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Hello, today I am starting on my VF-1A "5Grand" A special livery used to celebrate the 5000th Valkyrie to cross the production line. The livery is a 1-off and ultimately painted over before the unit was sent into combat. This 'should be' a quick mental health build in between workings of a much larger project I'm focusing on. It will also serve a a test bed for trying out a few new finish techniques in the paint department, and a few little other things along the way! Lets start with what makes run of the mill VF-1a kit special... the decals! Beautifully printed white, navy blue and gold! A very clean and striking color combo that would make even commander Golg Boddole Zer blush! It's a very modern color way than what is traditionally seen on the VF-1 Valkyrie. The larger sections of color breaking up more of the white really modernize the VF-1 and helped me appreciate it more without the fancy packs. The large color splash around the cockpit calling to a more IRL NAVY aircraft such as VF-123 Black Lions' F-14D! I adore this color combo, it's a shame the decals (mostly) won't be used! Masking hell it is, Yack! Quick look a Hidetaka Tenjin's lovely artwork for the kit. I really want to mimic the textures used in his artwork here, so a weathered... yet clean build it is! Semigloss sheen metallic weathering, a new one for me. The main reason I don't want to use the decals is the navy blue. The decals are just not the look I'm going for. In Tenjin's artwork, the blue gives off a almost candy finish with depth projecting a similar refraction as the gold does. The decals just look dead or flat, even when painted on Hasegawa's sample build. It looks okay in 1/72, but at 1/48 we can do better! That however, is still a ways away, not to get ahead of ourselves. --- Starting with the cockpit. Everything fit smoothly with minimal issues. My main focus was getting the assemblies together cleanly and glued. I really want to be able to go minimal on the filler, primers and paints as Hasegawa's nearly 10 year old kit is already not a sharply molded as I hoped. The original 1/48 VF-1a [Vermillion] was released in 2010 after all. I was a bit worried the TV version of Hikaru/Pilot wasn't going to fit well due to it's age. With a bit of trimming and finesse, I was able to get the extremities where they needed to rest in the seat and the flight-stick didn't end up too out of place. The TV version of the pilot. I think this is probably the only time I'll be building a non-DYRL pilot so I feel happy leaving him as-is. I think the only adjustments I'll be making is adding some definition to his arms/legs and fabricating a harness. I'm unsure if I'll go for the traditional pilot colors or try to spice it up to match the 5grand livery! For the front controls console, I found it easiest to build it on the runner. I've pretty much left the cockpit in 3 assemblies. The pilot/seat, the cockpit tub, and the front display. This is enough to allow me to detail it without having too many loose parts. With a closed cockpit build, it doesn't need to be 10/10 anyways. Unsure how I'll approach the cockpit going forward. I do have a set of Hase's photo etch, but do still intend to keep them for the Super/Strike build whenever I get to it. I think I may take a simpler approach and just rely on detail painting and a little bit of freehand scratch-building modification to make it a bit more interesting. I've yet to pull up references from the 1/20 kits or artwork so we'll see. Don't touch that dial!

Anyone here has an OOB build pic of Hasegawa's VF-1 Battroid? It would be appreciated because i wanna see how the kit looks with only the waterslides decals applied on and without any further modifications like painting, seamline removal, etc. Thanks. *box art design incase anyone needs it

G'day lads, just thought I'd pop in and let you guys know that we are are looking at producing a line of canopy masks for the Hasegawa 1/72 and 1/48 Valks (at least to start with). Personally I could never get those decals they give you work without looking like a huge mess, so I always masked and painted by canopies which is a huge PITA. While prototyping I can say that masking up now only takes a few minutes before you're back in action. Anyway let me know if you are interested or if you have any input/suggestions or goo and bad experience with canopy masking sets. EDIT: These are starting to become available now so I'll list details here in the first post so they are easy to find. So far we have the following sets available (or will be soon): 1/48 scale VF-1A/J/S DYRL(Hasegawa canopy part N -1) - AUD$8.25 each. 1/72 scale VF-1A/J/S (Hasegawa) - AUD$5.50each. All orders include postage within Australia. International orders add a flat AUD $3.00 for postage. I can be PM'd here or via email here. Cheers, Brett

I am trying to do a collection of these celshade eggplanes, this is my take on the YF-19, it is a shame that there is no YF-21

Hello MW! Hopefully nobody minds if I just start up this thread to capture my progress as I delve into the scifi genre a little more and give my newly acquired Macross models some love. I started the Hasegawa Spacewolf model in 1/72 back on the 'What lying on your workbench...' thread and figured I would give it a home of it's own. The Hasegawa kit, for those interested, practically falls together. It was a headache free, simple build that would see little weathering or preshading as I intended to display it in a cross over scheme as a Macross realm prototype. Purists may hate it, and Harlock fans may shake their fists... but I just had to do it. I mean, come on! - the decal sheet sports skull squadron markings! Here's some pics of my build so far. I meant to keep this build light and easy, but I still needed to resolve how to arm it with a large calibre gatling gun as promised in the other thread. I resorted to casting the barrel end of the riptide kit from Games Workshop/Citadel and it fit really nicely on the sawed off intake trunk. I chose the red/black scheme as a bastardization (I've come this far right?) of the orange test schemes we see in history. I figured the white decals will really make for a striking contrast once they're applied. I shaved all the elongated aerodynamic bits off the wing tips and rudders. That aspect of the kit was cool and all, but didn't appeal to me. The burner can and gatling gun received a light gun metal finish and eventually the whole model will have a panel line wash with promodeler product. The cockpit area will remain black, with no fanfare or extra detailing via paints. At this scale it's a bonus to have knobby things included but once that canopy is installed you can forget seeing it from inside my display case. I chose this tamiya yellow green for my interior coatings, like the WW2 chromate used in that period. I felt it was fitting as so much of this aircraft feels inspired by the planes of the age. I did the landing gear in the same color and then washed the items and bays with citadel's badab black wash thinned with plain old water. It settles nicely and is a worry free detail aid. Under wing hard points are intended for big, clumsy looking drop tanks. I intend to attach some Macross goodies once they arrive in the mail and I've had a chance to duplicate them. Enjoy... C+C welcome. modelglue