MacrossJunkie

I was assuming at the time that "Mr. Banana Split’s 29" was referring to the anniversary 29 in Roy colors as it was yellow, black, and white like a banana. So I wasn't making the connection there.

Just asking out of curiosity, but why that specific combo?

I think that would be a pretty safe bet. Luca's ghosts and the Lil Drakens all came with stands.

Bandai seems to be very inconsistent with their commitment to symmetry. They double down on it with Kakizaki, but then lose faith in their symmetry god by not making the left leg of the Angel Birds VF-1 spell out "sdriB legnA".

Love those customs @nightmareB4macross. Man, the Yamato 1/48 VF-1 days were like the golden age of customs. There were many good ones back then. I especially liked Kurt's custom VF-1s, which you seem to have managed to get a hold of. Wish people were still doing them, but it seems quite rare to see a new custom in general these days... or I just haven't paid enough attention.

They look cool on their own, but the concept just seem silly to me. Using the ghosts as boosters, but then putting boosters on your boosters. Seriously? Next we'll have gunpods that shoot out smaller gunpods that shoot. 😁

Right now, they're scattered around in various detolfs around the house until I can find a new display cabinet and everything's a mess. This was the last one I had with the cabinet intact from years ago. I had some stuff to the side also, like my SDF-1 and I forget what else. Not only do I need to find a new case, I need to also figure out how to dispose of the old one. With the cost of shipping and gas these days, it will probably cost as much to ship a new display case...

Okay, I lied. Decided to YOLO and transform it anyway.

Happy to know you like it! No, I haven't considered creating a museum space for my collection. Haha. Though I think I need a bigger display cabinet. Well, I need an intact display case, period... Some years ago, one of the front sliding doors shattered into a million pieces from a bit of vibration, sending glass shards all over the room. That was fun...

Finally got around to start doing Delta era valks. Weathered my Hayate VF-31AX. Took a few pics in fighter mode. Will do the other modes later when the clear coat has dried more.

Pics of Alto YF-29 re-issue in all three modes.

I don't know if it's because of bright convention lights or because the new prototype is actually darker and slightly less saturated in color, but those new shots look a whole lot better and much closer to what I was expecting, while the earlier shots looked really pastel and more like a kid's toy.

Thanks! That's the plan. Alto's 29 was practice.

Got the supers done for Alto's 29. I think I'm pretty satisfied with the texturing work. I'll take pics in other modes another time.

Note that the link I provided is just to show what sort of colors they have. While you can order straight from them, it will probably take around 1.5 to 2 weeks and the overseas shipping is pricey too, especially these days. There are stores in the US that carry these, have comparable prices, and will reach your door faster. You probably already knew to look at domestic stores, but just making sure. Good luck on your weathering! On a side note, warning to all. Do not use Vallejo Mecha Varnishes. It has caused me nothing but headache. Contrary to its claims that it's made to be durable for mecha models where things can rub together, it is the flimsiest, most scratch prone clearcoat I've ever used. It peels right off with Tamiya's masking tape which is fairly low tack. The clearcoat has no adhesion to the surface or at least it has less than masking tape, which is ridiculous. Comes off like peeling dead skin. It can't withstand ANY rubbing or it will come right off. The areas that I redid using Future as the base coat first are like a million times more durable. Maybe it's okay on surfaces that have primer and their brand of paints, but it's complete and utter trash on toys. Small rant over.

Thanks! For the weathering on the 25A, I simply used an airbrush to apply the weathering and used I think Tamiya's X19 Smoke acrylic paint. Nothing fancy, it was pretty simple and straightforward using standard post-shading techniques. It was actually more work trying to color match the stripes I added to it to make it look like how the 25A appeared in the show. However, instead of Tamiya smoke, these days I highly recommend Ammo by Mig Shaders. I find them to be fantastic and easy to dispense and get great results. For general weathering, I like Ash Black, Starship Filth, and Grime. Since you mentioned Isamu's 29, here are a couple pics of mine. I did change the fold crystal color from blue to purple because the fold crystals have always been shown to be purple. I also redid the canopy tinting because it was too dark and saturated, making it look more toy-like, imo.

Another pic, using my DSLR. Picked up the weathering better and doesn't look like someone went and overused smoothing and sharpening routines. Wish I could turn that off on my phone, but there's just no settings allowing me to do that.

Well, this was more of a pain in the butt than I thought. I basically had to do twice the work because the first time I was finished, I was putting it back together and the Vallejo Mecha clearcoat appears to have little adhesion to the plastic and was scraping off or peeling off like dead skin and taking all my work along with it. Had to redo and sprayed with Future instead and then with a satin finish after. Seems to be a better, but I'm not transforming it for a week at least. Still need to do the super parts. The phone camera seems to be not very good at picking up the subtle weathering. I feel like it's doing some automatic pre-processing and filtering it out or something.

Supposedly the Dassault Mirage 2000, but I really see very little resemblance aside from both having Mirage in the name. To me, the VF-5000 still has far more in common with an F-14 than this.

Looking pretty good overall. The booster still seems too low though. Also a little worried about how fragile looking the area is where the legs seem to attach at the thinnest point of the intake. It's similar to Yamato's VF-19 toys and one had disintegrated on me at that attachment point while having been displayed in battroid mode only a few months after getting it. I never paid attention before, but it seems like its transformation has a lot of similarities to the YF/VF-19 with regards to the arms and legs.

The wings look like they're doing the wave 😆

For a long while now, I wasn't sure how I wanted to weather my Delta era valks and just sat on it and procrastinated. But after looking at this Max YF-29, I think I want to mimic the texture work but add in a bit of post shading on the panel lines also. I experimented and this is what I came up with as a test using oil paints on the top half of Alto's YF-29: It's hard to get on camera properly and there are more subtle textures than this to the eye, but that's the general gist of it. How does this look and should I proceed using this technique on my Delta valks? Yay or nay? I probably won't bother with the 31's except for the A and the AX's because the original ones require too much work getting rid of that craptastic canopy tint and color matching the paint on the upper thighs where it's just bare gray plastic when it shouldn't be.

Did he have an Hs? I suppose somewhere in the movies after Keith? I was thinking of the Ba he had in the series. And we already have an Hs made, but there's no Ba variant yet in the DX line.

I wish we could have gotten his 262Ba over this. Between the continuing QC issues and the hideous paint scheme of this AX, I assume this wasn't greatly desired in general.

I got semi-bandai'd on my Alto 29 re-issue. Which I hope won't be an issue with Max's. "Straight" position. The tip of the wing on the port side is not straight and is angled down more by a degree or two compared to the starboard side. "Up" position. Port side wing tip does not go up as high. "Down" position. Port side goes down further than starboard. Maybe I'm being anal about it, but it bothers me. Anyone else have the same problem with their copy where the articulated wing tip is off by a couple degrees? Also, not a QC problem, but I really wish Bandai would do the frames on the sensor arrays. They have no problem doing tampo printing in general so you'd think it would be easy for them. It makes it look a whole lot better and would be accurate how it should be. It's just a pain to do it myself.