Cowpeeler Posted September 25, 2009 Posted September 25, 2009 How did you paint the red and green marker lights on the backpack unit? Was that a clear over a silver basecoat, free hand or a spray? Quote
Lolicon Posted September 25, 2009 Author Posted September 25, 2009 (edited) How did you paint the red and green marker lights on the backpack unit? Was that a clear over a silver basecoat, free hand or a spray? Just used a fine tip brush to dab a bit of silver and then clear red and clear green paint over it. Nothing special. Repaints coming up! I had intended the feet to be a dark midnight blue, but man they look way too bright blue in the photos; they're not even that blue in person. Gonna repaint those to something darker. I don't like the upper arms. Tamiya gunmetal is fine for mecha internals and other parts that can appear "scraped up" or otherwise worn, like joints, but damn I should have used a flat grey or other color for the upper arm section. I don't like all the little silver flakes on such a broad area. I'll be repainting those as well. The joint in the center of the chest that holds the plate with the skull insignia is more of a purplish color in the anime. Another repaint! Glad I have that spare VF-25S kit lying around for replacement parts. Edited September 25, 2009 by Lolicon Quote
Lolicon Posted October 6, 2009 Author Posted October 6, 2009 Finally peeled myself away from Aion long enough to actually make some progress. Well, really, aside from the hands, I can't do anything until additional supplies arrive. Painted the hands and whew! That was both challenging and kinda fun. I was dreading it since I'm really bad at hand painting (no pun intended). Still need to clean them up and do a wash, but they turned out far and away better than I expected, given my previous hand paintings. I wonder why the models in the manuals never have painted hands? Quote
honkhet Posted October 6, 2009 Posted October 6, 2009 great job on the hands man! with almost everything coming together now, can really see the fruits of your hard work all the color choices are spot on, cant wait to see the majesty of ur completed vf-25s js one qs, did u paint the yellow missle covers? what type of yellow did u use for it? over here i've been hunting for yellow paint, but they are all of the gloss type, and i didnt want glossy missle covers... Quote
Lolicon Posted October 6, 2009 Author Posted October 6, 2009 great job on the hands man! with almost everything coming together now, can really see the fruits of your hard work all the color choices are spot on, cant wait to see the majesty of ur completed vf-25s js one qs, did u paint the yellow missle covers? what type of yellow did u use for it? over here i've been hunting for yellow paint, but they are all of the gloss type, and i didnt want glossy missle covers... Thanks honkhet! I still have the big wing boosters to finish, but that's more time-consuming than it will be difficult. For yellow I just used Tamiya chrome yellow. It's kind of a glossy finish, but I then covered it in semi-gloss clear, so it dulled the finish down to what you see in the pics. Quote
mickyg Posted October 6, 2009 Posted October 6, 2009 Very nice work on those hands! Care to share your method in a little more detail? Quote
Lolicon Posted October 7, 2009 Author Posted October 7, 2009 Nothing special on the hands. Gloss coated the hands first so I'd have a smooth surface to work on (I don't think it really mattered though). Then I just used a Tamiya acrylic mix with a little bit of Mr Retarder Mild added to slow the drying process. I read that the recommended amount is about 10% of the mix, but don't quote me on that. Anyway, that stuff is great. It slows the drying process and causes brush strokes to vanish completely, so it was easy to take my time with a fine brush and just carefully paint away. Quote
honkhet Posted October 7, 2009 Posted October 7, 2009 yeah! i've been using mr reatrder mild alot cos i dont have an airbrush and basically hand paint everything its really great! i am already at my 3rd bottle in 1 year Quote
mickyg Posted October 7, 2009 Posted October 7, 2009 Man, all this GSI stuff that I just don't see at my LHS! I must get my hands on some of this. You know, I just ordered some Mr Mark Setter and was in my local today and saw they had it too! Maybe I just need to request stuff. Of course it costs 2 and a half times as much to get it locally than to mail order it. So I take it retarder mild is for acrylics? I'm guessing the normal stuff is for GSI's Mr Color lacquers? Quote
Lolicon Posted October 7, 2009 Author Posted October 7, 2009 You know, I have no idea what Mr Retarder was designed for. I use it in Tamiya acrylic and it works fine. I assumed it was for use with Mr Color paints, but I didn't know those were lacquer! (I have no means of obtaining Mr Color atm.) Quote
honkhet Posted October 8, 2009 Posted October 8, 2009 yup, i use them with mr color paints, and they are of the lacquer type. even a small dip of retarder does wonders! Quote
Lolicon Posted October 8, 2009 Author Posted October 8, 2009 DOH! So for some reason I decided to push my luck with the GSI clearcoat tonight and instead of my usual super thin coats, I applied a thicker coat on the hands... the result was a slight melting of the acrylic paint underneath. I pick very poor times for experimenting... Luckily it only affected the paint slightly (much less than I would've expected for lacquer on acrylic) and after doing a wash, it just ended up making the hands look worn out, which actually works for me, so I won't have to repaint... not that I wanted to paint the fingers again! The first pic shows (pretty closely) how the grey appears in person, rather than the duck egg blue color it looks like in the other lighted pics. Quote
Lolicon Posted October 19, 2009 Author Posted October 19, 2009 (edited) Short update as I haven't had much chance to sit down and work on the model. Finally got around to painting the gunpod and parts of the wing boosters. Turned out more purple than I would've liked, but overall I'm fine with the anime candy color. For sensors, silver + clear red looks good, but silver + clear green looks terrible, at least when I tried it. It doesn't help that Tamiya acrylic silver has tons of flakes in it. I ended up stripping it and just painting the sensor bright green. Wing boosters are nearly done. Just need to wash and panel line them and they'll be good to go. Nothing special was done for them. The nozzles on the top were painted red because the kit comes with a sticker but no decal for that section. Why does Bandai only provide stickers for some parts?? Both gunpod and boosters are on hold so I can try that new Promodeller wash I ordered. Guess I can finish the reaction missiles while I wait... Edited October 19, 2009 by Lolicon Quote
Lolicon Posted October 21, 2009 Author Posted October 21, 2009 Into the last stages now. Finished off the gunpod finally and corrected the joint piece on the chest flap. Had it red originally, but it's more of a purplish color in the anime. So close, yet so far... Quote
mickyg Posted October 21, 2009 Posted October 21, 2009 Looking very good! I'm inspired by this build. I hope to grab Alto's in the coming months. Wouldn't it be great if it were on sale by then? Hah, who am I kidding... Quote
shinagami Posted October 22, 2009 Posted October 22, 2009 i bought the alto armored last week and on hold, currently im building the g version suppermessiah....but still havent got the time to upload the progress pics... Quote
honkhet Posted October 22, 2009 Posted October 22, 2009 great job lolicon! really really beautiful! cant wait to see you finally put on the wing armor Quote
mickyg Posted October 22, 2009 Posted October 22, 2009 (edited) i bought the alto armored last week and on hold, currently im building the g version suppermessiah....but still havent got the time to upload the progress pics... I'd love to see those pics! Even if it's just a quick post on this (or my) thread. Your RVF was VERY nice to look at! Edited October 22, 2009 by mickyg Quote
Lolicon Posted October 22, 2009 Author Posted October 22, 2009 I would love to see others' WIP pics too. Quote
Lolicon Posted October 26, 2009 Author Posted October 26, 2009 It's done. Took a few crude pics with my primitive pic taking setup. So here's the big payoff after months of working on it here and there whenever I had a little spare time. Amateurish? Sure. Mistakes made? You bet. Learning experience? Of course. All in all, I'm happy with the way it turned out. Certainly much better than I expected than when I first received the kit way back in June (wow has it been that long?). I wish I had gotten those terrific photo-etched parts earlier in the project, but alas I was nearly done by the time I got them. But hey, it still looks better than the DX. Quote
shinagami Posted October 26, 2009 Posted October 26, 2009 congratulations!!!! great + clean + nice job there....no worries, i'm an amatuer too, as long as u keep up and try to do better, u will definitely be a master modeler one day....at least that is my dream . keep up the great work Quote
mickyg Posted October 26, 2009 Posted October 26, 2009 Very nice Lolicon! Did I mention I was inspired to get my own now? Yeah, thanks a lot! I've already got 3 other models (Hasegawa) that need to be done, plus I want to get the VF-27 now too! I'm never going to be able to finish everything! What a great hobby this is! Thanks for sharing your pics - I've just saved them all for future reference. Have you got a place to display your finished works? Quote
honkhet Posted October 26, 2009 Posted October 26, 2009 congratulations lolicon! this is simply awesome and worth the wait like mick said, this is truly a great hobby and of course its 10X better looking than the DX Quote
Lolicon Posted October 26, 2009 Author Posted October 26, 2009 Thanks for the support and kind words guys. It's a great hobby, if you can find the time to sit down and really put your all into to. I'm gonna have to take a short hiatus after this due to real life circumstances. It's a toss up between Michael's unit, Armored Alto, or Brera's VF-27 as my next project... leaning towards the 27 because it'll be a nice change from the 25 series. Hmmm right now the only place I have to display stuff are my bookshelves and my already overcrowded display cases. I can't put fragile items anywhere else because of my two young kitties who would like nothing more than to pretend to be furry Vajra to my VFs. That's right, even kitties love Macross Frontier! Quote
mospeadamacrosstech Posted October 31, 2009 Posted October 31, 2009 Thanks for the support and kind words guys. It's a great hobby, if you can find the time to sit down and really put your all into to. I'm gonna have to take a short hiatus after this due to real life circumstances. It's a toss up between Michael's unit, Armored Alto, or Brera's VF-27 as my next project... leaning towards the 27 because it'll be a nice change from the 25 series. Hmmm right now the only place I have to display stuff are my bookshelves and my already overcrowded display cases. I can't put fragile items anywhere else because of my two young kitties who would like nothing more than to pretend to be furry Vajra to my VFs. That's right, even kitties love Macross Frontier! I'm so busy right now, I don't have time for a model kit. Even so, seeing your results have me thinking otherwise. This is looking pretty darned good. Quote
Smegalot Posted November 2, 2009 Posted November 2, 2009 Funny about ur cats love knocking your models down. mine used to do that when he was little to get noticed. Nearly killed a Super gunam on me onetime. Still very cool Ozma, amd impressed Quote
Cent Posted November 3, 2009 Posted November 3, 2009 Whoa thats the best plastic model kit of a cat I've ever seen! =P Good work :3 Quote
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