PetarB

Er.... no. Starship Troopers is from Starship Troopers. Ender's Game is a few decades later.

Nice. :lol:

If Robert Pattinson hadn't been in Eclipse, you know I would have thought perhaps he might bring something to this, his name is just tainted now. Never the less, Akira has always been inextricably linked to Tokyo for me. I can't understand how they can transplant it without ripping out its heart. It is NOT a western story. Putting it in NY just shows zero respect for the story.

Where did you hear that?

Did anyone ever get to build the Glaug Booster? I can't remember what happened to it, I don't know if it ever went into production...

Many thanks Roman. Now I have no excuses....

Had my eye out on this one for a while. It looks like a lot of fun.

I wouldn't mind having a go at the white version of the Fern II, which to be honest I have not seen that much detail about except 1 photo somewhere. Looks like you are close to completing yours, apart from that troublesome cockpit.

That looks fantastic Roman - a massive improvement. You might be interested to know that I just got delivery of the Platz FERN II over the weekend. I can't make up my mind whether to do that next, or something else, it's a really crazy cool looking aircraft.

Yes, always liked this design from the start but that custom sealed the deal. Won't get one until they do a 1/72, however unlikely that is though...

I think in the absence of facts (or even basic education in the issues), reporters and commentators tend to veer one way or the other to sound either important or to give a good soundbyte. Annoying.

Yes - started. How soon I will finish it is another story.

Thanks for the link. I was thinking of doing a house swap in Tokyo towards in the end of the year. Have to have a big think about this. Of course i would love to support the Jap economy, not to mention visit Kyoto again, but its going to be a harder sell to the wife now, we will just have to wait and see.

We were planning our next family holiday in Japan. I've been there by myself for 2 wonderful weeks a couple of years ago. Going to be a harder sell on the family now. I've heard a lot about Tokyo and the north, but how did Osaka and Kyoto fare through the quake?

I just read the original comics for the pics... the stories were certainly not the stars. Black Magic was barely coherent.

It does look a bit rough, but I will still try and see it. Big Appleseed fan here!

Thanks - it took me about an hour to realise that not only did I win for this as a scratchbuild, but I also came first in the kit build as well! And I have to say there was some tough competition. The cool part was - it was a lot of fun.

I really like your brass tube fix for the booster packs. I've always thought this was a huge weakness of the kit.

More, including construction pics, here.

Thank goodness for that - why would he want to be? He was a great martial artist. However he is not the best 'ever'. As a martial artist myself - and a movie fan - I can tell you he is very inspiring, however there are a lot more martial artists/movie stars that I find more inspiring these days. The great Jet Li is one. But let's not forget Bruce. Bruce was amazing.

I like it! It's just the wrong scale...

I like this new trailer. Quite keen to see this now. And like Agent One I'm glad the hero looks the part. In fact the Australian actor bulked up big time for this particular role - a big commitment to change your body like that, you really have to change your life dramatically, it's not just a 'gimmick'. Remember, this was the same actor who played Jim Kirk's father in Star Trek only a couple of years ago. Christian Bale has some interesting things to say on the subject of altering your body dramatically for your art.

John will spill his coffee when he sees this - c'est magnifique! Really fantastic work there. All the extra work that you did and customisations really stand out.

Hi Reuben, your work is fantastic, beautiful build up of this kit. I always look forward to this step-by-step! I wanted to talk a moment about the problem you are having above. I understand what you are trying to achieve - I've done it myself plenty of times as well. There are two problems here. The first is that you are trying to use metal paint for the chipping effect. Unfortunately, metal has a very distinct 'texture' - or lack of it - that never seems to scale perfectly for scale models. This is most noticeable when it is hard up against other paints. This is why in many scale models, a black wash or other technique is set to seperate the metallic part from the other painted sections. With the attempt to use metal for chipping, this out-of-scale effect is magnified. I know it's not the exact effect you wanted, but perhaps a simple choice of a gray colour instead of metallic would have looked more 'in scale'. The second problem is the metal not integrating with the chips. One of the reasons is described above. The other reason is the lack of similar finish between the new paint and the old. Usually a couple of coats of clear - gloss then matt for example - binds the two seperate colours together. Another technique is the use of 'filters' - very washed out airbrush coats of colour which subtly change the colour all over, but also serve to bind the models colours together better. I can see your filter-style yellow Mig pigments have done this to some extent. I think a combination of the above might server to communicate the battered feel a bit better. But you've done a lot of the effects now, so perhaps try the above techniques on another model in the future. Anyway, this is all minor really, because so far its looking fantastic - I look forward to more!

Here's a teaser for my next SSF product...