So I decided to surprise her with a model from Ninja All-Stars. Of course, I partially ruined the surprise, because I told her I was painting up a chibi for her. But I didn't show her it while I was working on it (I'm bad at surprises, apparently).
Excuse the pictures, I was so excited to ship it off, that I forgot to take "studio" pictures of the model.
I knew that I wanted to do a female chibi for her. Each clan has their own female ninja, and there's some ronin and characters too. Finally, I decided to go with the Kunoichi from the Yamazaru clan, as she's my favorite out of all of them.
When looking at her, I knew I wanted to have her running across a roof top and used a tutorial I'd found a couple years ago that used spaghetti, two sided tape and tin foil. I built the base out of foam core board and got to work on it.
She definitely needed to have pink hair, I think it's because of the pigtails. Also Sophie's favorite color is purple, so I made sure to put her in a purple uniform and she ended up with purple eyes too, because it seemed like the only color that would work.
The roof was painted with various browns, I had thought about black for the roof too. But in the end I decided that it might end up too dark with all the purple on the model.
Also, since the lower section of the base was black, it seemed like it would look weird with black roof tiles too.
I'm really pleased with how the metals turned out too, especially the headband. The daggers, I'm not 100% on but they turned out pretty well. The features on them are a little rounded though.
When it was all finished, I mailed it off to Sophie and a few days later she received it.
I am happy to say that she loved it! It now sits on her painting desk. She's now talked more about picking up Ninja All-Stars, haha.
I'm so glad that I was able to do this for her, even if I partially ruined the surprise.