honneamise

This is looking great memnon - a lot of work went into it so keep it on your shelf! I like the more yellowish brown you used for the paint scheme, it seems to be a closer match to the earlier boxarts and instructions than the lighter, more reddish shade you see today IIRC. And the cockpit is very well done no matter if it is lineart-correct! I still have about 8 of those lying unbuilt in the basement and I don´t think they are so bad - your pictures prove it right away! And these can be built in Gerwalk mode ! The only thing I always disliked is the downward sloped nose, but it is STILL anime-correct - there is at least one scene in ep.2 in which a Gerwalk can be seen hovering from right to left and its nose has EXACTLY this shape. Still, IMAI seem to have reconsidered their decision, their slightly modified kit for the VF-1D has the straight nose and they kept the new shape for their transforming Valks too. BTW have you tried your hands on one of the Hasegawa kits yet?

Mechwarrior that buildup looks great so far! I´d love to see more pics as you progress! The Tanmen Cat´s Eye is sooo cool, too bad I don´t have one!

The landing gear is almost done. The Ghost may be sitting a little high up, but it will need a lot of ground clearance for the downward angled stabilizers at the aft ends (still missing).

So globalization is not only for the big players any more. Thanks for all the kudos guys, you support is always welcome, especially when I´ve just shown my day´s progress to my girlfriend and she tells me she can´t see any difference and I should finish that crap and get me some "real" work .... she´s a teacher and her week has been horrible so far.... Gundamhead the price will be EURO 75,- and you don´t have to hurry, I guess I will have to make several production runs anyway so it will take some time. And the last time I checked the exchange rates the EURO was dropping..... Ranger565 of course there will be a landing gear, as you can see the gear wells are already done. I´m planning to provide two front gears (or one that can be shortened), a longer one in case you want to build the "45 degree" one as seen in the lineart and a shorter one for a "90 degree" option in case you support the "gear is not fully extended in the lineart" theory. The only thing I won´t do is decals. I have no acess to Alps printers and the only canon markings for the Ghost are just two kites and I´d say it should have two UN SPACY´s somewhere - all other stuff is purely personal taste.

You´re right LtSO, most of it still needs some smoothing, re-scribing and polishing. I´m so glad to finally have a camera with macro setting but now every imperfection down to bits of dust shows up in the pictures...

Well, maybe some of us would like to know, so they can start saving some $$$ for it... TELL ME NOW!!! (if not here, by PM at least ) Honneamise, what's the status on your art prints? (If you started a thread in the "For Sale" section, I totally missed it.) 368532[/snapback] Viceland I´m sorry the prints got a little behind.... I wanted the print company to make them exactly 30x50cm (original size) but I was just so busy with the model I somehow didn´t get to it. Well I guess ordering those prints will take just a few minutes so I really should be able to do it within the next few days.....

Time for an update I guess... Those rear cones are in the making so the Ghost is approaching its final length... upper side details underside: I added the landing gear boxes and made the speed brakes. This is the closed position.... ..and opened

Have you seen Orguss or Megazone 23 Part 1? The something special might be Ishiguro Noboru's direction. I saw Orguss and mz23 and was like, "Wow! This has that something special Macross did that its sequels don't!" 370246[/snapback] I haven´t seen mz23 but I know what you mean Ginrai! I´ve just watched Orguss recently and it had the same epic yet personal touch to it or whatever it is that makes SDF Macross so special. Admittedly Orguss has about the same guys teaming up - Mikimoto chara design, Haneda for the musical score and Miyatake for mecha design -so it cannot be that bad- but what makes both series worth watching is the chemistry between those elements and a good story. Storytelling is even better in Orguss IMO ´cause everything is more straightforward and there are less recapturing episodes etc.

I will make them just how they are, only putty the depressions on the parts etc basic stuff just to get some more modeling experience and stuff on the shelves. But for your scratch building skills, you could make them whatever you'd want to. ^^ Though, yes, they're maybe not even worth modifying. Man, you gotta scratch build us some other Zent ship in that big size! 369811[/snapback] Actually I only COMPLETELY dislike the Nupetiet-Verginitzs because of its square shape, the Kamjin ship and the Cruiser are not too far off and can be made into something with a decent amount of work. The Carrier ship is SUPPOSED to be box-shaped so I have no big problem with this one as well. All in all the 4 ARII kits are not among my favourites but I´m still glad to have them.

I have got the ARII ships too and I have figured out if I try to convert that boxy ship into something decent I could as well scratchbuild a new one and, while at it, increase the size to make it more impressive on the shelf. So, that one looks very good so far and will probably save me from months of puttying and sanding if I buy it. But I can imagine how much work has to be put into it to make it really convincing, so I doubt the price will be anywhere around $50, that´s probably solely the price of the resin for this beast! Like Sdf-1 said, around 200 or even more will be likely....

It has been already mentioned but I just have to recommend Citadel despite its price tag. This is the only stuff I know that allows you to get a white finish on a near black plastic without losing tiny details even if you need 5 or more coats. This is a tiny 144th scale helicopter, it came in very dark green (see the rotors under the fuselage) and I needed it to be white. The downside has been mentioned as well: shake it like hell, keep it warm and spray in little strokes while constantly moving the can alongside the part. And the ridiculous price, of course. The most annoying thing is that Citadel had a light bluish grey in cans as well, it was called "space marines grey" (those Warhammer names are really funny). It was not even desgnated as "primer", but you could spray one single layer and had a perfect primed kit regardless of the base colour. They have discontinued it - this one was the best primer I ever used....

Well, placing Yoko Kanno that high up is a matter of opinion. Modern musical, maybe, but overall....that would be quite a long reach. 369742[/snapback] She seems to be ingenious in adapting different styles. She can play/arrange almost anything but the more I listen to it the more I think I have heard something similar before. The M+ soundtrack blew me away at first but after some time I felt there is not that much originality in it. Take a bowl, put some Stravinsky, Badalamenti, Ry Cooder, Ryuichi Sakamoto and a couple of different World Music pieces into it, throw in a bunch of J-pop-tunes, stir and out comes M+. I have had the same experience with Escaflowne and Cowboy Bebop - not that I don´t like these soundtracks, in fact I still love them for what they are, but I cannot see the godlike genius that some people seem to associate with Yoko Kanno!

Why don´t you try Citadel primer? Makes a thin, even coat even if sprayed on at little distance, leaves all detail intact, creates just the right texture for the paint to stick, does not dissolve anything - expensive,though. And, regardless of the brand, remember never to just point your spray can on one spot of your model! Always move the can alongside the part while spraying - that way you get an even surface and avoid too much primer buildup on one spot. Just in case you didn´t already do that...

That's kind of funny, because I actually like RT's music better, with exception to most of the Minmay songs. Of course, I'd been exposed to RT first, and it better fits my western sensibilities. But there are a few RT tracks that I'm actually kind of sorry aren't part of the real Macross score, like a couple of the Zentradi themes, and even a few versions of the main RT theme. 368937[/snapback] Perfectly understood, Sundown! In my case, Macross came first and I got used to it. I only had 2 episodes at the time (and the music is particularly good in the beginning with NO songs or eerie violins, just the cool stuff) and was starving to get more so I bought a couple of Robotech tapes - I knew nothing about the differences and of course I was kinda shocked about the entirely replaced soundtrack so I of course I just did not want to like it! I cannot say that the entire RT music is crap, it has some catchy themes (I remember the main theme being somewhat similar to John Williams´ Superman movie theme ) and it fits the anime in its own rights. It is, as you say, obviously composed to be palpable by a western audience. Naturally, if we are used to things like re-occurring music from a long-running show, we don´t want to have it replaced no matter which one is "original". Here in Germany we had the same thing with "Captain Future": The whole score was replaced - I only know the german version and I love it so I don´t know if I really WANT to hear the japanese original...

I almost forgot another thing that keeps me glued to Macross: the music! I mean there is hardly any franchise with a greater variety of musical styles but they are all (well mostly) great to listen to. The first Macross Soundtracks I got were the two M+ CDs and Yoko Kanno, despite being kinda derivative (let´s face it: Voices IS some kind of Ryuichi Sakamoto ripoff -just one example) the music blew me away. But what really grabs me even more are the Kentaro Haneda tracks from SDF and DYRL: sometimes they even sound like music that elderly people might hear in a café in the afternoon, but then they change into a tension and grandeur to put scores by John Williams or James Horner to shame. The style is varied with orchestral pieces next to guitar solos - all the music from the fighting sequences both in DYRL and SDF is awesome and, despite being from the 80s, has become kinda timeless IMO. Even the Minmay J-pop songs have grown on me, but I admit I didn´t like most of them in the beginning. With different music, Macross would have a completely different impact, and I absolutely LOVE the way it is executed no matter which series. If anyone is in doubt how important the music is, just compare any episode of Macross SDF with its RT counterpart: the different music may not be the main reason why people tend to dislike RT, but in its plainness it manages to kill a lot of the magic of the original series.

Wow that one looks really beat up Ranger565 but in a very convincing way. I always wanted to have a TV Hikaru 1-J finished that way - his plane(s) get a lot of damage IF he brings them down in one piece. So far I did not have the guts to take a pristine Hasegawa kit and do so much weathering and damage to it but your pics look encouraging

39 but don´t tell anyone

Man, I was 3-4 years old back then... 368418[/snapback] I alwas suspected I´m the oldest sucker around here....

RTHK the lighted Valkyrie is awesome! Cool custom paint job!! Here is my standard, nothing-added Roy VF-1S:

Here comes my VF-1J GBP, IMAI kit from 1983, bought and built in 1983 (or 84 can´t remember exactly). This was my first Macross kit ever and my first exposure to anime modeling. Took me about 5hrs. As you can see I didn´t bother with seam lines. Back then it had two head lasers, of course....

The model kits are what got me into Macross. Back in ´83 a toy and model store here in Cologne had the first IMAI kits and they had built ones displayed in their storefront. I went into the store and came back as a different being..... Unfortunately, the store guys obviously didn´t know what they were selling, and gathering info about Macross was very difficult at the time. I managed to get a tape of the first 2 episodes of SDF and that was it for about 10 years (no Macross on TV, novideos to buy or rent). Needless to say that I watched it until the tape was worn out and that the series had become something almost mythical for me. From ´94 on anime became more widespread here in Germany and I bought M+, M2 and DYRL (only the crappy COTB Version). I liked them all (LOVED M+)but it was 2003 when I finally got a HK version of the first TV series. The subs are horrid and the animation is of course out-dated by the later OVAs, but - this was the beginning of it all, and for a series made in ´83 it is really good, a great saga indeed! I like all Macross series I have seen so far, my favourites being M+ and M0, and while I´m not too excited about M2 and MDynamite7 and the 7movie, none of them was a major letdown, and I will give M7 a try as well, but the old TV series will always be the "centerpiece" for me. So, yes, I can say I like Macross as a whole. It is the only franchise that managed to grab my attention continuosly for over 20 years now. Star Trek and Star Wars are not nearly as addicting to me - I´d rather go and buy M7 even if it is the worst Macross series than enduring that crappy ST NEMESIS movie again! Being a model kit builder, the recent Hasegawa kits and all those fan-made garage kits are among the most important things that keep me glued to the franchise. And, even more than that, being a member of MW - it is great to know there are other fans out there, and being able to exchange information, opinions, pictures etc. has become the greatest thing I ever discovered about Macross.

Look at what Grayson72 did with a Hasegawa Battrois and an ARII GBP: http://www.macrossworld.com/mwf/index.php?...topic=14522&hl=

Yeah, I'm going to get those old destroids & stuff at some point. But hey can someone tell what kits are these here? I thought they're those old kits, but now I started to suspect that?!? IMO pretty awesome models there. And now when I looked more carefully, there could be some findings?!? Like 1/72 GBP..? I'm not enough expert here. The Macross section is in the middle of the scroll bar... Comments please. 368089[/snapback] You´re right Sdf-1, these are the old kits and they are not even much modified, just built very well. The IMAI produced kits in 1/72 (Spartan, Defender, Gerwalks (but their nose is kinda too sloped down)) are generally very good in detail, proportions and fit, they just have no polycaps and have to be glued. The same can be said about their 1/100 kits (GBP, Tomahawk, Phalanx, Glaug) The ARII kits (1/72 GBP, Tomahawk, 1/100 Spartan, Defender), while featuring polycaps, are generally inferior in proportions, detail (sometimes very soft, sometimes over-exaggerated) and fit, but some of them can still be made into decent-looking replicas (see the Tomahawk on the site). Unfortunately, their 1/72 GBP is one of the worst kits they ever made....

I´d be perfectly fine with Hasgawa Destroids. Despite their reputations of being mainly a plane company, they have done Tanks in the past and they are doing robots like the Virtual On models (and the Battroids of course!) right now. They´d be perfectly capable of delivering great Destroid models. Even if their Valkyries sell well I guess they don´t do Destroids because they were so poorly featured in the series. Only good for a few cool scenes and mostly ending up as cannon fodder. If there had been something like a "Macross in the mud" series with heavy ground units as main players, maybe there´d be a higher regard for the Destroids, but Macross is mainly about flying and jumping around while transforming your mech three times a second. My first exposure to Macross were the IMAI kits. The line-up that was available here in Cologne featured all the Destroids and only few Valkyrie kits (only Battroids/ GPB´s so I did not even know about their transforming ability), so I thought the VF-1 was just one design among others. When I finally watched Macross I was blown away by the VF action but the handling of the Destroids was a huge letdown for me. I still want Destroids but I doubt we´ll see anything new - BTW the 1/72 IMAI Defender and Spartan are still worth building IMO.

Back end plate, has yet to sanded down to conform to the underside (model is upside down in the pic).