honneamise

Another one from the rear

I finally had some time to mask and paint ...still quite rough, I will have to do some fine tuning to the blue/grey separation lines. The finish is very glossy because I used Gunze paint which is all gloss, but it will receive a dull coat at the end. The intermediate blue came out quite dark, more like USN Navy blue, but I still like it. I will post-shade the whole ship anyway so it will get a little lighter overall in the end.

Don´t worry cobywan your two are reserved, take your time. Money sucks if you haven´t got more than you need - I know that very well ! Be glad you ARE paid once a month - I build architectural models as my main job and getting commissions is really hard these days, many Architects need models but their budget is too tight so if I get the job I usually work for much less than it is really worth....frustrating!

Thank you guys, great to hear you really like the Oberth!!! Honestly, I was a little nervous about the reception of the kit - I mean, when I built it and kept looking at it all day, in the end I was not able to judge for myself if I had created something really cool or just a very strange looking piece of plastic. My friends are mostly Macross-ignorants and I got comments like "Oh, one of those japanese flying submarines,...interesting" And of course I didn´t know if my self-taught casting techniques could stand up to the standards of other garage kit manufacturers. I am VERY pleased it all seems to turn out well (although I am always nervous about the postal service- sometimes it takes them ages to deliver) and I´d really like to go on with making Macross kits.

Hi guys the kits are ready and, while I´m waiting for some payments, there are still some who are looking for a new home! I´ll send the parcel with the US orders out in about a week from now so If anybody still wants a kit I can still bulk ship it to the United States (or ship it elsewhere of course), just drop me a PM.

Of course this is just what I make of it, and, looking at the screencap posted here, I find the blue/med.-grey/ radome tan- scheme very plausible. In the end it will still be up to every modeler´s own liking i guess... here is the reference I used

Ranger565 this is great work! I have the same screen cap sequence (the only one I am aware of, at least with the Oberth in foreground) and I have based my painting hints on the instruction sheet on it, too. I totally agree with the blue, I have interpreted it as something around USN intemediate blue but it is not too far off from the RLM 24 as seen on your beautiful VF-1A, maybe a little lighter. The blue in the anime is less greyish but I fear using a max type blue will kinda kill the sense of scale with this model. As for the underside and the bow, I came to a different conclusion. It is funny but my screencap does not show any hint of a tan on the bow. The upper part (of the bow) is just very light grey and the lower half of the whole ship appears to be a darker grey -just the neutral grey you propose. Now my interpretation is that the underside PLUS the whole front part of the ship is the lighter grey and the medium grey tone you can see is just the darkened shade of the same grey because the underside is in shadow while the upper side is in light. Based on that, my recommendation is more towards a very light grey such as FS 36622, the underside tone used for the Vietnam camouflage.

Haha you´re closing the circle Bertt! This IS the model from your first post - this is the first release by IMAI, later Bandai took over the molds and sold it as well! It is just that Bandai does also reissued the variable 1/100 as well but these are the ones originally from ARII so there is quite some confusion

Here is the almost finished box art

Sorry guys I have caused some confusion concerning the shipping. Of course I know not ALL of Macross Fans are in the U.S. but somehow I missed this point in my PMs. The thing with the bulk shipping does just mean that Grayson72 will do the distribution within the United States. If you live elsewhere in the world I will ship the kit directly and the shipping cost will be different. I totally forgot to mention this in my PMs. I have now sent corrected PMs but I thought I should point that out here as well. For any further questions regarding shipping just contact me and we´ll work something out!

Well the base thing.... I must say although I was the one who brought the issue into this thread I´ve decided to drop the whole idea of putting a base into this kit. I´m not perfectly comfortable with this because this ship really needs a base - it has no landing gear after all! On the other hand, all the people here who want this kit are modelers and I guess they can make one in a few minutes. If I put a recast ARII stand into it I will most probably waste resin because most people want something else and make one of their own. If I go for Cobywans design -which I like much more than the ARII stand of course- it will take a lot of additional time and will increase the cost of the kit. My "real" job is to make architectural models and other commission work and at the moment it seems if I don´t get the Oberth done quickly it will probably take months before I get to work on it again. Then there is the upcoming possibility of a stand coming from the Model Base. I´ve seen some of their products and they are really high-quality so quite some modelers will want one of these. So I hope my decision is OK for you.... As for the price and shipping, it is still 65 EURO for the kit, Grayson72 will do the shipping within the United States, and the whole bunch will be shipped to him in one big parcel so the intercontinental shipping will cost EURO 3,90 per person if all guys on the list still want one/two. I´ll PM all of you soon! Once the kits are shipped I will of course wait for a -hopefully positive- response from you before I try my hands on another Macross project. I originally thought about a TV-Version ARMD platform in the same scale but this will be too big for my pressure tank. Now that I have experienced the dramatic increase of quality if a kit is pressure-cast I don´t want to make any sub-par things any more so I have to shelf the ARMD until I see a way to get it done. It seems much more practical to make a more complex kit but with smaller individual parts. I´m a big fan of 1/72 Destroids so this might be the way to go. I´ve been gathering info on the Cheyenne lately and there seems to be almost enough lineart/screenshots etc. to make detailed plan views - even without a dedicated Zero-artbook....

Instructions, I just need to resize the writing on it, if I leave it like this you will need a magnifying glass to read it.

I can´t believe it - casting is done!! Couldn´t resist to make a pic of all the parts for the 21 kits. Assembly instructions are almost ready, boxes are there. Really, after all these weeks the Oberth kit is nearing completion fast.

Flash Gordon 1980 - but this is actually a very good film... Star Crash aka the Adventures of Stella Star: Italian Star Wars cheapo-rip-off from 1979 with David Hasselhoff in it! Brightly colored starfields with silver and gold spaceships on strings. Hot chicks (Caroline Munro) and BAD stop-motion. But also starring Christopher Plummer and music by John Barry (he later recycled the main theme into the Out of Africa-theme)to add a touch of quality. Yeah this is my all-time-favourite!!!

I was confused by these posts, I even thought I had already preordered one at HLJ but I was dreaming... that was just the Booster ´51 and I got it yesterday. Still I know I had really seen a built up model with the ghost attached. I´m pretty sure it was on the last Hobby Show video made my the HLJ guys: you could see both the SV-51 Booster version AND the VF-0 Booster and Scott T. Hards announced them as the TWO next upcoming kits in the Hasegawa Macross lineup. I haven´t downloaded the video and it was a while ago but I remember it very well. To me it´s simply a fact that a VF-0 with Booster will be released....hope I´m right about that. Moreover, there was another announcement by a member here on the boards that Hasegawa plans to release a VF-11 kit and there would be an article about that in one of the upcoming issues of Hobby Japan... has anybody heard about this or has anything happened to back up this rumor? While I´m pretty sure the VF-0 will only be a matter of time (they have the mold and they can sell it again by putting in some more plastic parts) I´m somewhat sceptical about the ´11.....

So cool HWR MKII! Your REX rules and it is great to see it "grow" . I´ve seen an artwork by Takani some months ago and, while not knowing what it was I was blown away by the awesome lines of this beast. Other thing, didn´t want to start a new topic as this sort of belongs to "what I will have on my workbench in the near future": Any fans of Xabungle mecha out there? The Bandai kits look very cool and, while as old as the old Macross kits (´83) they are very detailed and well engineered. They are much more true model kits than most of the later Gundam "buildable toys". The reason why I post this: HLJ will have 16 of them available in August, have a look at the future releases! No pics yet but most of them are very cool! And cheap as well. Here is one of Takanis takes on Xabungle:

Here is the kit fitted with the new engines. The "intake" is just snapped on with no glue, the engines as well . The body is now coloured light grey but it looks similar to the base colour so you might see little difference to the previous pic. Next I will prime the engines and then the ship will receive some U.S. Navy Intermediate blue. But only after I finished casting the parts of course.....

Sorry no real progress on the build up, I was busy making a new mold for the engines. I was not satisfied with the two-piece layout, I test-assembled some parts and the fit was not as great as I had hoped - there were some slight distortions in the parts and the main part- aft-end fit turned out to be very mediocre to say the least. So I redesigned the whole thing as a one-part-mold and now it looks MUCH better! No more puttying and sanding here and the right/left intake part which needs to be attached on each side now fits like a glove. Downside : Now I can throw away all the 22 two-part-units I had already made and the new ones look great but are a pain to cast because of the recessed areas on each side. 14 are ready but that leaves another 32 if I count correctly... Have a look:

The comparison pics are great! I´m just curious about the nosecone of the IMAI 1-D. I always found the nose on the IMAIs looked best of all the old models with the 1/100 non-variables by ARII being too skinny and the non-variable from IMAI too much downward sloped and raven-like (though it is anime-correct, see Ep.2, looks like they just took that hovering Gerwalk scene as a pattern for the kit!). Now with the Hasegawa next to it it will no longer win a price for sheer elegance I must say... funny how the slim lines of the Hase models (which are, in fact, very similar in shape to the old 1/100 ARII fighters) have changed my view somewhat, but after all both kits are just interpretations of the original design and I still like both of them!

Great build-up Grayson72, I love to see one of these made by a modeler with your skills. You really know how to bring the best out of an old but still well made kit from the ´80s. Looks very cool with the boosters on. It really shows you can work with resin - even crap resin parts look perfect on your model !! I thought after the arrival of the Hasgawa kits nobody would tackle these old kits anymore - but I always disliked what seems to be kinda canon these days to call every old kit a piece of crap. I knew the IMAI variables were still great pieces of engineering but still I never had the guts to build one in spite of all the unbuilt Hasegawas on my shelf now. 20 years ago I had three of these - the VF-1S, -J Millia Type and -1D. I remember they were great to build but took a lot of time to complete, and I was never satisfied with the look of the Millia Type because the red plastic was almost impossible to paint white (especially with abrush). I was always impressed by the level of details these kits had - back then it was not commonplace for a kit to feature recessed panel lines and a detailed cockpit - the VFs had it all! I really like the fact that you used the "VF" decals on the feet - all the old kits had them and I felt a bit let down when I discovered Hasegawa dropped them in their new kits. Are they just not considered canon anymore? Thank you very much for these inspiring pictures of your work, Grayson72!!! I hope this thread will encourage some more people to get some of their vintage kits out and actually build them.

Do you mean the Yukikaze FAND II from Platz? I hear those Platz Yukikaze kits are very very very nice. 314740[/snapback] I have all three Yukikaze kits from Platz and yes they're unbelievable. The gray resin looks like injected plastic. 314959[/snapback] What about the canopies? In pics of finished kits they seem to be opaque or sometimes they look as if cast in a solid block of tinted clear resin. Is there really no detailed cockpit? I remember the Bandai EX 1/100 had cockpit details but on the whole looked less impressive with a toylike landing gear. I haven´t seen the series yet so the non-see-through cockpit may be correct, just wanted to know what to expect. Platz make excellent models, my first one was a 1/144 Mustang I built a few months ago. Detailed like a 1/72 or 1/48 with decals for five different machines!

First pic of my kit build up, partially assembled and still in priming stage.

Looks like a 1/4000 DYRL SDF from Yellow Submarine alongside a 1/5000 TV version from IMAI. The YS is a resin kit released some years ago and the IMAI is an old but very good plastic kit from the 80s. Both are really well built and painted! Great to see those together, first time I see an IMAI actually built up and not locked in a vault!

A little spaceship I did as a commision just before my holiday - I needed the money Took me only two days but came out well. This is the Toybox from the Planetes manga/anime (actually I think it is the anime version but I don´t know much about it). It is a 1/500 resin kit from Platz - only 12cm long and the same price as for their 1/72 Yukikaze planes! so the kit costs about EURO 8,30 per centimeter - crazy but now that I´ve built it I know why. I have never had a better cast/engineered resin kit in my hands - perfect fit, almost no sprue gates, no air bubbles, perfect assembly instructions with lots of sketches, decals by Cartograf, cast metal parts, Photoetch parts, lots of options for retracted/extended bits and pieces all over. These guys at Platz scare me...how do they get the resin into the molds? I was not too crazy about the strictly utilitarian design but it grew on me as I built it. When it was finished I began thinking of buying one for my own shelf, but I find it still too pricey

Hi sorry it took so long but first MW was down ant then I was away for two weeks - that was a long time without MW! I´m glad MW is back and I´m working on the Oberth again, see my post on the other thread. I´m about halfway through building and painting one ship just from cast parts and this should be finished within this week. I need to replace/ make some of the molds to get the first 20 kits ready. Pictures will follow soon.