PetarB

I don't have the launch rail, I am tossing up at this point whether to get it or not. The reason is that I really like the lines of the booster & valk - and for me the rail might detract from it once mounted. I like how Bertt did his in the orange colour, it looks very utilitarian and separates it from the booster quite effectively. But it might be too much for me, visually. I've got some polished pieces of clear acrylic which I am considering as the base. Still in two minds though, the launch rail is very nicely sculpted from what I've seen. If only WMCheng would finish his, I would love to see another one to compare... (hint, hint!)

Then why bother having them at all? They've just confused Klam here, and probably a lot of other hopeful people. I understand pre-orders need to be filled. But advertising due dates, with no intention of following through is just dishonest. Once again, some of these have new dates every month for over a year.

One of the main points of Dune - in fact Herbert said many times it was almost 'the point' - was that ecology was the fundamental issue facing people in the future. His thesis was that the ecology fundamentally altered what it meant to be human, both psychologically or physiologically. He also wrote a few short stories on the issue. A focus on the ecology is a great one, in my opinion. I just hope they end with the concept of jihad as the next stage, and not go all politically correct hollywood on us. I'm all for a remake. I loved the Lynch version, and I loved the mini-series. Bring on another, please!

Just realised, the 'due date' is today. :rolleyes:

Hmmm... I'll believe it when I see it. Do you know how long I've been waiting on 'pre-order' status for the mk2 Valkyrie? 1.5 years. Every month, when it approaches the date available, the date gets put forward another month. It's ridiculous, and unprofessional.

I'm a LONG TIME Macross fan. But only a couple of weeks ago saw DYRL for the first time. Every single piece of art direction in DYRL is much better than the TV version for me. The TV stuff looks too dated now, but DYRL holds its own.

Not only did I consider drilling them out, but I also thought about making them wider - which is how the artwork looked to me. I was too impatient to get on with it. I think flat black will be fine. I'm considering putting some mesh in there, so it may not be an issue anyway. As for the weathering - most definitely. Hydraulic fluid and oil stains, scuffing and normal wear and tear will all get a look-in. I don't think we ever found out if the boosters were reusable in the show, but I will give them the benefit of the doubt!

...and once the booster went on, I could not resist grabbing some blu-tac to temporarily stick the exhaust bells on. After these pics it all came apart again, sadly, for the next stages I've still got so much to do. Next I have to finalise the decals. The on goes a coat of future, another round of metallics, then an oil wash. Then there are the exhaust bells. I still have a couple of tricks up my sleeve too! Will I ever finish this thing? But it's been a lot of fun so far.

Here are the Valk pics - with some details put in with a .02 pigment-based ink marker from my art shop. And after putting it all together for a test fit, I had to put it on the booster...

Well, it's been a week or two since my last update, but I have been busy! After putting a less than satisfactory coat of Future/Pledge on the booster and valkyrie, it was time to do some metal detailing with some masking. I'd run out of the wonderful Alclad II by this stage, and with no new stock in site for a month or two, I went back to old faithful - Tamiya Spray 'Silverleaf'. That is the only metallic spray I'd use from Tamiya, the rest have an awful 'grain' in them which looks really out of scale for metallics, and as such they are also very thick. Silverleaf looks great, and goes on thinly, but its certainly no Alclad. Next I attacked the decals. Because there were going to be some large black stripes on the booster, I wanted to tie in the Valk with this too, so everything got black stripes. This is not Max's valk - which would have a much deeper blue on the fuselage - I wanted it to look more utilitarian, and I wanted the booster to have echoes of large real-world rocketry like the Soyuz, Saturn V, and Energia, hence the choice of colours. So the decals wouldn't look too wild, at least nothing like the VF-4 I did earlier this year. A collection of old decals - and new ones - certainly helped here. After putting on the large black panels supplied in the kit, I realised that they look quite different from the others, so I may have to make some myself which have less density. I also did a less than spectacular job of trimming them.

Some Macross Option decals are about to be re-released, if anyone's interested. A couple more days for the 'earlybird' special.... Hobby Link Japan

Here's an awesome build-up by Kylwell at Samurai-Monkey.

Great! I'd probably weather them a bit... but I guess that's hard to do realistically at this scale. Nice panel work - I bet you tested your patience with that.

That's awesome!

Wow! Some great work there - I particularly like the VF-4 and the Strike Valk.Thanks for posting those pics!

Well Deadghost, here's hoping to a successful conclusion for you, and once again, thanks for posting pics.

Just saw this thread. BLUDDY HELL! Very awesome.

They're not bad, but you should have got someone from this forum to build them for you. There are plenty of people in this forum who would do a much better job - something to think about for future commissions, maybe. I haven't heard any good things about Jason Gares unfortunately, and I'm surprised it all worked out well for you. And posting pics is always a great thing to do!

Well as you can see, I settled on option 2. Option 1 was also a favourite, it was a tough call. The white trim you see is actually more of an off white or cream colour, which is what I was aiming for. There's a little bit of overspray which I will have to fix on the booster trim. I'm going to put some Pledge One-Go (a Future equivalent) on tonight. Tomorrow I will be putting on metallic trims and decals. The colours in these pics are different - one camera broke during the photography, so I grabbed another to take that final pic! Something I learned during this exercise - while Mr Surfacer seems to be an excellent primer for styrene, it just does not seem to have much 'bite' for resin. The primer lifted in 2 locations when I pulled back some masking tape - which I had already removed tack from. This is the second time this has happened to me, so I wont use Mr Surfacer as a primer again on resin. However I've used Tamiya fine White primer on resin several times, and it's never lifted. Might have to stick to that in future.

I would like to purchase the ES-11D too... but at this stage it seem impossible to find, unfortunately.

Not really into battroids, but it looks like a fantastic kit. Looking forwards to an announcement on a Fighter version of this mecha.

Hi Sahir Many people would like the 1/72 VF-11B to exist! I don't think Hasegawa has any plans to release it. It was released some years ago as a short-run resin kit, although these days it's almost impossible to find. I would be nice if someone made it available again...

www.milliput.com will get you started. Just google milliput technique or aves technique and I'm sure some pointers will evolve. Mori-mori is also of interest. You need to get some and just experiment - although perhaps Aves is more suitable for this as it costs less!

I'm not going to be able to put the paint decision off much longer... Here are the colour schemes I'm considering: The idea is to integrate the booster colours more with valkyrie. Feel free to yell at me! I reserve the right to disagree

Basically you're asking questions that have no right or wrong answers. Good scratchbuilding begins with good plans. They are half the battle. Then your materials should be tough, but easily machined. Epoxy putties like Aves and Milliput are excellent for smaller subjects - Bondo is good for larger subjects. Right angles and conformity to measurements are important, but so is the ability to generate smooth compound curves. Check out some of John Moscato's build-ups. He uses a lot of Renshape or Ciba-Geigy board - which is excellent stuff, but expensive - for block sculpting. His work is quite inspirational.