Vifam7

Thanks! My plan is to put these 2 next to Wave's upcoming 1/100 kit and Bandai's Hi-Metal sometime next year. I look forward to seeing your photos soon!

Two comparison photos between my recently built Arii 1/100 fighter and Toynami's toy.

A minor correction and addition to the above. GM21 has a thin soft tip point. It contains gray acrylic paint. GM02 has a ultra thin hard tip point. This one contains gray lacquer paint. For panel lining a Yamato, I'd recommend using the GM21 since it's acrylic paint and tends to come out easier if you make a mistake. I also read somewhere that Yamato's plastic doesn't react well with the lacquer paint of GM02. As written above, the easiest tool is a soft graphite pencil (perhaps an artist's 2B pencil).

Kotobukiya's blog shows that they just got a sample of the actual product. So I suspect it's already in production. No idea when it'll hit the store shelves though.

I know I won’t finish my Hasegawa kit before the end of the year but I figured I should at least finish my Arii 1/100 fighter mode VF-1S. Finally completed it today. Took me half the year to complete this relatively simple kit! But that’s more due to my extra slow pace and repeated delays in working on it. Putting the kit together wasn’t that difficult but it did require glue, putty, and sanding. It’s an old kit so the fit wasn’t that great too. But it was a cheap kit ($10) and thus it made for a good kit to attempt my first full paint job. Pretty much built the kit straight out of the box. The only mod I made was to the main landing gear doors. Didn’t like the large one piece rectangular doors , so I split it in half down the middle. The sculpt of the VF-1S head underneath is completely wrong and perhaps a bit too big but I haven’t got the skills to fix that. As for painting, I used USAF light grey from a rattle can (Tamiya AS-16) as the base color. Brush painted everything else with enamel paints. I’m sure if I used an airbrush, some of the edges would be sharper. But since I won’t have one for the foreseeable future, this about as good it gets with my mediocre skills. As you might see on the last pic, I messed up on the decals. Silvering happened. Ack! Oh well, another lesson learned. My build isn’t anywhere close to what others here at MW can do. The photos are hiding some of the really bad blemishes. :embarrassed:

If anyone is wondering where Kawamori might have gotten the idea for the swiveling wingtip boosters - Bell XF-109 (wiki page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_XF-109) EWR VJ101 (wiki page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EWR_VJ_101)

Considering that Kawamori himself is a Gundam fan, we shouldn't really be surprised to see some Gundam influences in Macross.

I usually have 2 or 3 different kits in various stages of build at any one time. Usually one traditional glue & paint kit and one Gundam kit. Gunplas are my "escape kits" - kits I work on when I want to get away from the complexities of traditional kits. Ofcourse this means it takes me a long time to complete each kit. It takes me a minimum of 3 months to complete a MG kit. And that's without a full paint job. I'm now 98% finished with my Arii 1/100 Valk which required gluing, sanding, and painting. It's taken me half the year to come this far. And this is a relativly simple kit!

The F-15 Eagle which entered service around 1975 is expected to remain in USAF service until 2025. That's about 50 years of service. The B-52 Stratofortress bomber which entered service in 1955 is expected to remain in service until 2040!

Here's a more representative pic. It's a not a RX-78 Gundam but a Zaku should do. Keep in mind, the Toynami is a bit off scale. It's should be a bit smaller than it is.

No, not yet. It's on my list of Gunpla kits to buy though. But right now I have such a backlog of unbuilt kits (particularly Macross kits) that I've held back in buying more Gunpla. Almost finished with an old Arii 1/100 VF-1S fighter kit. These glue-together kits require more effort and take so much more time to complete than I think a MG Gunpla.

The only thing painted on the Zaku is the red monoeye. Well that and spraying on clear flat. The clear flat coating does a good job in hiding the scratches caused by sanding. The dark green one is MSA-003 Nemo from Zeta Gundam. The light green one is RGM-109 Heavy Gun from Gundam F91. I've always liked the mobile suits from the RGM-79 GM lineage. The Nemo is a MG kit. Only thing painted is the piston cylinders in the ankle. The kit is pretty much perfect out of the box. The Heavy Gun is an old 1/100 kit. Released when Bandai was just starting to play with system injection molding and snap-fit. Even though it comes pre-colored, a TON of details still needed to be painted in. And even though it's snap-fit, the fit is atrocious. Meaning sanding and glue is necessary. It's a kit that definitely tells you what advancements have been made by Bandai over the years. Thanks! I don't like the Kyrios myself. But I bought the kit (it's a 1/100 HG) because it was rather cheap and well... it drew my interest because it was soo wacky looking.

It might look a lot better by a bit of "dirtying up" - like applying some Pro-Modellers wash or Tamiya weathering. Just a thought.

It probably looks crooked due to the hump in the stock. However, if it's made of PVC (hopefully not), it'll most likely be crooked and require the hot-water treatment.

It's a mod work on the Wave 1/100 kit. The Macross Ace magazine staff asked Nobuyuki Sakurai of Dengeki Hobby to create a VF-1D for them. His work is going to be documented in the next Macross Ace issue.

Here are some of my work from this year.

1/72 would certainly be the perfect scale size. Not only in terms of decals and accessories but also in terms of display with other aircraft models. Despite my newbie modeling skills, I'm building a Hasegawa 1/72 VF-1 just so I can put a Valkyrie next to an in-the-same-scale F-14. But that said, 1/100 scale isn't THAT BAD. For those of us who are scale conscious (like me), 1/100 fits in better with Gundams and other anime/sci-fi related models (Yukikaze, SB Yamato, SRW, etc.). And 1/100 isn't exactly miniscule. As for the price, it's likely to be around 6 to 7 thousand yen. Certainly not cheap but still perhaps a decent option when considering one's own budget and priorities. I don't understand why some folks here are already bashing this line (and others like the Revoltech). I thought most of us would be happy to see/have options in what Macross toys we can get.

This is all about how they "make" the 1/2000 scale SDF-1 kit - to show that it's a "prototype replica" and not a traditional resin or plastic kit. It does mention that, for the completed toy version, it may have to be scaled down and details to be simplified. But everything is still up in the air. Oh, but it does sound like they're still aiming for a 2010 release for the completed toy version.

It would be awesome if it turns out to be 1/72 scale. But it's likely to be 1/100 scale. Which is fine by me. It's nice to see all of these choices in the market.

Add on "power-up" parts have been de rigueur since Mazinger Z. In other words, it's tradition in robot anime. Whatever explanation the creators think of for these add-on parts is an exercise in how craftily they can make us think how cool it is and buy the toys.

There are 1/144 scale Macross kits but be warned they do require glue and paint. And since they are quite small, they may be a bit difficult to work with.

If you're just entering the kit building world, I'd start with a cheap snap-together 1/144 scale Gundam kit. Then progress into the 1/100 scale Master Grade Gundam kits (Version 2.0 Zaku is a good one). Once you're confident of putting things together, you could move onto kits that require glue, putty, and paint. Once again, start with something cheap - like ex-Imai or Arii Valkyrie kits.

I suppose kit speculating could become a problem if it becomes rampant. Like what happened to comic books. But I don't see that ever happening to model kits (at least I hope not).

If you're going to reference Ace Combat, then I think Japan wants their fighters to look more like this.

Very likely that the VF100s line is being replaced by the VF Hi-Metal line. Dunno what we'll be getting from this line in the future. We know that a VF-1 is in the works, but I wouldn't be surprised if Bandai has another Frontier Valkyrie in the works. By the way, when Bandai uses the term "Hi-Metal" or "Chogokin", it rarely means that we're getting a ton of metal parts. More often than not it means metal in the joints and a few other strategic locations for strength and balance. I wouldn't be surprised if this Hi-Metal Fire Valk was 75 to 85 percent plastic (ABS&POM). It'd still be a major improvement over the all plastic VF100s Messiah though.