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I don't get why Acadia keeps teasing us with toys with all these markings on the prototypes, but give us just bare plastic toys with maybe a UN Kite symbol is all Why don't people cry foul and complain about mis-representation on Acadia's part - or is it just Bandai is evil and Acadia-can-do-no-wrong! - argh

Gorgeous as always! Like the new BG.

Yeah, I don't think that's saying much - he's an artist, not an aircraft mechanic (hopefully an aircraft enthusiast). I deal with concept artists all the time that are amazing painters, but nothing makes sense because the creedo is; "...as long as it looks cool!" In fact, most of these markings are jibberish for their main audience who are Japanese, its just some interesting gak that makes it look a little more "complicated". I'm just glad Bandai spent the effort, it really makes the Arcadia offerings so bare and sparse.

Sorry to hear that MJ! I would second Chronocidal's suggestion and make one yourself, its just the end tip, you can sand yourself a piece of styrene - layer it up to the right thickness, sand the edges a little bit round. Use a pin-vise and drill a little hole in both the existing piece and the newly made replacement and stick a piece of paper-clip wire inside and crazy glue it on so the paper-clip is like a re-inforcement (used to do that all the time when "pining" resin kits) it will greatly increase the strength of the glue joint on such a small area. Take the $40 and buy yourself something nice! I'm keeping quiet till I get the toy in my hands, luckily its paid for and sitting in my Private Warehouse - but I'm leaving for vacation for 2wks, so I get them to ship it when I get back. It looks real good though, I can't wait!

WoW!!! What a great kit!, I love it, I guess I'll have to get one too (my wallet doesn't thank you Great work on it so far.

Woohoo!!! So excited I just got payment for HLJ! I just love this interpretation, so sleek, all the proportions are to my personal preference and all that nice Tampo - it just puts the Arcadia to shame (and cheaper to boot!). I think I'll keep my chunky Arcadia in Battroid and display this proudly in the sleek aircraft mode or dump that Arcadia crap (especially hard after all that work I had to do it to get it looking acceptable) and get a second Bandai for all the cool extreme Battroid poses too?! Hmm decisions, decisions...

Thanks for all the kudos! It certainly was a learning experience. The hardest part to judge was how much effect you need to go, only to be toned down by the gloss coat (glossy clear coats tend to darken the finish) and how much would come back when you flat/matte clear coat it all in the end again (flat clear coats tend to lighten the finish). I was a bit timid being the first time trying this method and I think I error-ed on the subtle side - now looking at how much I liked the effect, I wished it was a bit stronger to see all the effort went into it and I wished it was overall a bit lighter. It looks great under strong lighting or outside, but inside in dim lighting, I'd wish it was a bit lighter. At least I know exactly what to do with my Hasegawa VF-0s and F-14s when I finally do get around to them.

Here ya go! This is what I did to make decals for my Arcadia YF-19 and VF-0D. I re-built all the decals by tracing them over in Adobe Illustrator so they are vector sharp files. If you can print white, then they'll even have an underlay of white. You could send the file to be made into "rub-on" transfers - its a photographic process and very expensive, but it will look awesome. I only did a test one colour process (white only) to test it out and used that as an underlay for my laser printed colour decals. You can see the results here; http://www.macrossworld.com/mwf/index.php?showtopic=35120&p=1203668 Let me know how the file works out for you guys. Good luck! (p.s. I'm offering this file free as payback to this wonderful site that has helped me so much over the years, I hope no one takes this and goes out to make money off of it please.) YF-19 Rub ons (outlined).zip

Note: in the fourth photo, if you look inside the leg (my feet are extended in prep to paint the burnt exhaust) you can see two bright orange screws... the only drawback to the salt weathering was these two screws rusted instantly... weird that all the other metal parts seem to do fine, there was one pin in the landing gear hinge that looked a little rusty too, but I was able to brush that away - this toy will be kept dry from now on, so the "rusting" wouldn't be an issue anymore (I hope). No more ocean dives for my baby!

OK, I got the chance to decal this baby last weekend and matte/flat clear-coated this weekend. When I was making up extra decals for my YF-19, I did the same for this baby - with special thanks to the white slime markers to a wonderful friend here on these boards (you know who you are - thanks so much!). I love the finish (hated all the effort that's required to bring an Arcadia up to snuff) - of course now I like it more than my Bandai Valks, which were pretty much a bit of pencil smudging weathering out of the box and a clear coat protection and that's it. This was a little more involved, it took about 4 weekends, but I do like the colour of blue it finally turned out into and the salt weathering method. Now I know how to finish my F-14s from now on. This is the amount of Tampo that should have been on a toy of this price range. It's 90% there, I just need to do a bit of Aclad burnt exhaust on the feet and intakes, dark wash the landing gears and paint the silver shock struct and weather the ordnance a little to match up with the plane - however they will be very light as they aren't usually as weathered. That will be sometime in August - we have a family vacation to attend to I'll do a proper photoshoot of this and the YF-19 in the summer. BTW, does the site re-size the attachments when I upload them? They're all blurry - they were "razor" sharp when I took them, but when I click on them, they all look soft, not like Subaro amazing photos - how does he attach them?

Beautiful photography! Was there re-issues of this? Mine has the rainbow canopy coating, which issue was that?

Hey, the canopy when blue again... and pretty opaque too. What's the actual colour of the released toy? I hope its not that frosted milky finish some of us go on the YF-30.

Yes I agree 100% I get hosed with customs and duties being Canadian and NY saves me so much on that - I don't mind giving the money to a store that will get me something I want other than paying a government that does everything in their power to prevent me from ordering what I want. If it wasn't for NY - I wouldn't even get any of my Frontier renewals.

Cool! You left the raised salt edges eh... neat. I wonder how the actual salt will look if you clear coat it, I wonder if it will dessolve into the clear coat. I removed my salt completely so I was left with a really smooth finish. Well, I'm stupid and stayed till 1am on a work night (I was wrecked the next day at the office!). But now that I'm on a roll, I really want to get to the decal stage. Basically the panel lines are way too faint to hold any wash as per Arcadia's usual - plus they are inconsistent, some are deeper, some are shallow all in the same line - argh! Why even bother to mold the panel lines when they are so shallow?! Anyways, I basically drew them all in with a really sharp 4H mechanical pencil. Then I used the pencil shavings and a smudge stick and smudged it all around the panel lines, lighter on the white surfaces and darker on the blue surfaces to essentially do a "post-shade" to pick them out a bit. Everything is still quite exaggerated at the moment because when I spray the Clear Coat with Future, it will even a lot out. I need this glossy clear coat to provide a nice smooth base for the decals because the plane is dark, I don't want any silvering to happen. Everything is darkened up due to the glossy clear coat at the moment. Once I decal it, the next step is to clear coat the decals again, maybe hit it with a very light mist of grey/blue to tie it all together and a final matte/flat clear coat which will lighten everything back up and blend in the decals. Can't wait to take the masking off!

I found some salt crystals or re-dried salt water within the joints as I semi-transformed it - but nothing to worry about. Salt is pretty inert on the plastic. I wouldn't recommend using a toothbrush to brush it off as the paint layer is so delicate and thin that it might leave tiny swirls and scratch marks from the bristles. The water rinses the salt off just fine. I just have to handle it delicately until I can clear coat protect it with the Future.

Yeah, that was my thinking exactly...

Argh! Probably...

Thanks! Unfortunately, I was a teenager in the 80s and know all too well Now I know what to do with my F-14 TPS schemes...

Round 2! This time I re-did the salt and sprayed on a darker grey doing a bit of a post shading - but the panel lines are so faint on this Arcadia bird that it was hard to tell where they were especially under all the salt. Makes me think of spicing my steaks for the BBQ. I did the bottom much lighter - but I did want to kill the bright white and bring it to a light sky grey. Round 3! I had to use a blow dryer between each time to thoroughly dry the paint and the salt. I re-salted the entire plan yet again - it really is the combination of the large grinder crystals, the smaller table salt and the melted/dissolved puddles/pools that make up the pattern. It really took 3 layers to start looking good (I wasn't quite sure after the first 2 layers - but this 3rd layer made all the difference). I sprayed a much lighter grey over everything again paying attention to the leading edges and major transformation joints. This time I decided to spray white over the underside to bring it back as the previous greys were getting a bit dark - I like colour and weathering in the bottom is at the moment. I think I went a little overboard - I was pretty excited with the results (being my first time) so it was hard for me to gauge how heavy the effect would be especially when all the salt was still on the plane. You only know after you rinse all the salt off and dry it with a paper tower to see what the result is. Whoa! This thing looks like its been left at the bottom of the ocean for a while!!! I do like the bottom though. So to bring it all back and tone it down, I decided to mix up a batch of the proper blue (the right colour I felt Arcadia should have molded it in the first place) - Tamiya Medium Blue XF-18 Medium Blue (is pretty darn close) mixed with a few drops of X-4 Blue in a thin light wash and airbrush it over everything. This tones all the weathering down. Keeping in mind that I will want to future clear coat everything which will again tone it down, I'm purposely leaving it a little "over-weathered" at the moment. I did take a Q-Tip with some Windex on it to rub over the white stripe and red Macross Kite every layer to keep them showing through each layer. I still have to post-shade some of the panel lines now that I can see them, panel wash (but I don't think that will do much with these shallow grooves - I think I'll have to trace them with a sharp hard mechanical pencil) and gloss coat the entire thing to protect it and give it a surface for my decals. Once that's done, I can still do a very light blue/grey mist over everything including the decals to tone them down and make them look painted on and the final semi-gloss/matte future clear coat. But that's for another weekend.

Better than some recent big budget blockbuster movie where the F-22s fire out of their intakes! (can't remember which one - too busy rolling my eyes )

Finally got enough courage to start on this! My first time trying the salt weathering technique, thought it might be easier on a toy first instead of on a model I've spent hundreds of hours on. Worst case, I just strip it down with Windex back to the bare plastic of the toy. My first coat is a mixture that I think the actual colour should have been - this will form my base coat with the bare plastic showing through as my darkest colour. I will do a dark grey post shading over this and a sky/light grey post shading on top of it as well - each with its own salt layer to further mottle the paint. Wish me luck!

Hey, canopy is clear (not that dark blue I was worried about in the previous shots)!

Or it looks like it could be huge trenches aka 1st gen...

I meant ripped off by the YF-19 - I don't feel that way with the VF-0D yet... at least we got intake markings on this - but I guess its too much to ask for them to be properly aligned. BTW, mine is from NY too - so its not isolated to HLJ ones, it might be the entire batch. Have we got any confirmation of anyone with properly aligned intake markings?

Great! Another thing to feel ripped off about... argh. I've got the same problem. Well at least they included the intake markings this time around (unlike the YF-19)