Hikuro

My vf2ss came and I'm excited, out of box she's just gorgeous to look at and go wow over. I'm sure putting this kit together will make me say different as I'm aware there will be a good deal of painting to be done. I hadn't decided if I want to do this in major nexx or silvi gena colors. The kit is just white and gray plastic, but what's a good color to replace the white to look more anime accurate?

So which is the width and which is the length? Kind of hard to measure these things with a ruler to me when they're so tiny. In either case, I still can't find the missing neck piece I need. I thought it just went behind my desk on the carpet but I moved everything around to get to that area and it's not there. Spent a good 2 hours cleaning that area up from Decal pieces coming from other projects only to find nothing. I think I'd have a better chance at buying some kind of a scrapped junker valk or something than finding this missing piece.

Just got vol 4, with 1 and 3 on the way so I've only read 2 and 4......well "Read". What is up with Roy in this last volume? He seems pretty pissed off at Hikaru. Am I right to assume that he doesn't think Hikaru is mature and experienced enough to be some kind of a squad leader?

Still having big issues with those pins. I tried to compare with my other figures but some aren't as consistent as others. The pins on the collar area that connect to the back side don't go fully inside on my max vf1a. I also think I put the wrong pin on the right thigh. How can one get a pin out from smaller areas that go thru evenly versus stuck out?

Well, I just recently scored an old Bandai 1/100 VF-2SS model kit, and for pretty cheap too! Dunno what I'm going to exactly do with it though.

Only safe bet to avoid KO's would be BBTS or Toyarena.com, those kind of places usually label if you're goign to get a KO of something already done. I remember when City Commander got the treatment and even heard stories the quality was shoty. I've got Hegemon on order, should be here the end of the week I think. Got a nice big ol decepticon sticker waiting for him.

I can't figure out the pins at all. I got to many different sizes so I'm not picking the right ones or something.

Lost the piece where the head needs to connect to the rear of the fuselage. It's around, I just got to find it. Did anyone ever have any trouble in getting the 1.5mm pin thru the part? Mine wants to not fit or just go downward thru the gap the plastic piece has. But both legs are assembled, and the right arm is done, and so is the head unit. Those are major deals right there.

Sanding and Primer seemed to of helped for nwo, gotta let it cure over night. These hinge pins are REALLY pissing me off. Why couldn't Yamato just put these in according to their size? I mean the tree thing with nothing labeled and bits and pieces everywhere, that's annoying, but these pins are even worse.

I'll have to try to take the right arm apart again to do it. I also made a really big mistake where I accidentally put the right hand together palm flipped backwards and stuck the pin in. I gotta find a way to get that pin out to fix it.

Dammit I thought Wiki was wrong when I looked today. How the hell could you go from an order of 18 episodes for season 1, then take practically a 3 month break just for another 9 episodes before calling it quits? Damn you disney, if it doesn't have a wanna be pop idle in the making of her own scandal you don't want it.

Ugh so lame. so the parts that have to do with the inside of the shoulders seem to flake off paint no matter how much paint I try to put on. That's real damn lame!

Paint is holding up really nicely. I've been doing a scratch "test" with my finger nails and what not. If I leave it alone for a day or two, it cures nicely. Which is why you don't see much of anything unless it's internal being assembled. I built the head as my final bit for the day, I feel like it could use a little blue violet or something on it instead of 2 shades of gray for the turrets and head unit itself. There's a very faint clear green on the visor, but just enough to make it stand out as something was there. That bit came out nicely.

Very nice. Remind me to get a VF-1J and let you comission it for me You can see where Alto's VF-25 is a clear inspiration for the new VF-1J, very clear. But I do think I like this new modern look a lot more as I keep looking at it.

There was a ton of touching up. Painters tape was not my friend through any of this venture. It's a little hard to see it, but if you focus on some areas of the parts you'll see lil marks that I had to touch up with royal light gray to fix the over spill of paint into portions of the panel lines. Still, none the less the paint job did turn out good, and I think the color mix is excellent. One thing does bug me, the right thigh didn't want to snap correctly and is leaving a gap. Anyone had any slight gap or odd part fits with their kits? I was able to design the Apollo logo on Illustrator andn have it cut on my machine at work. However I didn't size it correctly and it's way to big. I'll need to measure the black area of the rear wings this time and hope the machine will cut that small. It was VERY difficult to get it cut the size I had already. So chances are I may need to scout for someone to make special decals or something. Any suggestions?

Most of the blue striping is done. The nose of the plane is still outside drying before I call it a night. The stripes on the wings and legs will need some touching up of gray once they've dried. I'll need to re-primer those areas then lightly touch up with royal gray once it's dried. You can kind of see where I tried to touch it up already and it came out a lil grayish purple. The black for the chest portion came out really well, and very pleased. Next step is to let it cure over night and then tape that area up nice and snug so I can get the blue on the final portion. After that I'll have the lower leg wings, and tail to go which is under another coat of black right at this time and will have to all it quits for the night, done or not.

Tested the new audio, it did not sync well, AT ALL. Just 5 minutes in and it becomes 4 seconds slow from the animation. I might of used a bad version. Which this bugs me, I had to convert a WAV file to MP3 to use on a 700 dollar program. WTF?

Gray is done. Next is taking measurements of the striping and putting down marks so I can tape off and start painting. Where the hell did I put my painters tape?

So....hard......not to........ah F it! I like it, real nice and inspirational to see it physical. Makes me really hope my paint job for my custom VF-1S turns out well.

Something about these cans of royal might gray where there isn't enough! I'll just barely get everything I need in gray colored, barely. Still got another coat on existing parts to go.

While running errands for work I managed to score a new can of royal light gray and blue violet which looks cool! I'll be able to finish the main trim of colors tonight then start figuring out how I'll get the secondary blue violet trim as The stripes in the wings and legs. The chest area will be a huge challenge! But the most difficult of all the paint application.

Zentraedi subtitles are done. I really like how they came out! Next is keying in some of the audio of the english dub intot he animation and timing the music score around that. Then I need to figure out how to do rolling credits.

Looks good on camera. But gonna get rid of the black filler on the cockpit. medium sea gray will be a much better fit. Maybe it's just the florescent lighting in my home.

Hmmm under better lighting, the TS-81 Royal blue really isn't all that great I think. It's a bit to light and sandy looking, nothing like the cap of the can would suggest. Looks more like a desert color to me. I think I need more of a normal gray.

Last week I won an auctioned on Yamato's 1/60 V2 Unpainted Unassmbled VF-1S. The goal to this is to try and recreate Chillyche's VF-1 paint scheme for his character Rafe Townsend (Who I voiced) for his in developed Macross Aria webseries. To achieve this I've gone all out on studying Tamiya's paint charts that will work on ABS Plastic. I carefully considered my options on what Che set his RGB scales for the 3D model render to what Tamiya had available without having to do paint mixing of any kind. Essentially I'm using TS-81 Royal Light Gray, TS-57 Blue Violet, TS-14 Black, and XF-83 Medium Sea Gray, along with a few other color choies like Silver for the turbines, and Nato Black for the color around the main body and Cockpit Green for the seats. Stage 1: Cleaning the parts; involved washing the parts in dish soap and warm water then rinsed with cold and left to air dry over night. Stage 2 BODY PAINT: This was the first few coats of Royal Light Gray which produced a some what odd look I wasn't expecting. It doesn't really look like it matches that close to the 3D Render, but hopefully with the Nato Black and Blue Violet this will really stand out and blend well with the rest. Sadly, I've completely ran out of the Gray, and I still got a lot of parts left to color and then STILL touch up after some assembly. INTERIOR PAINT: I'm sticking to the original part models for the feet and mechanics, seeing how they're pretty much the same color mold as the production figure. I did however have to paint the seat cockpit green which is a pretty close match to the production figure, and silver on the turbine blades which look fantastic! Stage 3 Assembling: I've assembled the left and right foot which was an interesting task. Seeing how the instructions are no way clear on what to do. The only option I was able to find was using this link http://www.collectio..._optional_parts which provided me a translated guide on what I safely need to do to assemble. So THANK YOU to collectiondx.com for this! SIDE NOTE: Incase anyone is reading this, the pilot figure provided for this was a TV style pilot suit. If anyone has a DYRL type to donate for the project, or know where there's a recasted version in existence please let me know. Aria is more schemed towards the events after DYRL versus the TV series, and I need to repaint the figure to match something close to the 3D Render che did of Rafe.