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I loved the visuals, cinematography AND music! I can forgive a lot if the visuals are compelling enough... after all it is a film to be watched, not a book to be read.

Not at all! It's just a custom, I think they used some ARII or IMAI old 1/48 parts and just stuck them onto the Hasegawa 1/48 scale model. I'm hoping the real Hasegawa offering to be much better than that!

Angels & Airwaves! Just discovered them when I saw this great new trailer;

WoW! KyeKye - YOU ARE THE MASTER! Those Valks look simply amazing. I don't think most of the folks here appreciate just how tiny they are, you need to put them on a penny and photograph them. Hands of a surgeon buddy!

You would print the 01 & 02 onto the white decal paper, but you still have to cut it out? - isn't it a solid white sheet. I'd love to see it when you're done.

That looks great MacrossJunkie! I'm planning on just cutting out lots of different shaped rectangles and odd-shapes like that and do several passes over the whole ship in strategic spots (the idea is to not cover the entire ship and leave various mottling of greys exposed) - probably on post-it note paper as they are relatively low-tact self-adhesive and I can reposition and rotate them as I spray. Finally I will do several once overs of grey to "blend" all the colours in. At least that's the plan before I add the pencil lines. Of course I haven't the time at the moment, so its just all in my head for now - but planning is an important part of modelling. Thanks for the links to the licence plate fonts - but isn't that just a font download? I'm sure we can get artwork or fonts that are close, the real trick is getting it onto white decal as there aren't any printers (other than Alps) that will "print" white. How do you proposed to use those fonts?

Hey, what a great idea! Hmm... procrastination pays off again! Now you really have some personal investment in your toys ;-) Post some shots of your bridge here!

YOU GUYS!! Just pure amazing awesomeness!! Care to cast them and sell them? I feel like such an old man these days as my eyesight sure ain't what it used to be, I have to move things farther away just to focus on them, I remember when I could focus right up to tiny things - argh, I hate getting old... Fantastic work! Now I can live vicariously through you guys.

Hey KyeKye, that looks amazing!! You guys are fantastic - now you've pushed me from just a oil-wash of a toy to a bigger and bigger deal I'm trying to not turn this into a model (as I don't have time for a full build) - but you've convinced me that this toy deserves it. I love your ideas. Still gotta find a few hours to sneak in. What do you use to cut your brass wires? I hate doing it because it makes me think I'm mangling my sprue cutters and ruining the cutting edge. That Valkyrie is insanely small. I'd love to see what you use to build it up - let alone paint it. Great work so far. When you put it together again, are you going to putty and fill up the seams?

You my friend are crazier than me!

Ah! What a great idea!! - I guess I should read through your thread from the beginning ;-)

Great job so far! I'll be watching for ideas!!

I didn't know - great work so far! Definitely subscribed!! Too bad you didn't do it earlier before I "ripped" off my bridge! ;-)

Hey Keykey - why don't you post pictures for us of your disassembly process? Feel free to add to my thread if you want.

Ah Shaorin... your setup and thread brings back memories. It was the 80s and I was in highschool when we got into this anime stuff. I remember getting my first copy of a copy of a copy of Macross on Beta and watching that over and over again. My friend and I were totally into this hifi stuff and nothing like the real "Made in Japan" components of that era. We were totally loyal to Yamaha at the time and funny enough, I still am today. I remember the tape Dolby-S and glass heads, flying erase heads, 4-6 head VHS-HiFi and linear tracking turntables! My love of Macross goes hand in hand with my introduction and love of these components. We started out in the 80s with; Yamaha AVC-50 Yamaha DSP-E492 JVC HR-S7600U (SVHS) Panamax 1000+ (Power conditioner) Sony SLV-900HF (VHS) Sony SL-HF400 (Beta) Sony KV-27V15 Technics SL-L3 Sima ColorCorrector Model SCC Pioneer CLD-1091 (LD) Sony DVP-C650D (DVD) Akai EA-A7 Akai GX-A5X Akai GX-A5X Bose Acoustimass AM-10 Paradigm Model 7SE Polk Audio PSW350 Then later on in the 00s we finally got a decent stereo only system with good speakers (to this day they are the best purchase I've made, they sound awesome and I highly recommend them) B&W CM4s; Yamaha TX-480 Yamaha AX-596 Yamaha CDC-685 B&W CM 4 Finally in 07 we finally got into the home theatre properly with a 1080p HD front projector, 100" screen and the Yamaha RX-V3900 amp with full Dolby-HD DTS-MA and HDMI; Yamaha RX-V3900 Panasonic PT-AE2000U Elite Cinetension2 100" Sony PS3 (40Gb) (BR) All that old equipment still works great, but just can't keep up with the 7.1 surround, HDMI inputs and HD video. Its too bad, because I baby my equipment and I still have the boxes, bags, styro inserts, instructions, receipts and they are totally scratch free and looked the same as the day they were bought. Unfortunately they are worthless now. But they sure have great memories as we took the laserdiscs and dubbed them onto S-VHS and watched our favourite anime over and over again - we even re-mixed and re-edited the Bubblegum Crisis songs into our own music videos with scenes from our favourite anime - back in the day before YouTube and PC editing! They knew how to make quality components where there was a real steel chassis, 10-20lbs per component with cast aluminum knobs, non of this plastic crap. Decent remotes where every function had its own switch/button and remember the jog/shuttle dials! Ah, I'm getting misty just thinking about it now. I just got a new 50" Panasonic Plasma for the bedroom as just a TV and the materials and workmanship really has gone downhill. However the picture quality is miles ahead of this ancient stuff. The last time I watched my Blade Runner LD on my 100" screen was almost un-watcheable compared to the Blade Runner BluRay - amazing how much difference 4x the resolution makes!

So am I hearing this right? If I choose SAL, there's no customs charge? OMG! It was close to $60 in customs/duty/brokerage itself!! Argh.

You're very welcome. You can probably guess at my name from my user name and IMDB it (its the second one and the only one in the Art Department). Please don't credit me with anything I replied - even though I haven't given anything away, I just don't want to raise any flags with Universal Legal. Now go out and tell everyone to go out to the theaters to watch it, not just download it (or else I don't get paid! and can't support my Macross addiction).

Hey Happy, 1. So how did you get involved in the project? They called me. Its a pretty small community of film designers in Toronto, so whenever anything slightly sci-fi comes along, they call - thats the nice part of working yourself into a niche (the bad is no one calls you for anything else!). 2. Who did you work with directly, and what was it like? Worked mostly for the Production Designer - Sean Haworth (amazing guy, just came off of art directing Tron and Avatar). He loves toys and knows about Macross. He oversees the entire visual language for the film and works closely with the director to ensure we have both of their visions translated onto film. 3. You said that you had a lot of zentraedi influence for the interior of the ship design, were there any other influences and if so what were they? Tons, hard to pick out any single influences, but of course Alien/Gieger was thrown around. We just started to look at everything! If you could pick out the individual references then it would be plagiarism and we'd run into problems with copyright and legal. Sean had a few of L.A.'s best illustrators working beforehand to conceptualize a lot of the Alien environments too before I came on, then when I started to design and translate some of those ideas into built form, we had a constant dialog of back and forth, when I came up with an idea, we'd send the 3D models to LA for a rendering/illustration to be made and then we present the idea to get studio and director approval. 4. Based on what you saw, do you think fans of JC's film will be satisfied with the prequel? It's pretty hard to judge working on it and being so close to it, I naturally think its amazing. However reading the script from the beginning so many times, I don't have any of the sense of suspense or surprise that is required with such a film. We watched and still captured the original JC film so many times (it was really done on the cheap) - but we were definitely faithful to it when the situations required it. With such a fan base already, its hard to appease the die hards, because nothing can live up to your minds expectations. Also todays film production climate, with all the different parties, individuals, studios, egos involved, its more like movies by committee - so one has to take into account the sheer up-hill battle to get any project even green-lit. That being said, I would like to think that the art department's efforts to stay true to the original "look" of the film will definitely please the fans. Everyone who is a fan that has walked through the hallways have always mentioned the chills they get. 5. Are there any designs that stand out, kind of like Rob Bottin's Norris spider head? I just saw the effects shops creations from time to time, but wasn't involved in that department. They were certainly cool from what I saw, I was mostly concerned with the built sets. 6. As I have done my research on this film for months now, I have come to realize that there seemed to be a lot of passion and real dedication to it, do you think there was based on what you saw? Definitely YES! 7. Do you have any advice for those who would also like to work on a movie some day? Find out what department of the film you'd like to work on. I work in the Art Department. Then find out which union is responsible for that department and apprentice or apply as a trainee to that union and look for work on film in those entry positions. This is rather location dependent as I only work on shows that come up to Toronto to film. Depending on your home town, you may need to move to one of the production centers in North America to get consistent work. I personally went to University and graduated with an Architecture Degree. I found out a lot of my childhood heros such as Star Wars illustrators and concept artists had architectural backgrounds like Syd Mead (the futurist concept artist for Blade Runner). So I followed that direction, after working as a design architect for a few years in a design firm, I side-stepped into film by joining the union (Director's Guild of Canada) up here and started blind calling their members lists and lucked into a few jobs until you're name starts to get out there and people begin to know you and what you do. Good luck!

Yep! It was so much fun. Also to see all the real physical effects and monster creatures in latext foam. Actually they are back in town to do "re-shoots" although I'm not involved on that. It's been pushed back. Got some amazing photos, but can't release anything ;-( Just tell everyone to go out and see it when it premiers!

But the DYRL SDF-1 doesn't have all these stripes...

Thank you, Thank you, Thank you!!

What decals/markings would you be thinking of?

You guys have to go out to see it to support a fellow MacrossWorlder! I worked on it here in Toronto. They brought me in to design the alien spaceship. Look for Zentradi influences in the set! It was great and creepy to walk through those hallways dressed as it was back in the 80s when I saw it as a kid and it freaked me out. There was so much physical effects that I think it will make the difference.

I just used plain old white glue. A lot of the pieces fit in really well with a lot of friction holding them in. A lot of the pieces I also want to be somewhat removable if I ever need to disassemble the toy for any reason (they cover the screws). Also they are gluing dissimilar materials, some ABS, some POM, some styrene - so model glue only works on styrene and its permanent.

A little black oil wash later... Ok, so now I remember about the clear visor part gap - argh! I did my best to sand the back vertical edge down a bit and shave off some plastic off the tab in the bridge side that fits into the clear part so that I can get it to seat itself higher and more snugly into the bridge to minimize the gap. I also added a few drops of thinned black paint inside the clear visor piece to pick out the molding for the bridge levels (its amazing they even thought of that!) Then I had to re-paint the big radar dish tan color. and fitted it onto the rest of the ship to see how it would fit in. I will add some tiny darker grey, silver and dark sivler paint highlights as well as some hits of red and white here and there to bring it some life like the DRYL references, but at least its at a stage that I can leave it for a few days. At the end, I want to add a few strands of stretched sprue to span vertically across the main antenna masts to simulate the vertical antenna cables. I also noticed playing around that there are magnets inside the main guns that help keep them together in the cruiser mode. The last 3 shots is how it will sit on my desk till I can get enough time to work on the next stage. Possibly start the other shades of greys and applying small patches of greys randomly all over to form the base for the pencil work, I'd like to darken up the lighter grey and lighten the darker grey so they are a little less contrasty and blend a bit more (the post-shading at the end will tone down the paneling, pencil work and match the greys a bit more). Of course there's the matter of taking the leg apart to get at the city, that will be a paint deal in itself. Wish me free time soon!