Lolicon

If he lived a little bit closer, I'd consider stealing that model! That is by far the best VF-25F I have ever seen. Even the "pro" built models are fairly lacking and inaccurate by comparison. Good job putting them all to shame! I'm afraid I'm going to have to steal your tinting method too. Maybe you can hand paint the underside of the lerx? It's a fairly easy section to paint. Just one long straight line, really. I've wondered when and who decided that the canopy and sensors are supposed to be tinted purple? The CG model has those sections darkened merely from lack of internal light in exterior shots, and in closeups the canopy is clearly transparent (or has a slight bluish haze).

What the f***! My Armored Ozma arrived today! And it shipped on the 12th via SAL! (I live in the States.) I have never received a SAL package that fast; that was almost EMS speed! Anyway, it's a monster! The box is the size of two regular VF-25s stacked together. Can't wait to get my paws into it!

I like the VF-25 battroid mode for my own reasons. The mass of the VF-1 is a lie. Where's this extra mass coming from? The area directly below the chestplate (in fighter mode) is the air intake/upper leg. There's really nothing between the front and back plates. Yes I know in the TV series these magical side covers appear from the VF-1's hidden Tartus section to fill in the gaps but even that just puts a lid over the space, it doesn't really give the VF-1 more mass. Even Yamato didn't bother giving side cover inserts, much less actually build it into the toy. The VF-1 is just as skinny as the VF-25, it just hides it better. Anyway back to the VF-25. I wish I had read about your silver + clear paint method earlier. I was already almost done with mine and I was only able to apply it to the gunpod sensors. Ah well I'm working on Alto's battroid now, but I'll probably set it aside when my Armored VF-25S arrives. I've already scraped off part of the SMS logo on the sides of the cockpit just from test fitting the battroid. Luckily that part isn't seen in battroid mode. Early on I made the mistake of using the instruction booklet's model for reference. Talk about inaccurate! Since then I've been using the CG model and this one for reference: http://npgpm.web.fc2.com/vf25f.htm (It was posted way back in the original VF-25 model thread.) I thought you were going to paint the underside of the lerx later. That's something that people usually look; I almost overlooked it myself if I hadn't noticed it on the model in the above link. I also threw out the landing gear and just got an SMS stand. This kit was definitely designed more for snapping together and playing with it rather than as an intricate display piece (which makes me wonder why they didn't just mold the visor green instead of including a hideous foil sticker). If it wasn't so expensive I'd get another one just to stick together quickly and transform around with at my desk. I look forward to the finished model!

That looks spectacular! How many clearcoats are you up to now? Looks like you're in the home stretch. After this VF-25 experience, will you be jumping right into an Armored VF-25?

Nice. Even unpainted and without decals it looks 10x better than the DX.

Things change. Never planned on getting Armored Alto, wish I hadn't bought a plain Ozma way back when, etc. And I foolishly thought for sure I might actually use the special decal sets. But no way I'm building two Armored Ozmas!

Warerarorikonda! I got them from the Deculture Campaign a few months back. I ordered my initial kits from HLJ and they included them. Currently have two Altos and one Ozma, and getting Armored Alto and Ozma this month. Holding out on Super Pack bundles for Michael and Luca, but I'm not sure that's ever going to happen.

I'd be annoyed at the lack of custom decals, but I have the first Sheryl and Ranka decal sheets and I know it's going to be a long, long time, if ever, before I get around to building another VF-25F to use them on. I thought "Do I really want to build four Altos? Three Ozmas? etc etc" It's a clever strategy on Bandai's part to get us to buy more kits.

Some pics with better lighting. The lighting available at my home kinda sucks. I tried taking pics outdoors but most of the shots ended up overexposed. I don't like using the flash; I prefer natural lighting.

Very nice, Cowpeeler. The modeling force is strong with this one. Mine's mostly snapped together too, as I (foolishly) thought that I would transform it a couple times at least, but that'll never happen considering I've already experienced some minor decal chipping just from handling it! Not that there's much to glue anyway. Plus, I'm lazy and don't have all that much time to work on modeling. Gonna have to increase the number of clearcoat layers for Armored Ozma. Maybe 9 or 10 layers...

That's how the missile doors open in the anime. Got my R10 shipping notice. Woo!

Armored VF-25 is the only VF where I prefer seeing it in battroid mode. Can't wait to get Alto's too so I can do the salute from the last episode.

Got my Rainbowten notice and paid for it this morning. 8480 yen with SAL shipping.

What are you using for purple coloring? I like the shade that some of you guys are getting.

Some quick pics of my VF-25F that I recently finished. Pretty amateurish, but I like it, despite all my screwups. These are some quick indoor pics; I want to get some good pics of it outdoors sometime this weekend (no good indoor spot for photos, and the sun is the best light source anyway!) Additional notes: -Used waterslide decals. I haven't done waterslides in ages. -Tailfin red is painted, as the decals were pretty awful. -Chucked out the terrible landing gear in favor of SMS stand. -Painted the underside of the lerx (is that what it's called?) black as it appears in the anime. -Painted the wingtip navigational lights, because the decals suck. -Painted the gunpod sensor, because the decal sucked. (I'm noticing a theme here.) -Painted the sides of the main body interlocking parts red and black to minimize the unsightly white gaps between them. And yes, those decals sucked too. -Canopy looks rather milky in this poor lighting. It's much more transparent in person. -Cockpit display is a scan of the Hasegawa 1/72 YF-19 display decal. That's all I can think of off the top of my head. I'll get better pics later. Enjoy!

Wow just wow. Mine looks like it was assembled by a blind monkey compared to yours. Man, I wish I had that screencap earlier for the instrument display. I used a scan of the instrument panel decal from my Hasegawa 1/72 YF-19 for the cockpit display. Looks decent, but I think I'd rather have the real VF-25 display. EDIT: Whoops! Meant to ask: where did you purchase that ink from? It seems to give a good result too.

Why is the word "display" in quotations? Are we talking about a metaphorical display? Do people who talk about such models do more than display them? Is it a euphemism that I'm unaware of? I thought this thread was about the upcoming 1/48 VF-25? This thread was interesting until it degenerated into gunpla talk and how awesome/lame Bandai is for their snap-fit models. I'm cool with Bandai releasing a transforming 1/48 so long as it's not a pain to assemble. It's not like I'm some hardcore pro-modeler; I don't mind the snap-fit or poseability. But a model that's a pain to assemble is a pain to assemble, snap-fit or glued. The 1/72 has a number of stupid things about it, the most annoying being the crappy decals that are the wrong size and shape. That's unacceptable for a static or transforming model.

You guys typed up all the same complaints I had with the 1/72 problems caused by the compromises made by including the transformation much more eloquently than I could have. And I'm hardly a pro modeler.

Sure. It's a pretty clunky method, admittedly. I just dissolved a small amount of Tamiya purple in a container of Future, stirred it as best I could, then just dipped the canopy and then drained off the excess with a paper towel. I don't have an exact mix % as I just added purple until I got the color I wanted. (I saved the mix.) As has been pointed out before, Tamiya acrylic tends to clump up in Future, but I was able to stir it enough to get an evenly mixed purple water and I just let the remaining purple sediment settle to the bottom before dipping. Of course I tested it on some clear pieces of sprue first. I've seen some people here have tried purple ink and have had good results. I might experiment with that on my next VF-25 and see if that works out better for me than the acrylic method.

She looks incredible! I wish mine looked half as good! A few notes- I agree that modeling seems to be a dying art. All the hobby shops in my area shut down in the past few years (does anyone have hobbies anymore??) and I live in Houston, which is a big city. Astounding. I mentioned in in my previous postings that many of the decals are the wrong size and shape, but no one listens. Yeah, these decals suck pretty hard. I had many of the same problems you had. Decal 17 actually wrinkled up in the middle for no explicable reason, then ripped when I attempted to straighten it out, forcing me to have to line up two broken halves. Decal 52 was another particularly bad decal though I was able to fix it by inking in the white gap around the edges using my Sakura micron pen. The head decal I managed to get correct the first time... until due to a blunder on my part, I accidentally pushed the red part out of its socket in the black part, fraying the edges of the white stripes. The white stripes stupidly sit on the gap between the red and black parts. I got a replacement decal sheet and fixed it (and glued those two parts together!). For my second Alto head (building two Altos for different modes), I painted the red parts, glued it to the black section, then carefully trimmed just the white stripes from the decal and applied them separately. I prefer this method because it's easier than dealing with the whole decal, which has a tendency to wrinkle and is kind of annoying to line up correctly, and it eliminates the ugly mismatched section directly underneath the sensor which the decal does not cover. I've attached a pic. The shoulder hexagon decals were some of the worst decals I've ever dealt with. I actually used my hobby knife to put a few small partial incisions on the corners of the hexagons, and it really helped in getting it to fit properly. I'm glad I'm not the only one who painted the edges of the shoulder hexagons. Also painted the tailfins because those decals are just plain awful. Also had some issues with decals that have fully dried getting lifted up when I brushed Future on a part. I've since moved to the Gunze Sangyo clearcoat spray, so this is no longer an issue. The decals don't react to Mr Mark Softer very well either. Using my finest brush I'll apply a coat of Softer, which will then promptly bead up and you'll have to sit there and keep brushing it around until it finally affects the decal. Better to just avoid using it at all, if you can help it. I look forward to seeing the completed work!

Wow! I hope there Bandai made some changes to allow you to mount both the gunpod and sniper rifle in fighter mode. Is that another Sheryl decal set, this time specially for Armor Pack?? I want!

Ooohhh I wanna see! The tailfin decals are pretty awful and are completely the wrong size. I'm going to go back and paint the red sections instead. Is it still snowing where you're at? It's already May.

Are you talking about the stripe that goes on the rear ankle guard? Because my friend did the same thing and cut them. They're actually the correct length. You just have to make sure to wrap them all the way around, including the "step" at the edges. Attached a pic of mine. Don't worry though, there will be plenty of other decals that are incorrectly sized.

I've been unhappy with the quality of the paint job on my Alto pilot figure for some time now, and since I was planning on building two VF-25Fs anyway (one fighter and one battroid), I decided to break out the second pilot and paint him. I've never painted miniatures nor anything this tiny before. I enjoyed and loathed the challenge, and by some miracle, I actually ended up with a decent-looking pilot. Please forgive the quality of the pic as it's the middle of the night and I didn't want to break out the tripod.

What a beauty! Please tell us you're not actually going to be transforming it! The thought of such a beautiful finish being scratched up is heartbreaking.