PetarB

Gotta love those decals... and thanks for sharing the pics!

Bad Publicity for Macrossworld Link I've seen this sort of thing on a couple of forums over the past few months for Macrossworld. Is there an issue here that needs to be addressed? I quite like this forum, and having people call it elitist, impossible to register, etc, is probably something that should get sorted out.

Well it's obviously a longer than a few days. Lots of stuff happening in life at the moment... ...anyway, I spared you the boring bits, which basically consisted of many fifteen minute sessions grabbed here and there of putty, let dry, sand. Then the other day I got a tube of Tamiya Light-Curing putty. Praise to Jesus Christ, Bodhisatva, Vishu and forest Kodama! This stuff rocks. Basically you put it on, away from sunlight, in a gloomy room. Spread it around. Walk outside into sunlight and it cures. In about a minute. I love it! After all filling and sanding, I used my new scriber to re-etch some lines. You can see here the little corkscrews of resin it pulls out, unlike other scribers I've used. I use Dymo label tape to give a straight line. Accidents do happen though...! Anyway here she is after 4 coats of white. I'm going to be putting a couple more on. Some of you might notice that the scribed panel lines are quite deep. A little too deep. If I wasn't so impatient I'd find some way to semi-fill them, but a few coats seemed as good a solution as any. I love the shape of this airframe. The more I look at it the more I like it. I have a non-canon, but very, very Macross plan for decals and trims, but the basecoat will be this white. The next part will be fun, but might be a few days until the next update. Till then, sayonara!

Sounds like you got the idea. Use Tamiya Fine White primer in a rattlecan. Awesome stuff. If you want a stark white base colour, after a very light sand, you could probably just seal this with a Tamiya Clear rattlecan then get started on the decalling. After that, seal again, then a light weather, if you plan to do any weathering.

Wow Rick, I'm intrigued to see more of that...

Well if SSM does a release of the Launch Booster Vehicle, pricing will be up to them, so it may vary. Now come on WM, get out that airbrush please, I'm keen to see what you do with this one!

Iwata Eclipse, gravity feed... you wont look back!

Bad News and good news. Bad news... I wont be entering this lovely lump of resin into the competition. The reason is the good news, we just got a new account at my studio, and I am staying back tonite and tomorrow to push through a project. Since I am a partner, it's a great financial boost (ie, now I can afford that FineMolds Millenium Falcon I want) but I don't have time this weekend now to complete the VF-4. I will probably have it finished by next weekend though. With the larger timeframe, I will probably go back and clean up a few more lines, etc. Just like to say props to Gamera Baenre and Tetsujin for organising the comp, I know these things are a lot of work. Come on people, go and enter your Valkyries... there are a lot of talented Macross fans on this board! Thanks for watching, back in a few days.

Well, I'd hoped to get the first all-over coat on today. I didn't even pull out the airbrush - filling and sanding kept going on... and on... and on. So I'm behind a little, but on the other hand, I did some design work on the livery. That's for later. For now... the ugly truth! Mechacomp timer: 4 days, 51 minutes. Yikes!

In regards to the tracked launch vehicle itself, the only build up I've seen is one by HWR MKII which is quite well done. Don't know where it was though, perhaps he can post a link here...

Sorry, double post.

He's back! Looking forwards to seeing what you've in store for the paintjob on this one...

So tonight I started by pinning the engine pods onto the fuselage with some brass rods. Actually, the moulded support isn't too bad, but just for safety's sake I thought I should pin them. Then some two part epoxy to bind them together. I let that dry, gave my wife a massage, and put on a DVD - Letters from Iwo Jima. BIG MISTAKE! Great movie to watch, bad for modelling, as it's mostly in subtitles, if you don't speak Nippon... However I peeled myself from it and started filling in the huge seams between the engine pods and the fuselage wing. I did this by rolling a thin snake of Milliput (Aves would work fine too) then liberally coating in alcohol to keep it nice and slippery and mashed it into the seam. Once it was in, I then smoothed it with the blunt rounded edge of paintbrush, once again with liberal amounts of alcohol. This means I wont need to sand much later on. So much alcohol... Hmmm, I feel very happy for some reason.... While this was going on, I had left the cockpit inserts to dry - they got a coat of Tamiya Silverleaf spraybomb. I find Silverleaf the only metal from Tamiya's sprays that actually looks like a decent metal... there's almost no 'grain' to it, unlike the rest of their spray can range. After it dries (for some reason this particular colour is touch dry in minutes) I put a wash of dark grey pastel mixed with alcohol, the rubbed it back a little. In this picture the wash has just been applied so it's still glossy. The nice thing about pastel washes is that they dry absolutely matt... if that's the effect you're after. This last picture is purely for my benefit, so it looks to me like I actually did something tonite... Mechacomp timer says I only have 4 days, 23 hours and 8 minutes. I must admit, Im slightly concerned, but I will soldier on. My goal for tomorrow will be wing assembly, first all-over base colour coat, and metallizers for the exhaust.

Okay so firstly I got a call this morning to say my airbrush parts have come in... ahead of schedule! I'll pick them up later. Meanwhile I attached the rear blast deflectors on the engine nacelles. Its only looking at the photos I realise I've ignored the interiors, but - I will probably paint it flat back, and by the time the horizontal blast deflectors go in, you wont' even see em. Oh, and recutting those stretched hexagonal indents under the curve, that's going to be annoying... Anyway I've thrown the first coat of Mr Surfacer on to pick up imperfections. Yep, there are a few, but a little more judicious sanding and work and they should be ready for pinning and gluing to the fuselage. Speaking of which, I threw a quick coat of Mr Surfacer on. I like this primer for resin, it has a lot of bite for resin, and leaves a very silky finish which isn't too apparent on these photographs. Except for the base area, the sanding is okay, but I went a bit too keen on the scribed line. I really should fill and rescribe the whole thing. I'll evaluate where Im at tomorrow nite and see if I have the energy to do it. I have a surprise for the decalling in store, and it's going to take a bit of time, time wasted rescribing, and sanding... I've tackled the cockpit, but it's at a boring stage now, should be a little more interesting tomorrow. I swear, 90% of modelling always seems like prep work, then suddenly - BOOM - it all seem to come together.... See you tomorrow!

The exact model I have is detailed here... link to manufacturer. I bought mine at the hobby store - you might be able to order one in, or direct from their website link here.

I put the two engine pods together, pinned and sanded. However the pictures turned out poorly, so I will take some more tomorrow. You could just assemble them... but I puttied, sanded, puttied sanded. They are not perfect but acceptable. Sanding's always the bit I hate most! Anyways I sanded down the large join in the main fuselage and rescribed with my new scribing tool. I was going to order one of these from Micromark or somewhere like that. Imagine my surprise when I saw one in my local hobby store! Some scribers are basically a sharp spike and make an indent into the resin/styrene. This one's a bit different. As you trace your line, it actually digs in and lifts up the resin, leaving a clean line with no ridge on either side. And it does it very lightly, so you can go over it again for a deeper/wider line. Much better than the old pin-in-vise method. I love it!

Okay so I thought I should make an entry to the Macross Valkyrie Mecha Model Comp. Option 1: Fix up my VF-0D, which underwent an accident and is awaiting some TLC. It looks quite good and I know I could make it better. (easy option) Option 2: Build up my most precious kit, my VF-1 Atmospheric Booster mastered by Captain America himself, John Moscato. My precious (insert Gollum voice). Option 3: Opportunity presents itself - a VF-4 has just arrived yesterday. I reject Option 1 - too easy. Option 2 would score a lot of points just for the subject matter, and the fact that it's a such a great kit it would be relatively easy to do a decent job. But I really love this kit, and although I've started prepping it, and have done most of the VF-1 I don't want to rush it, so I put those engine bells back on the shelf and pull out the VF-4. This kit is fantastic. My inital enthusiasm is tempered a bit once I take a look at the neck join. It's not quite right, and if I sand back too much I'm going to wreck the lines. So I've added about 3 ml in neck length which will give me opportunity to smooth out those sleek lines a little better. I've dremelled quite liberally on the interior of both sides to insert a 3 cm piece of sprue, glued in with epoxy. Once this dried I packed it with milliput and squeezed the two components together so that it would fill all the hollows I've made and give some real strength to that join. I smoothed over as much as possible with alcohol, while leaving a little bump - I would rather have more stick out, so that I can lightly sand it down, than have to put more filler on later. Tomorrow I will sand it down and rescribe the lines. I've bought a hot new scriber which I can't wait to do some more work with. Now here's the challenge. I have 8 days in which to do this kit. Each day I will update this thread, and you can see if I make it. There's going to be lots of drama! Here's what's against me: 1) My mother has come over to spend the weekend with the family 2) My 2 airbrushes are broken, and parts for them are meant to arrive mid-week 3) Work is pretty full-on at the moment. Mecha Model Comp says I have 8 days, 3 hours and 23 minutes! Back to the workbench...

Very cool!

I've just received mine. Out of the dozen or so resin kits I've bought in the past couple of years, this would have to be one of the cleanest, sharpest casting I've recieved yet. Minimal clean up and fit issues. Another happy customer, thank you.

I always assumed they were required to carry bigger bomb payloads, which is why they were larger. I mean, check this out!

I've found otherwise, however, most accounts would agree with this statement

Wow cool image. Any chance of a larger one?

That's amazing work, simply amazing... well done!

I. CAN'T. WAIT.

Most, if not all of these links now appear to be broken. Anyone got any solution?