wm cheng

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)

Is it me or do those panel lines on the legs look un-characteristically deep for the current generation of Arcadia toys? The last two (YF-19 & VF-0D) the panel lines were so shallow (or inconsistent) that they hardly held any wash. These deep troughs remind me of my previous generation Yamato VF-0. Even the legs on my VF-OD now is so much shallower - wouldn't they have just used the same leg piece?

Your right, I didn't notice it before, it doesn't look so bad in person, but there is a slight difference between the painted metal parts and the coloured plastic straight out of the box. Maybe the lighting exaggerates the difference, but I don't think its the clear coat.

Nope, I just masked out the canopy, the red sensor windows and the feet. The future clear-coat levels out the decals so you don't notice carrier film - but I trim as close as I can anyways. The white lettering is actually rub-on transfer which is amazing, no carrier film at all and super thin. I just lucked into finding a place, our graphics department uses them for props so we snuck it in under the production budget, otherwise its about $100 for a custom sheet of 8x10 - so its pretty pricey but the resolution of the letters is phenomenal!

Last March I paid 29,750Y + 5,400Y shipping (from NY) which came out to $394.79cdn - luckily NY under-declares so I snuck in under the Customs radar - otherwise its an extra $60-70 on top of that! Joys of being Canadian... argh. Thanks everyone... its been sitting like an eye-sore for too long, glad its finally done.

Finally after a long year of nakeness... got my YF-19 dressed as it should of out of the box. http://www.macrossworld.com/mwf/index.php?showtopic=35120&p=1198988

Oh man! I hope its available anywhere else other than Amazon (shipping from them is a killer) - please post links to it if its available anywhere else. Thanks!!!

I couldn't find the old Arcadia 1/60 YF-19 thread... so here's what I just finished! Finally after a year of nakedness... I managed to make some combination of decals, rub-on transfers and some very special help from an old friend on these boards. These are the markings that should have been tampo printed on a $400 toy! The panel lines are too shallow to hold any wash, so I used a very sharp 4H mechanical pencil to line them (the flaps and moveable surfaces are a black wash) and did a very light "post-shading" with pencil filings and a smudge stick (very light since its a new demonstrator aircraft). Finally it was all sealed in with a semi-gloss future clear coat to protect the custom rub-on transfers and post shading. I added a dab of silver to the landing gear struct and it improves it a lot IMHO. I guess the VF-0D is next, but the salt weathering has me cautious.

But where's the Star Destroyer... seemed absent from this show...

Funny, I think that plastic colour is closer to what the colour should be instead of the one that is painted way too light.

Come on! The first part of that scene was one of the best scenes in ID - you can't fault Alice Eve in anything! LOL. The director is only one voice, believe you me, there are a lot of "snot-nosed" kids who are "Executive Producers" who all want to put their "stamp" on every film they have their fingers in (I have seen this first hand myself). That's why so many films today is really "by-committee" which is why they are so incoherent - plus marketing will dictate them to include a piece for every target demographic to hit. It just creates a toxic soup once all the ingredients are combined. That's why its really such an incredible stroke of luck when something coherent and good comes out.

Wow! That price!!!... fool me once YF-19 shame on you, fool me twice VF-0D shame on me! I guess I'm going to be out of this one.

Thanks! I have a lot of aircrafts (in fact almost all of my collection sits in that mode - except for the armored VF-25S in Battroid and the tornadoed VF-25F in Gerwalk) so I think this Monster deserves some Battroids in front of it...

BTW, what scale is this Monster... 1/100? I feel like I need some VF-25 or something around it to show its not in scale with my other VF-25. Is there something from Frontier that I can put with this Bandai Monster that would be in scale with it? How about these, will they work? http://www.hlj.com/product/BAN959023/Act http://www.hlj.com/product/BAN960345/Act

Woohoo! Picked it up from the post office yesterday... thanks NY for no duties or customs. First impressions... (I've never had one of these before) - boy the package was flat... I was afraid they packed the wrong thing. Wow, its big and heavy in Shuttle form. I love it, solid with some heft AND lots of tampo markings all over it. It felt premium and definitely worth its price (especially considering it was a 1/3rd less than recent Arcadia offerings). I'm just happy to feel great when I opened it - I've been let down twice now with Arcadia after spending considerably more. I just don't understand all this hatred for Bandai and the general "Acardia-can-do-no-wrong" attitudes on these boards (I know I'm in the minority). Aside from Bandai's ridiculous pre-ordering system, I consistently gain more enjoyment from my Bandai Valkyries. It was fun to transform, it had re-assuring clicks on all the main joints, nothing was too tight that it felt like it would break or too loose that it would be floppy. Plus it didn't look naked out of the box, it looked great and I love the olive colour. I just spent the weekend finally decaling my Arcadia YF-19 (after spending a year trying to scrounge and make decals from all sources) just to make it look acceptable - argh! Anyways, I'm pretty happy with this toy and highly recommend it to those still on the fence. I was on the fence as this wasn't a high priority item for me, I never got the original releases and was just fine with it. Now I'm glad I got one at a very reasonable price and its one of those things that grows on me the more I play and look at it. It will be great with some panel lining (oh yeah, really consistent and nice panel lines that will take a wash really well - unlike the recent Arcadia offerings - argh again!) a flat/matte clear coat and some armour dry-brush/paint chip weathering! But no rush, because it looks so great on its own. What's much more important to me is trying to get that VF-0D colour corrected and decaled up from being just a dark blob of nakedness... not looking forward to that process... Oh, BTW, when I first pulled the bottom hip/portion down, it seemed stuck, and the little turret with the gun was rotated so the gun barrel was sideways and prevented the whole assembly from dropping, luckily I noticed it and had to rotate it with a tweezer so it would clear the opening when it dropped.

Thanks! That's good to know... I don't think I'll be buying it. The 3 magazines alone work out to over $70 before shipping...

No way! That's just crazy...

Let me know if it comes off easily. I'm not so hot on that decal either, but I do love the shark mouth. I really hate "stickers" that span over panel lines - it really makes it toy-like.