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THANKS EXO & Shawn! I love getting this photo attachment feature back! Soooo much easier to post for me - I really appreciate it. Close up of the front of the leg chins (which I'm rather pleased at how its turned out). It's a little dark at the moment, but I will do a light thinned grey overspray over top of this to tone down the contrast so it seems more blended in the end. The upper chest portion is now just begging to have the thrusters and details highlighted in a silver with a dark red clear coat over top (but that's a step after all the weather and decals are sealed in). The more I do, the more steps seems to still be ahead. I think what started out to be a simple detail/paint up of a toy has turned into something else... it's a testament to how much detail Yamato has put into this toy - I just can't put it down! The lighter grey PE panels on the dark grey areas took on the dark oil wash really well. I will add the aztec decals over top of them as my next steps. I plan on having some of the decals spill over the edges of the PE panels to work them into the dark grey areas even more to "blend" them in. Note, I used the self-adhesive PE panels from the sticker sheets directly, but when I added the dark oil wash, the varsol in the oil wash must of reacted with the adhesive and some of the panels came off and needed to be re-glued (crazy glue) to the ship - should of done that in the first place instead of relying on the sticker sheet. I was worried that some of the nice PE panels were buried underneath the cool aztec panelling decals before (especially here at the top of the leg) - but luckily, the oil wash "popped" them back out and gave a bit more depth to the decalling. Here's a parting shot for a few weeks (as next weekend is Family Day - we'll be away for the weekend with the family!)

Yay, I got almost 4hrs this weekend!! Well, this decal job was a lot more than I had anticipated (I can't imagine if I had to mask and paint all those details!!). This time I transformed it into the robot mode to see all the areas I had missed decaling and I found out areas I had missed doing the dark oil wash to pick out the details too. So I took this opportunity to oil wash any missing areas including the photo-etched plates that were added (they contained some really fine etched panel lines. Now here's a tip I had to find out the hard way - do the dark oil wash over the PE parts BEFORE you decal over them - the decal film was just thick enough to have filled into some of the fine etched lines so the dark oil wash didn't remain in those areas. The PE parts that didn't have the decals over them retained the oil wash nicely and showed off the details nicely. An overall shot - showing just how much farther I have to go!! Argh. I think I'll apply some more aztec decals over the lighter PE panels on the dark areas next (as I don't think the decals will show on the dark grey areas). Then next is the coloured data stencils in the 1/144 scale sheets I had ordered before - this will add the hits of red, yellow and white colours sprinkled throughout the SDF-1

How do I do that? When I hit "Image" it just allows me to add a URL and "My Media" just allows me access to the Gallery and my old attachments. How do I add new attachments (right now its a pain to upload them to the gallery first) to the posting inline? I don't think the aztec panelling decals will show up on the dark grey areas of the ship, I plan on decalling the lighter photo-etched panels on the darker areas to tone them down though and I'm thinking that I'll apply those tiny 1/144 scale decals that have red, yellow and white (shown earlier in the thread) printed onto them to show up on the darker areas as tiny hits of colour like the illustrations - but that's a ways off for now. Thanks for the kudos - I just wished I had time to work on this properly.

Thanks is there another way to post pictures other than uploading it to the gallery first? I remember in the old boards I could just upload them (attachment) in the body of the post - is that still possible?

A few hours on the weekend... just some more of the same old same old... Next up is to transform it to get at all the areas hidden when in cruiser mode...

Wow! I can't wait to see you paint that up - maybe it will give me an idea of how to paint the 1/3000 scale PE valkyries They are like the Bandai 1/350 scale Yamato crew figures - absolutely amazing resolution in such a small object - but how the hell do we paint them?! Thanks for the heads up - looking forward to your thread!

If the unpainted model was available when I first bought this toy, I'd opt for that version (even if it cost the same as the toy), but I had no choice back then (I hate it when you're punished for being an early adopter!). The unpainted model is not only cheaper, but has more stuff included, the unpainted model includes the extra decals, glow in the dark stickers, resin optional parts and the photo-etched details including the tiny 1/3000 scale valkyries and launch arms for the ARMDs (the toy doesn't include any of these extras). It's mostly molded in all the correct colours anyways, and most of my time was spent taking my toy apart to access the city within the leg. I would definitely recommend the unpainted model over the toy. However, if you have no time to build or don't feel comfortable putting it together yourself or don't care about the extras - those would be the only reason to go the toy route now. But in either case, definitely get this toy (in either form while you can), I think its the best thing Yamato has put out! Good luck. p.s. - nothing more to report but just more decalling - I've just finished the underside of the legs - only the lower main fuselage and the underside/inside front guns left.

YES! +1 I haven't been this excited about a Macross release since the first 1/48 scale toys from Yamato!

That's what I'm waiting for!! to re-iterate FAM56; 1/72 scale forever!

Is that a fan created manual? - doesn't seem to follow the lineart in my official books as much...

Well, I'm quite impressed with this first showing. Especially given the fact that this is one of the earlier designs that has quite a bit of "anime magic" in its transformation and wasn't exactly thought out like the VF-1 since its not a central character - Yamato has done a remarkable job at comprimising all the various modes into a coherent whole - I'm pretty happy. The canards are just way too big in the MMM Lineart (what is MMM?) and the profile just doesn't flow as well as the Yamato profile - however, I do agree with the upward turn of the nose cone as above. My main problem with the VF-4 and all its resin iterations has been the plan view, the forward fuselage just seems too thin, too needle-like (while the profile - side elevation is great) - my main reason for not getting any of the resin kits thus far - Yamato still has that needle-like plan view - my personal taste would be to fatten it a little - same as the VF-1 would be nice. However, overall, I'm quite impressed and very much looking forward to adding this baby to my collection - please Graham, if we don't get tampo printed everything, then ask for water-slide decals as well?

Thanks everyone, not much new news but the same old - every few hours I get I continue on the decalling, there are so many surfaces and so many tiny little pieces (I didn't quite know how labour intensive this was going to be). I got maybe another 8-10hrs over the Christmas Break to work on this puppy and I've managed to cover the top and side surfaces. I still have the sides of the upper portion and the entire underside and some interior surfaces that are currently hidden in cruiser mode. I'd say I'm at least 2/3rds done with the aztec panelling, but only 1/3rd done with the overall decals as I still have tones of the tiny data stencilling decals (the tiny hits of red, white and yellow details) all throughout the ship. After the aztec panelling, I plan on doing another dark/black oil wash in select areas to pick out the darker vents first (while the gloss coat is still there for the decals) and then tone down the overall effect of the decals with a light thin coat of grey - which will lower their contrast against the grey plastic and hopefully lighten up the dark grey areas. This will tie everything together a bit more. At which point I will clear coat gloss again to apply the more colourful tiny 1/144 & 1/100 data stencilling decals that I shown before. This way the colours will stand out a bit more against a more muted background. I hope... at least that's the plan. Hopefully I'll post more when I've got something more interesting to show. It's just a stage right now of sloughing through the grunt-work of applying tonnes of tiny decal bits - hopefully it will pay off in the end.

Pre-ordered! sight unseen...

+1 or at least provide water slide decals as well (I never use the thick stickers).