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wm cheng

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  1. wm cheng
    ARGH! Disaster... while I was trying to sand the nosecone to get rid of the molding seam and sprue marks, I somehow accidentally broke the wing hinge to the upper nacelles. I don't get it, I was being so gentle. I didn't even noticed that I could actually remove the nosecone via two screws first and work on that separately from the rest of the plane. Damn! I can try to glue the hinge back together, but that hinge seems to be stressed so I doubt it would take the strain. Worst case I can glue the wing permanently to the upper nacelles which would only affect the Battroid mode (luckily I always intend on displaying it in the aircraft mode since its so sexy that way anyways) It still sucks though. I post pictures when I'm done.
  2. wm cheng
    Yes, but the trick is the underside, the "leg/intake/engine" portion of the fast pack sits flat against the underside of the horizontal portion of the Valkyries, concentrate the glue to the underside and build it upside down, the top will take care of itself if the bottoms are aligned properly. Also the thicker crazy glue will help, and do one fast pack at a time - the rest is just patience and where your personal frustration point ends up being
  3. wm cheng
    I purposely made the conscious decision that this was a painted toy and not a model, so I left a lot of the delicate "needle-like" antennas all over this ship off - I'm not sure if I made the right decision now, but I had intended to transform it once it a while (otherwise I would have puttied and sanded every seam). Some of it is my laziness and just wanted to cut down the scope of the work involved, but basically every one of my "real-world" fighter models that had delicate pilot tubes and lightning rods (F-16) have broken off over time despite my careful handling. Oh well. The photos do get progressively better as I shoot it - like everything, I get rusty when I haven't done it in a while. Well, overall I am very happy with how it turned out and admire the ones on these boards that have gone through the extra effort of lighting them - BRAVO! That's just beyond me at the moment. Maybe in 10yrs or so when I'm no longer the center of my daughter's universe I might return to modelling like I once did, but for now, toy collecting has taken over and will have to do for now. Yamato has really outdone themselves with this stellar offering and I wholeheartedly recommend this toy to anyone still sitting on the fence about it - its truly remarkable. This and the new VF-4G Lightning has to be my all-time-favorite offerings from Yamato.
  4. wm cheng
    So lastly, I took some quick pictures of my baby. I couldn't go outside to get proper lighting (its fricken cold in Canada in the winter!) so I probably won't get decent shots till the Summer. This will have to do under proper shots are done. This is just on my workbench with whatever black foam core I could find lying around the basement so you get the idea!
  5. wm cheng
    Yay! I'm too chicken to start right in on the VF-4 modification to FB2012 colours - so I thought I'll warm myself up by finishing off the SDF-1 finally after all these years ;-) Just to back up a bit, I tried to paint those tiny photoetched 1/3000 Valkyries and it turned out to be a disaster. I tried 3 times, and each time it got worst. When I sprayed them white, I lost all the etched detail so the wash wouldn't sit inside the lines anymore because the white paint was in them (so shallow) and I tried to paint the red, yellow and blue squadron colours with the finest brush I had, but it was just too small for my old eyes. I ended up each time bathing them in Windex to strip the paint off and start over. So in the end, I left the top bare metal (luckily its silver and not brass) and did a dark black wash to pick out the PE details and painted the flat underside white. Yes, those PE backpacks are a b#$@h to glue together, they fit perpendicular to the valkyrie and there's a left and right pack, one has the beam canons! It took me about 3hrs to get the four Valkyries assembled and I ended up with one crappy tester, one ok passable, and two decent planes. Luckily I had lost 2 of my launch arms, so I can only use the 2 good planes that turned out anyways. These next photos show how I'm attaching the PE launch arms, I just folded the base and that friction pressure is what's grabbing onto those molded vertical ribs within the black opening - its just friction fit, I thought I might just put a dab of "white" glue to hold them in place, if I were to handle the toy a bit more (for now I'm just leaving them). And with a tiny dab of thick crazy glue, they held. You have to play with the "claws" a little bit (pry them open with some 000 tweezers) depending on how vertical you got your fast packs glued onto the Valkyries. Luckily I had to only choose the 2 best ones that turned out of the 4 that I made. Then a little "twisting & turning" once its mounted to get them aligned and true the way I wanted them to appear on the ARMD openings. So here are some better shots of the ARMD with the attached launcharms and Valkyries finally attached to the rest of the SDF-1! (I need to dust this baby a bit when you're taking macro photos so close, every piece of dust shows up!)
  6. wm cheng
    Please, everyone should do it, its not a huge undertaking and everyone will have their own unique take on it. Variety is the spice of life, and I want to see and learn from others too!
  7. wm cheng
    Happy New Year guys! Exactly what MacrossJunkie said (he's my new hero! - I hope to emulate him with my toys someday). The only note I have to add to what he said is you have to be careful of your base colours (especially in modelling) that whatever you use as a solvent for your wash doesn't react to the underlying paint colours (there are parts of Yamato/Bandai toys that are painted or tampo printed that you don't want to react with) but for the most part, the molded in colour bare plastic is fine. I actually tend to use pencil for some of my Yamato 1/60 V2 Valks since the panel lines are so fine and shallow, I find nothing really lies within the shallow groove other than an ruler drawn pencil line. If you're careful and use a harder lead like an H2 and line it very lightly to get a light grey out of it (I also use a smudge stick from an art store to smudge the pencil a bit either side to create a "post shading" effect or stain/streaking) you can get fantastic results even on white Valkyries, especially after you've clear-coated them to prevent the pencil from rubbing off. I've used a pastel/chalk dust wash before too, especially for staining/streaking - I think I outlined the method on my VF-0S build. The newer Tamiya weathering sets are based on this principle (but even easier as its already made into a "makeup" like paste with applicators) and I think MacrossJunkie here is the resident expert in applying those to toys, you have gotta see his Bandai VF-25G - its especially hard to get a dark coloured Valkyrie to look good and he's one of the only ones I've seen pull it off! Meanwhile, I got a whole bunch of display cases for my workroom over the Holidays, so I'm into day 2 (14hrs so far...) of cleaning (extreme dusting!) my whole collection (and of course repairing the breakage that occurs when you dust! - argh!!) - then assembling the new shelving (now with protective glass) and re-organizing it all. Hopefully I'll get some pictures up when I finish towards the end of the week and properly finish off my SDF-1. All I got left is to attach the tiny PE Valkyries to the launch arms and take some decent pictures of this baby! Then the next thing would be to customize my VF-4G to FB2012 scheme and weather my VF-25G (to MJs standards) - hopefully by the weekend.
  8. wm cheng
    Woohoo!! NY came though. Actually the Post Office attempted delivery Thursday, but I wasn't home and couldn't get to the post office Friday to pick it up, so I went today on Saturday and its was there and its perfect!! By far my most favourite Valk from Yamato, they really outdid themselves recently with this and the 1/3000 SDF-1 which are my favourites now. NY actually declared 900Y on the customs form so I didn't have to get dinged with customs & duty! (definite bonus for those ordering in Canada, we always get killed by duty). Now to plan the FB2012 paint conversions. I guess I can't really paint the interior of the intakes brown since it would be really obvious in the Battroid mode because it affects the forearms. Would it be too half assed if I painted the nose cone radome tan, and the rear moveable surfaces white (like 70's navy planes that have the gull grey schemes with the white moveable surfaces), but left the fat red strip at the rear red instead of brown? I'd of course paint the rear fins black with the red stripe top and bottom forward of a white rear rudder and the blue leading edges of the rudder and canards in silver. What do you think of that? I was thinking maybe getting ModelMaster Lacquers so they'd be more durable than my usual Tamiya Acrylics. I can't stop staring at it!! p.s. anyone know of a solvent to remove the tampo "made in china" and "1997 Big West" on the underside of the wings? I want to paint that white.
  9. wm cheng
    Woohoo!!! Me too - and I might get an extra week off from work to do this custom FB2012 paint scheme before I start back!!!! This has jumped to the front of my work bench. So excited.
  10. wm cheng
    Did someone say decals?! As in waterslide... or only stickers??!
  11. wm cheng
    Every time I go to try and pay, I get a site is down for maintenance - is anyone getting this message?
  12. wm cheng
    Nothing I see so far says they are models. Really over the top thick trench lines for the panel lines, their layout is nonsensical in terms of real world aircraft. I really don't see the difference between these and the Yamato toys other than less sturdy hinges. I am however overjoyed that Hasegawa will take on the VF-25 line though - now they "know" aircraft and can produce "real" models!
  13. wm cheng
    So those that ordered with Nippon Yasan when can we expect a request for payment (for those that didn't pay out right away)? Should we expect a request for payment ahead of time or a few days after the 25th? They will send an e-mail to request payment right? They don't expect us to go to their website to do it do they?
  14. wm cheng

    DX VF-25G

    wm cheng replied to zulu's topic in Toys

    I wonder why there are still so many VF-25Gs around but there is like no VF-25S anywhere other than hugely inflated prices? Are they really having that hard of a time selling out the VF-25Gs?
  15. wm cheng
    Thanks! (its hard not to take some of the comments personally)
  16. wm cheng
    I thought it look fantastic (but I always knew it would). ILM really out did themselves (although there was a little too much Transformer motion in the last shot). I thought it look visually spectacular. It comes out on my birthday! Please everyone, at least go see it to make up your minds (if anything, at least show Hollywood in the pocket books that there is indeed a market for robot movies - then they might make something you'd like, or at the very least, pay for my toy collection )
  17. wm cheng
    What? I didn't know about it either. Thanks for the heads up now though. Ended up getting it here; http://www.cdjapan.co.jp/detailview.html?KEY=NEOBK-1388324 Shipping is cheaper than Amazon.jp and had some points leftover from the Macross BluRay.
  18. wm cheng
    Yes, definitely! UPS is worst than FedEx, but both are ridiculous (I've had to pay more than the cost of the item being shipped on more than one occassion!) It really is highway robbery and its not like I live in an igloo in the middle of the arctic circle?!
  19. wm cheng
    Imagine if this was a Valkyrie?! http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=iAvG0buqa2Q#!
  20. wm cheng
    Woohoo!! Love 72nd scale, but I guess it will be Bandai eh? Oh well, they did ok with their EX kits, just still rather "anime" looking.
  21. wm cheng
    Hey if you drove it up here I would give you a personal tour of my model collection ;-) Good thing I bought 5 - the brokerage would have been the same if I only bought 1. They work great! A little loose maybe (I would guess that's the tolerance of the 3D printing process?), but nothing a piece or two of paper within the openings couldn't take care of. Very sturdy, more so than the stands themselves, you might be able to shave down some of the side walls a bit or add some "ribbing" (vertical strips) within the holes to take up that looseness that can be "compressed" when the pegs slide into the hole. The VE-1 leans a little due to the looseness and the off-centre axis of the Yamato adapter's peg, but I'm sure a pieces of paper wedged inside the opening will cure that - I just wished Yamato placed the stand adapters closer to the toy's natural centre of gravity!
  22. wm cheng
    What you're seeing and criticizing is the result of "many hands" at work and the results of enumerable meetings with comments from every executive in the industry. That is the unfortunate reality of a "Hollywood" movie nowadays. Everyone who has a say (or stake) in the film will always put his/her "stamp" on the designs - regardless if its educated or not. That's why there is little coherence in today's Frankenstein designs - we are not a monolithic culture like Japan was in the 70s and 80s. So one must always take that into consideration when comparing designs. I'm just surprised that it's really Guillermo's uniquely "Mexican/Spanish" take of giant robots that has still come through this horribly reductive process - and its just slightly different to the mainstream Hollywood robots out there! (which is a remarkable feat if you ask me!) Trust me, anyone can design in a vacuum, it's precious few that can survive the arduous process through production. (unless you've got a powerful dictator with good taste like Steve Jobs on your side)
  23. wm cheng
    THANKS EXO! Just got my stands and I can't wait to try them out. However a little word of warning for Canadian residents. I was dinged with a $15.31 customs, duty and brokerage fee from UPS at the door! It was $10 alone in just brokerage fee, then $4.01 GST and an additional $1.30 in "brokerage GST" (WTF?!), so it all ended up costing $53.74cdn for five of them, or just over $10 a piece (a little shocking in the end). I wished I knew, I would have paid it anyways for these great parts, but I just hate being nickled and dimed every step of the way!
  24. wm cheng
    Hey, they used some of my bits and pieces SketchUp designs directly in that blueprint!! Too bad its an older outdated version, I don't get why Marketing doesn't co-ordinate with the rest of production?! Gettin' excited, it comes out next year on my birthday too.
  25. wm cheng
    Hey, you can't say its a Bay-bot! (and that's a good thing - even if its old school ;-)
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