who in their right mind

Research & Prep

first step was research for supplies. ie: what hobby paints do i buy? (I brought this set as well as this primer and this varnish; they worked together. apologies for the amazon links, see if your local art supply store has it). which places do i buy nendo bases? (see below). was there a cheaper way to not have to buy a "full" in box nendo for every single part? (yes, see below). etc.

the most helpful videos/sites were:

ChibiChopShop (and their youtube series). this is where you'll buy your individual parts. their search navigation is ass but they've got a lot. you can also sell unneeded parts to them for some cash.

CCS's expansive custom nendo video is almost too much information but a great research intro.

ebay - where i brought my 3 "bases" with the box. there might be specialized places that are cheaper, idk.

this painting video really simplified things (and where I got my primer/varnish rec).

there are sites that "print" custom face plates; i didn't need any, but go look into them if you feel like your blorbo needs it.

i was in a position where i didn't mind spending a little cash (~$200-300 USD), but i'm not doing this for other characters. my other limiting factor was space: i'm working out of a 1ft x 1ft space in my bedroom, so complex applications like airbrush (and/or very smelly paints) was out of the picture. generally this meant i stuck with manual brushing and water-based primer/paint/varnish.

Buying the Base & Parts

second step was figuring out which nendo "bases" best fit both characters. (i use the word base since technically you can mix/match everything from hands/arms/legs, but it's easier logistically if you buy a "base" nendo and go from there).

with a bit of hasty photoshop recolor work, and lots of looking at nendoroid-heaven (the most comprehensive list of existing nendos with pictures), i rigged up a crude approximation:

(zihark, head) 1508 Wuxian

(zihark, body) 2317 Richter Belmont

(bright eyes, head) 2289 Themis

(bright eyes body) 1378 Zeyan Li

(some of this changed as reality met my expectations. :p if you're unfamiliar with the characters, reference picture on left, nendo stuff on right)

there are some minor parts not listed (eg her cane, his sword, her glasses I stole from an Alucard I already had), but I went ahead and got his head, her head, her body on ebay. The rest was CCS.

things i wished i had known before I started (at this point): while most nendo parts are interchangeable, not all hair pieces (front+back) have a default seam that works for every piece; pay attention if there's a convex or concave curve (i had to return one "back" hair piece, and this current one still isn't quit perfect, but i "moulded" the front to the back by wrapping a rubber band around both and letting it sit for ~2 months in a very hot summer since i figured these are slightly flexible plastic pieces). that hunch worked.

block out a month or two for all the parts, paints, and supplies to come in and to check they fit with each other.

Returning Unnecessary Parts

I live pretty minimally, and once I had gone through the parts that were delivered, I wanted to get rid of any unnecessary parts.

Luckilly, as mentioned, ChibiChopShop will accept a pile of Nendo part returns for a nominal amount of money. Here's what I sent to them as part of that process (ie unused parts). Note the back part of the hair (395) for zihark that didn't work because the seam was incorrect.

(2289's hair also didn't work for bright eyes so I went with something else in a second purchase to CCS.)

Painting

when everything is actually in, and you're ready for the painting bonzanna, you're gonna want to dedicate 4-5 days to it (between letting the various phases dry). there's three big steps: primer, paint, varnish. do not skip any.

i personally started with zihark's hair because it was both the biggest and least complex part (the hobby paints i selected had a default shade 'sky blue' that was a 1:1 for his hair, no mixing needed).

i had two brushes: one high quality small thin one (see below) that came with the hobby paints, and a larger flat (see above) one for large messy areas (like primer/varnish). that was fine.

things i wished i had known: it is gonna look butt ugly after the primer and those first few coats. it's fine; you haven't ruined it. mix paints WELL before you apply so they don't end up streaky (unless if that's an effect you wanted). warhammer + hobby mini painting subreddits are going to be your friend for random one off questions.

the first day i spent about ~6 hours laying out the primer and slowly layering the big flat areas. my arms and eyes were sore as hell then. successive days was still a moderate amount of painting but lots of little breaks while letting coats + detail dry.

i was focusing on zihark first because he had a lot more reference available and imo i wanted to get him right. (if you look closely, i actually changed my mind halfway through on bright eye's chest piece.)

relatedly, something i sorta figured out midway that a limited color pallet always works best; given zihark is an official character, his is already pretty tight with the grey-purple/blue triad. bright eyes started looking best when i started using a gold/brown/red/warm scheme for everything except for the black bottom half; you'll notice i tinted her overcoat a cream-white instead of cold white. given her hair/eyes are also a brown/gold/yellow, i was reasonably sure this would gel well.

by day 3 things start looking decent.

(bright eyes detail/trim work in foreground, zihark's stuff drying before the varnish stage in the background.)

since his hair was done first i let it sit 24 hours after the paint and before the varnish. (I let it sit 3 days after the varnish and before starting to put pieces together so it "cures" fully. rinse and repeat for all parts.)

some parts didn't need painting (eg, bright eyes' hair) ~ here's the full collection of parts before assembly.

Parts on the right were bright eyes' parts waiting to be varnished, parts on left were the last long drying batch. incidentally i took this time to add his scar under his left (to us) eye using a brown colored pencil - it's hard to see from this angle but there.

aand ~*assembled*~!

since more of you are familiar with zihark, see below for front/back pictures.

you can see where i goofed a little in the bottom left of his jacket and not blending the paints properly; but at least it's on the back. the X straps get a little shaky but that's mostly since i was painting over some pretty bumpy subtle shapes; it's not as noticeable with direct light.

have another picture of them in my current fanshrine (not including the larger zihark figurine). these pictures are also going up on the (online) zihark fanshrine too. :)

honestly they turned out better than i thought they would :3

the only changes I'd do in hindsight is to paint her glasses/cane accent colors gold instead of silver; if I ever do another nendo i'll take the time to do those pieces, but it's so minor. otherwise, putting these in my lil' fanshrine with a bit of museum wax to keep them standing (without damage)~

Overall, while it took a few months to do right, absolutely worth doing if you have a blorbo you've loved for 10, 20 years and have thought 'i wish they had a nendo' more than three times. :>

Personal Context

Last year I printed ashes & ghost - my R18 Fire Emblem Fates: Gunter/Corrin doujinshi. I've had a long familiarity with collecting (JP) doujin as well as working on western comics/anthologies; have printed ~3 such anthologies with Fireball previously to a&g.

Fireball initially was highly recommended by @kmclaude years ago and kept my attention for its consistent quality & lack of kink art restrictions especially back then when very few other printers operated in that space.

Over the years I've looked extensively into other commonly mentioned comics printers, going as far as getting print samples from most of them; however places like Mixam have heavy restrictions on kink content (which is different than "basic" NSFW) and the quality is often uneven. For now, Fireball and now MCE are the only two that consistently meets all of my criteria. Your needs may be different.

Another thing I should mention is everything in this post is done in linux and FOSS programs (krita, libreoffice). I do have decades experience in Adobe suite, but one of my personal goals with printing a&g was to show that it is viable to print professional quality works on a linux machine given the state of current censorship by big tech.

Photo Comparison

In all photos, Fireball is on the left and MCE is on the right for consistency. MCE's cover here was glossy; fireball matte so that may also influence differences.

Comparing covers; MCE was somewhat darker than I expected in-person, but takes better/richer photos for social media if that's important to you. Fireball's cover was more accurate to in-person colors.

Here's the back covers and spine difference too; I made a slight adjustment to centering the text + adding a note of the 2nd print run. Fireball's spine is thicker due to the thicker paper stock used; I've listed the spec difference below.

Fireball specs:

Color: Color Insides/Color Cover

Stock: 100lb Smooth Uncoated Text

Option: 1.0 Mil Matte Laminate On Front/Perfect Bind

Size: 6.25x9.5

Binding: PerfectBound

MCE specs:

Size: 6.220472440944882" x 9.448818897637796"

Binding: perfectBound

Interior Paper: 60# Opaque Text - B&W (58 pgs)

Cover: 100# Silk Cover (C1S) - Color

Lam: gloss

Interior ink closeups of both... MCE's inks are noticeably darker. No issues with a variety of screentones in either printing (something most US printers struggle with).

(Panels distance from the page border were slightly adjusted by me in the MCE run; that was not a printer issue.)

Speaking of inks, there is a slight amount of ink visible on back side of pages in both printers (note the rectangle panel by Gunter's boot and the speech bubble behind his knee). Personally it doesn't bother me but you may want to adjust printer stock if it does for you.

( excuse the fingers and the blob on my fingernail; had just finished painting custom nendos, and they left their mark :p )

Here's an interior section towards the beginning; text available to analyze.

Something to note that FIreball's printing run was ~70 and MCE's was ~7 (though likely more later). No printer consistency issues with either.

Both can do fully custom sizes of books.

Doujin Friend: Odd question: which printing was closer to your intent and/or computer monitor colors?

krad: HMM... (cover: fireball) (interiors: mce) keep in mind i use a linux laptop so my screen quality is of the 'yolo' variant x)

Something else that was a plus for MCE that's not showing up in these pages is their online prepress builder; I found it notably easy to handle, and it worked flawlessly on linux/firefox with a bunch of adblockers.

Fireball has you send in a collated PDF directly to them. Works great for people familiar with print work, but beginners may be daunted without a builder to hand-hold them through. You do have to explicitly ask for proofs for both printers.

However, a negative for MCE showed up in the order process re: payment processors. Fireball has a custom order/payment process so the same potential weakness did not show up there. (Deliberately being vague for specific reasons; I can elaborate for mutuals in private.) This is not an issue if you do not work with fetish/kink artwork.

Overall (tl;dr)

MCE is easier for the beginner-intermediate doujinshi creators due to the prepress guide and their print quality is exceptional (with the caveat that the inks/covers will be possibly darker than you expected), but Fireball feels safer for hard kink.

Both also offer print services for more than just doujinshi including postcards, posters, although Fireball is more geared towards traditionally US "indie" scene with business cards and brochures while MCE has more familiarity with the manga scene (offering manga and light novels defaults).