proportion is a bit off, and her arm armor likes to get in the way. 

The tail is great. Thanks to the wire, it can be posed, but parts like to rotate around, and it's not very solid. Also, the proportion thing is off here again. The way the tail is sticking out, you just can't help but wonder what is wrong. The tail also gets in the way of plugging in the stand. Thankfullly, it can stand on its own very well. 

The leg is weird as well. It looks like someone pulled it out, so both the upper part of the leg and the lower parts of the leg appear to be stretched out.

Oh, that leg can be posed as a reverse-jointed leg like a chicken. 

It's cool, but once again. something feels off. 

The best pose I found with this kit is lightly armored, or at least with its backpack off. 

So to paint, I took everything apart. which ended up being hard due to the small part and brittle clear part. I went over each part for fitment, and I used Tamiya putty for large panel gaps like her arm. I had one part which I had to rebuild due to a casting issue, but it wasn't as big as it sounds. still, this cleanup
ended up taking so much of my time, especially on her tail. 

Here are the pictures of the finished kit. Starting from her unarmored version.

I did something different with her skin tone. I used plastic color as the base tone and shaded it using Mr. Color Lascivus line. So as part of the cleanup, I made plastic goo and used that to fill in the parts in the gap. Once everything was dry, I filed them to a smooth finish, which took a few tries, because her torso was just... sigh... a lot of work. 

The end results in a bit of lose of detail, but I think it came out alright. It is a shading technique I am still working on, but I think I can make this work. I also built this with an optional A.T.K. naked body and the paint work came out great. I can't show it here, but feel free to check out my twitter for it. 

And here are the pictures with armor on. Instead of dark purple, I used blue to go with her name, Azure Dragon. I like how it cam out. 

I think I spoke a lot of bad things about this kit so far. That is not because I hate this kit and I want to bash this kit. I love this kit, and I want to point out the downside, in the hope that E-Model fixes it. The build was a chore and it was harder than most kits. But the end result was amazing and very satisfying. I think that the tail section gave me PTSD, but it is the most satisfying part of this finished kit.  I have built several A.T.K. girl kits so far and I am getting more and more impressed, and I can't wait to build their other kits. As for this. I recommend this kit, but I advised you that you will need to work on it. 

Oh did I mention that there are enough parts to make both armored and unarmored versions of this kit?

My mind was blown when I found out.