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http://www.macrossworld.com/5878/macross-frontier-movie-boxset-announced-with-english-subtitles/

I recently bought a VF-171 (CF Version) and Amored Parts set from a member here (thanks again Kurisama!) and decided to get to work on making it “Accurate” according to the second Macross Frontier movie. The TV version never shows the Nightmare “dressed up” unless it’s the EX version. While the movie version shows the CF version all armored up, but the colours are always grey. What to do? I figured I’ve got plenty of grey paints and an airbrush, so why not paint them? Here’s how I did it. After extensive screen caps of the movie, I made an educated guess that what's seen is basically a light and a dark grey. Easy enough. For the light grey, I went with “Light Ghost Gray” or FS36375 and for the darker gray, “Gunship Gray” or FS36118. The darker grey only got used on the chest armour, the "missile box" on the forearm/vertical stabilizer, and hinge parts for the shin armor, as the rest of the parts seemed to offer enough contrast with the darker plastic already there. Figuring disassembly would be the easiest approach to painting seperate colours, I hit my first hurtle - the chest piece was the only part I had any success breaking down. Luckily the rest of the parts were not terribly tricky to mask. I painted the bottom portion dark gray, and the top part light gray, being careful to incorporate the darker plastic for a “preshade” effect in the overall paint application. This may not be movie accurate but I like the look and contrast. I'm almost certain the middle chest piece should be the same as the outer parts, but decided to keep it as is. And then “tried it on” to see what I thought. Not bad… So here's what I had, after a bit of playing around, showing some parts painted, others in their natural "Blue" colour. Moving on to the other parts, I used Humbrol Maskol for the fine vents and grills, and thinly cut strips of Tamiya masking tape for everything else. A combination of tape and blue tac was used for the rocket nozzles (and they were a pain). Paint was applied in various coats, always being careful to use heavily thinned, semi transparent layers to give me a lot of leeway in the degree of “preshade” that came through. This was a good thing, because I had a lot of trouble getting the paint to spray properly. I ended up with a lot of spatter, which seems to come from not thinning the paint enough, and it drying on the tip. I usually get the paint consistency right, about halfway through my painting process. This time was no different. With it finally all painted, I concentrated on applying a very thinned wash of lightened black acrylic paint. I managed to thin a bit too “hot” with windex on one application, and removed some of the base paint on one leg armour piece. The rest went without too much problem, as I started thinning with plain water instead. I also applied a dark grey wash to the Valk itself, to help bring out some of the panel detail. Here it is, all properly dressed up now (with the parts just sitting on the Valk, not snapped in). While I'm not completely satisfied "it's done" I do feel it looks a lot more movie like now. Maybe some dry brushing with a lighter colour on the edges of the armor would be something worth trying? Any thoughts?

It's been a long time but long time but just in case people haven't bothered to watch Frontier or its movies, there are spoilers ahead... I finally just finished watching the Macross Frontier movies and overall I thought they were pretty poorly done (but thanks just the same to the member that hooked me up with them!). One of the many things that kind of rubbed me the wrong way with the movies was the story of Macross Galaxy. I think I've kind of put it together but do we have a thread already someone can point me to (my search came up empty) that lays out the story of Macross Galaxy? Here's what I've surmised (it's only based on one viewing of the TV show a long while ago and the one viewing of the movies recently so there's lots of room for error here): 0) Macross Galaxy bucks tradition with most emigration fleets in that it's very cyborg/implant friendly. So there's a culture of enhancement on the ship up to the point where very few of the passengers aren't enhanced in some way and all of the leadership now has completely foregone flesh and blood form and dumped their consciousness into a network of some sort. 1) This fleet picks up the survivors of the long range research mission Mao Nome was a part of. Dr. Grace joins the leadership of Galaxy in abandoning her corporeal form. She continues Mao's research with Mao's granddaughter Sheryl. Ranka's brother Brera is heavily 'enhanced' although I don't think we know if this was so he could survive wounds from the attack or just because that's what happens on Galaxy. If just about everyone from the research vessel ends up on Galaxy, how does Ozma end up with Ranka? 2) Through Grace Galaxy learns of the ultra powerful Vajra. I think Sheryl is infected with the V-type virus from her days with Mao. So Galaxy uses Sheryl and her singing to draw the Vajra to Galaxy so they can study them some more. They quickly realize that having Vajra around is bad so... 3) Galaxy sends Sheryl to Frontier. This is where things feel really forced in the movie-verse because there's talk about the Vajra home world and 'untold resources' or something like that. The idea though is that Galaxy needs to see some more interactions with mankind in order to hopefully break the Vajra communications network (essentially, they need to learn to speak Vajra). So the plan is that Sheryl will sing on Frontier and the Vajra will come to Frontier and Galaxy can then observe and crack the code. 4) In the movie-verse it seems that Battle Galaxy and the core components of Galaxy have been lost to the Vajra but that the core bio-data unit the Galaxy leadership now resides in has been smuggled aboard Frontier in the vessel Sheryl, Grace, and Brera have arrived in (or in one of the many other ships that must have smuggled a couple hundred Galaxy soldiers in). Without Battle Galaxy the emigration fleet is undefended so Sheryl hires SMS to help (SMS is moderately successful in helping some of the ships elude the Vajra). 5) Without a fleet of their own any more, Galaxy must take over Frontier. Somehow though, Frontier has figured out this plan and ambushes the would-be aggressors. 6) Galaxy ultimately succeeds because Brera is a cyborg ninja who can't be stopped. Why aren't all the other soldiers that Galaxy brings over to Frontier nearly as bad-ass as Brera? 7) So at this point it seems that Galaxy has completely given up on their own emigration fleet with the leadership of Galaxy instead intent on universal domination using the Vajra as their weapon. Unfortunately they don't have a physical form any more so it seems like they wouldn't really have much in the way of motivation but I guess that's beyond the point. So, are there some key parts I'm missing with regard to our knowledge of Galaxy? Did I screw some stuff up? For the main bad guy I feel like the story was tucked into the background most the time.