MickyG's Yamato VF-1S Unpainted, Unassembled Kit Build

[mickyg]

I've paid for photobucket. I feel so dirty...

I'm going to scale my images down a bit too. It'll take a while but a lot of my pics are just too big in storage. I'll see what I can come up with. I don't want to pay for this indefinitely and $30 a year isn't exactly a bargain in my mind (seems like I could get my own hosting for that amount?).

Back on topic - I did some painting yesterday and a bit more with the wing sweep marks. I'm not sure I like it (the sweep marks). I'll post up some pics soon.

The painting was a good thing to focus on though. The backpack/vertical stabs area have always bugged me. I must've painted the parts separately as the camo pattern never looked right to me. So I fixed that up. I'll post those up soon too.

Thanks for sticking with me everyone!

[Mommar]

You know, the bit about the sealing plate on the wings causing that "wing sweep" marking might actually help you mask area's where the paint could chip or scratch. If you're going for realism and a marked up bird anyway you might as well extrapolate that "realism" to some of the more fantastical parts. It would make sense a Valk that has gone through many transformations is going to have other parts rubbed going back and forth between modes. Why not include that detail as well, then transforming might not be as much of a problem.

Edited September 6, 2013 by Mommar

[mickyg]

That's a great idea! I'll just have to find a way to integrate that into the white base plastic. On a tomcat, a lot of the marks are dirt and grease, if I'm not mistaken. I don't think it's lack of paint, necessarily. So to make it realistic on mine, the rub areas need to be grimy and not white.

I'll see what I can do.

[mickyg]

So here's what I did the other day...

First up, the sweep marks now extend all the way for battroid position:

It's a shame those giant manufacturer's stamps are so prominent. I didn't think I'd be that bothered by them but now that I'm having to work around them, I guess it's an issue.

Next up was correcting my painting choices around the backpack. As I mentioned, I'm not entirely sure what I was thinking and can only assume I painted this up before it was assembled. At any rate, I've done my best to simplify things. I started by popping the legs into their tabs to see how the pattern could continue with the leg parts. There wasn't a whole lot to worry about, just some more light blue and maybe a bit of gray to re-spray.

I quickly masked up the areas, using my preferred method of recycling old tape. The Tamiya tape is great for this but my regular masking tape is starting to get a bit gummy. I won't be re-using it again (plus it's cheap so what's the point?).

I was a bit concerned about the light blue not going down well over the gray so I sprayed plain white down first (still using LifeColor, by the way). This gave me a light colour on which to put the blue down.

The end result actually appears to be a touch too light now. I'm hoping it'll be less noticeable when the various clearcoats and weathering are finished.

[Valkyrie addict]

Looking good! do you plan to leave this in fighter mode??

[mickyg]

It'll probably spend most of its time that way but no, it'll be fully transformable. I'm hoping to jazz up the arms a bit before I call the painting done. The camo on top, gray on bottom scheme makes for a pretty boring battroid, unfortunately.

[Valkyrie addict]

I ask because the hinge on the backpack, part B13 uses some friction to help hold the backpack still in gerwalk and battroid, so any extra coat of paint layer will peal and it would be horrible to see the paint scheme get damaged unless you've think of a way around this? You could sand the area it goes to give some recess to it, but I don't know if this will affect the backpack firmness on battroid.

[mickyg]

I still have a lot of work to do on the hinge parts but have definitely noticed some surfaces that constantly rub paint off. I'll find some way to deal with it. The parts aren't fully assembled permanently yet. Once you put those screw plugs in all the way, that's pretty much it!

[Mommar]

I can't wait to see this thing done. Addict is right though, I noticed that backpack hinge and winced. Even with my "brilliant" idea I'm not sure how one would keep those areas from being destroyed at every transformation but perhaps you're a far smarter chap than I.

[mickyg]

So B13, that's the little hinge between the backpack and "back" right? I don't have the manual here with me.

I've been looking at my 1J here in the office to get an idea about how this part will wear and it looks like it's just the rear section of the hinge that needs attention. The front and middle don't seem to touch anything. I could sand the wear part so it doesn't rub (either on the hinge or the part it fits into).

"Smarter" chap? Hardly! I am stubborn though and perhaps that's just as useful.

Edited September 10, 2013 by mickyg

[Valkyrie addict]

B13 and what happens to it

[mickyg]

Perfect! Thanks for the pic. I think I can figure something out...

[MacrossJunkie]

I ask because the hinge on the backpack, part B13 uses some friction to help hold the backpack still in gerwalk and battroid, so any extra coat of paint layer will peal and it would be horrible to see the paint scheme get damaged unless you've think of a way around this? You could sand the area it goes to give some recess to it, but I don't know if this will affect the backpack firmness on battroid.

Even if it does affect the firmness in battroid mode, at least the backpack has a clip that can be relied on to keep it in place.

I wonder if it would also help to lightly sand with a coarser grit the connecting piece as well so the paint has a rougher surface to adhere to in addition to making more clearance between the connecting piece and the backpack. You'll probably also see paint wear on the raised nub on that same piece.

Very nice work so far, mickyg.

Also, what was your method of making the sweep marks on the wings?

[mickyg]

Prismacolor pencils (dark gray, light gray, silver), a blending pencil (sort of softens the lines a bit) and Tamiya weathering set (looks like a makeup set). I think I touched on it in a previous post but basically, I pick a panel line (real or imagined) then put my pencil or weathering applicator on that line, and sweep the wing against it. Fairly simple really. You just have to make sure you hold the color applicator still.

Edited September 14, 2013 by mickyg

[mickyg]

Valkyrie Addict, you've got a 30th anniversary 1J - how do Arcadia deal with B13 on that valk and the black paint it's sporting there?

[Mommar]

Hey micky, I just checked out my own 30th Anniversary Valk. B13 is black plastic with a tiny bit of white painted on the front edge so it doesn't suffer any sort of scratching like in that photo Addict posted.

[Chronocidal]

Well, you could look at it in the reverse direction.. instead of sanding down B13, sand down the underside of the backpack plate that rubs against it. It'll lose a little bit of friction from that surface, but there should be plenty of other rubbing surface on the sides of the plate, or even the hinge pins, where you can beef things up with nail polish or glue to tighten the joint back up. You might lose paint on the sides of B13, but you'll never see that in fighter, and you'll never be looking at the sides of that tab in battroid.

Similarly, you can do a lot to reduce scraping on the shoulder tabs (the ones with the orange lights) by filing down the ridges on the underside of the upper surface of the chest plate (inside the slot where those tabs slide in). There's enough holding the VF-1 together that you don't really need those to latch together extremely tightly, though I wouldn't remove the ridges entirely.

[mickyg]

Well, you could look at it in the reverse direction.. instead of sanding down B13, sand down the underside of the backpack plate that rubs against it.

Exactly what I have planned!

Work is progressing folks. Don't have much to show at the moment. The ventral fins are now solid pieces. I had great luck with the Tamiya ABS glue and then filled in the horrid gaps with regular gray Tamiya putty. It's all holding up really well so far. Unfortunately I managed to glue the posts on the fins at slightly different angles. It's subtle, but noticeable. Oh well.

I'll get paint on the parts and post up some more WIP shots soon.

[Valkyrie2008]

mickyg, I've been reading through your tips and tricks, I'm going to start a project of my own soon.

One question, does the Tamiya putty melt the plastic?

[mickyg]

I wouldn't go so far as to say it melts the plastic. Unless you mean that in a good way. As in, does it bond to the plastic? If that's what you mean, then yes, it certainly seems to. I was surprised by this, as I figured it's abs and this stuff is made for styrene. But it works very well. I'm annoyed now that I didn't use it in other places that need filler.

[Valkyrie2008]

Yes, I ment bond to the plastic. Looks like I have to play with putty to learn it's reaction to plastic.

[mickyg]

Definitely a good idea. I honestly wasn't expecting it to behave as well as it has. I figured I'd have to use some sort of expensive polyester putty or some two part Bondo type filler. This is so much more convenient.

[mickyg]

Based on MacrossJunkie's advice recently, I'm now using my Google + (Picasa Web) account for sharing my pics. Hopefully I can move some of my Photobucket images over as well.

At any rate, here's some shots of what I've been doing the last few weeks. First up, the gluing process.

I thought it made sense to install the part into the leg first, to set up the correct angle of the fin to the "post" correctly. The plan was to then "tack" the part in place with a few dabs of glue. I thought this plan was foolproof but after everything was set up, I discovered the angles are in fact off but a bit from one leg to the other. Oh well...

So here's the progress with the "post" now attached (bottom "tabs" were glued previously):

As you can see, the gaps around the post are pretty obvious. Anyone who's handled one of these knows that the hinge mechanism is pretty obvious. Since I'm not going to move these pieces, it made perfect sense to putty them up after the glue dried. So I sanded down any raised parts that were left after gluing (there were plenty) and went a bit nuts with the Tamiya Gray Basic Putty.

Pretty ugly, me thinks...

After a whole lot of wet sanding with my home made sanding sticks (sheet styrene but into sticks with wet/dry sandpaper super glued to them) I had a nicely smoothed surface on which to put some paint.

Or so I thought...

Turns out I had a lot of areas that needed to be filled after painting.

Not terribly obvious with the brutal light of a flash. But much more apparent in natural light:

So I've still got some work to do to smooth this out. I did manage to rescribe the panel line though. This was high on my list of things to do because the smaller tab at the bottom has a line that doesn't match the rest of the fin. It's a little thing but one that's always sorta bugged me when I look at the fin.

For anyone using Lifecolor paints, they clean up well with Windex, much like any other acrylic based paint I've used. But once they dry, it's another matter entirely. Tamiya and Mr Hobby Aqueous acrylic paints will dissolve readily in Windex after they dry. Not so with Lifecolor. It might be similar for Model Master Acryl, and some other Acrylics I've never used. There are certainly lots out there. At any rate, factor that into your paint selection.

I discovered, while taking the legs apart to get better access to the post mechanism on the hinge (and to assist me in pushing it out while the glue/putty was drying) that there was a lot of the inside of the leg visible when viewed from some angles. Solution: add some gray paint to make it look a little less stark.

It ain't pretty but it'll do the job.

Edited September 23, 2013 by mickyg

[Valkyrie addict]

Valkyrie Addict, you've got a 30th anniversary 1J - how do Arcadia deal with B13 on that valk and the black paint it's sporting there?

B13 on the 30th isn't modded as far as I can tell, B13 is molded in black and I guess the tampo is so thin it doesn't rub at all.

The pic I posted is of a custom of mine, I realized the mistake too late and was to lazy to fix it since it will be eternally in battroid. I think the best solution is to sand not B13 itself but the place it houses itself a couple mm off for the extra layer of paint to pass.

the leg fins are coming out great!! always hated the missalignment of the fin with the little leg tab.

Edited September 23, 2013 by Valkyrie addict

[mickyg]

Long time no post (common phrase for me, I know).

I've been up to lots but haven't had time to post lately. I've got a fair few progress pictures to share but am not able to get them uploaded at the moment. I'll put pictures up as soon as I get some time.

In the meantime, here's what I've accomplished:

• Tail unit/backpack has been touched up where paint had been scraped during handling or transforming
• Camo pattern has been finalised on the sides of the backpack, so I'm considering all painting on this part to be "done"
• Hinge has been modified by filing down the bigger "base" part instead of the hinge itself. It's an improvement but there's still some rubbing that I'd like to eliminate altogether
• Ventral fins have been patched up where the finish was rough from puttying. I used Mr Surfacer 500 to finish these out and then sanded them all smooth with a multi-grade nail file. They're now smooth and somewhat glossy, ready to be painted. They're not installed yet and I'm considering how I'll prep them. They'll need to be glued in place, then a very thin "snake" of milliput pressed in place around the edge to get rid of the seam. I'd debated adding a "metal sheet" fairing over the join, like a real Tomcat. Even though this part is pretty obvious and heavily riveted on the real thing, it's so small in this scale that I decided it'd just needlessly delay the project further to stress over it.
• The inner parts of the arm have been painted in the same gray as the underside color. I also experimented with dry brushing the base color on all the other exposed white parts. The contrast is now not quite so stark and I think it'll give it a better overall look when it's done.
• I made a lot of progress on planning the arm camo that will go on the upper part of the Battroid mode's arms.
• The base coat of light blue has been laid down in preparation for the camo

And that about sums it all up.

[mickyg]

Got a bit more done last night and managed to get a photo or two uploaded as well. These are specifically to do with the last two items on my list above.

I've been intimidated by doing the camo on the arms as it's all going to be made up. I'll let you all in on a little secret: I don't consider myself very creative. As you may have noticed, this camo pattern is an almost direct copy of the real thing on the NSAWC Tomcat. I simply found the plans for the paint scheme online, rescaled it to fit the drawings of the Valk and made masks from that. Not terribly difficult in my mind and certainly not original.

So, what to do for the arms, then? I'd have to *gasp* come up with something on my own! This has been putting me off for months now because I didn't want to screw it up. My goals were simple:

• Continue the theme from the top of the plane onto the arms
• Make sure no "loud" colors were visible from the bottom, when in fighter mode
• Make sure it doesn't look stupid

I started with a base coat of the lightest color. This is something I didn't do on the overall scheme when I started so long ago. Word to the wise - this is how you should do camo, if makes for much less work: Start with the lightest color and paint the whole thing. You don't have to go heavy in areas you know will be painted over with a different color. My paint is so thin and the details so sparse, that I didn't really worry about paint thickness much.

I knew I'd only paint half the arm "tops" so masked off what I thought would make sense. I drew an imaginary line from the point (vertex?) where the elbow "shield" meets the bulk of the arm part and connected it with the join of the two faces of the "wrist" at the front. Seemed to make sense at the time!

And then painted it light blue

One of three colors done. Now, how to plan out the pattern for everything else? In the end, I decided to just go for it. But not one to try anything without a safety net, I had to draw it out first. So I grabbed a bit of scrap paper my 5 year old son had been using to draw trains on (waste not, want not) and quickly mocked up an "unfolded" arm to plan on. The first one was pretty accurate to the real part, the second I decided was unnecessary to be pedantic about.

Here's what I ended up with:

Notice I'd completed both before realising a pretty glaring problem - the pattern on the bottom of the arms! Doh!

So I quickly scribbled out another pattern and since I was not interested in wasting any more time, flipped the page over and traced the pattern on the other side of the page (with my son's train right smack, dab in the middle of it). After drawing out a similar color plan, I was mostly OK with it.

The first image was an experiment in making things too busy. I decided that little sliver of dark blue made it look a bit too chaotic. No matter, I'll just ignore it.

Next up, was to pop some tape on the side, paying special attention to the orientation, so I can put it back on after I've cut out what I need. This was accomplished by drawing lines with a pencil onto all the edges of the part (by just rubbing the pencil against the edges). Then I roughly drew in the pattern and put a letter in it to remind me of the color that would go there.

I repeated this with 3 pieces (one for each side) then pulled them off and put them onto the cutting board for some surgery. I could then use a straightedge and a hobby knife to make sure the shapes were all hard edged and splintery/blocky like they should be.

Rinse, repeat as necessary.

I discovered well into the second piece that the lights in the ceiling were making it impossible to see the pencil marks on the tape so I switched to red pen. I'll pop some dark blue onto these "holes" into the paint, then remove the tape again and cut out the patterns for the gray, just putting roughly cut tape over the last dark blue I painted. I could have made this process even easier by pre-cutting the next color out but when I did this on the original paint on the top, I struggled to get the patterns exactly fitted. This way seems to make more sense.

Thanks for watching!

Edited October 31, 2013 by mickyg

[mickyg]

Please let me know if any of the images don't work for you - the links are https and I'm thinking it's possible I can see them because it's my account and I'm logged in. I'd feel like a real idiot if you all weren't seeing the photos I've so painstakingly uploaded.

Edited October 31, 2013 by mickyg

[GU-11]

Looking good there, MickyG!

BTW, did you solved the issue with the paint scratching during transformation?

[mickyg]

It may have gotten lost in my previous monumental post, the answer is "sort of."

Scratching is now more to the sides of the hinge instead of across the whole thing. I thought I had pics of it but can't seem to find them. I'll have to take some and post them soon.

[Dobber]

Damn Micky, this looks great!

Chris

[mickyg]

Well thanks Chris! Especially seeing as how you inspired it.

[mickyg]

I had a few days off this last week and got a bit more done. Here's where it's at:

In the end, I discovered my taping method, while better than last time, still needed some work. The basic premise is fine - start with your lightest color and if you want to be really lazy (or smart with your time, as I like to think of it) just paint all of it. If you're going for a preshade, just make sure you do that after you spray the lighter base, and after you mask out the next color. The next thing is to cut out the second darkest color from the mask, which has already been drawn on with a pen. Put the mask back on and spray the second color. The final color is the same as the previous method.

Where I could have simplified is that because this is a random pattern, I didn't need to be too pedantic about masking out what I'd done before. As long as you keep the edges of the painting area masked (just leave the mask in place for the whole session, as this defines the boundaries of the pattern) and use whatever means that are easiest to cover up the previous work, it's pretty straightforward.

When I start this, I was way to cautious about placing the precut masks in exactly the right spot to where they'd been mated up with the rest of the tape when I started. I also didn't lay down a base color at the start. This meant lots of fixes to sort out where shapes didn't quite "butt" up against each other properly. It also meant a few hard edges in the patterns that I simply didn't have to worry about with the arms.

Since these were taken, I've also painted in the areas in the forearm "shields" that I'd previously left white. I'm actually rethinking my decision to leave some things white as it just looks too stark. It could be argued that the nose and bits of vertical stabs are white, so why not but I think it might look a bit odd to have places that are white on the arms. I'll have to consider that when I do my next test fitting.

[Valkyrie addict]

Great skills and patience, masking is such a pain for me, and to do sooooooo much masking for your pattern must be burdening. Looks great!

[mickyg]

Thanks, man. I think the secret is that I have such small blocks of time to work on it. Means I have to be really patient and really efficient. Sometimes I succeed and other times it just feels like it'll never get done!

My next goal is to get it all assembled so I can see what I still need to do. Kinda sounds counter-productive, actually. I really need to see the "bigger picture" on the odd occasion though.

[mickyg]

Minor Progress Update:

It seems I'm suffering more and more lately with having huge plans in my head and not enough time to implement much of it in practice. Beware, because this is what tends to kill the momentum of any project. I'm feeling it but pressing on anyway.

On that note, I had big plans to assemble this, screw it all together even, and set it up in Battroid mode to assess what still needs to be done.

I started that task and quickly realised there were lots of items I needed to finish first, or I'd be assembling and then disassembling before I knew it. The top of that list was the intakes. In my immense wisdom, I decided to paint the insides the same colour as the rest of the underside (light ghost/compass gray). Either I thought this was a good colour for the trunks or I simply forgot what I was doing. Either way, I'm now of the opinion that all intakes should be white, so the paint had to come off. And no way was I going to do it with the halves assembled.

So out came several choices for removing the paint. This is water based acrylic so I figured something simple would take it off. Remember, this is Life Color paint, not what I commonly use, which is Tamiya or Gunze acrylics. So that meant Windex was not an option. Windex will slightly soften the paint (maybe...) but it doesn't dissolve it like it will for Tamiya or Gunze acrylics.

So I tried nail polish remover and that didn't work either. In the end, I went with Mr Color Thinner, which is a pretty much lacquer thinner, for all intents and purposes (I hear it's "synthetic" but I would imagine most lacquer thinners are, these days). This worked really well but I was surprised to see it still tended to cause the paint to come off in little chunks, rather than dissolving it outright. Anyway, bear that in mind if you use Life Color paints.

Here's what I managed to get done (Stripped is on the left and the right is what I was stripping):

There's a lot of gray left over at the back of the intake trunk, but that's where the fan face piece goes, so I left it (lazy move, or as I like to refer to it, "efficient").

The plan is to blend the white into the gray around the fan but I'm not sure how well this'll work. The "trunk" is so shallow that any attempts I make at shading, to create depth, are most likely going to look weird. Real jets tend to have a pretty hard demarcation line between the gray and the white. Some have it right at the front lip, while others have it farther back. Having the area around the fan bright white will look bright white, no matter what I do.

I've got to consider this further as I'm not sure how I want to go about it at this point. Thinking about it again, I think most aircraft (the F-14 included) tend to have a the inside of the intake gray, and then transition to white, a good way into the trunk. I may have just done a lot of stripping work for no apparent reason...

Now that I've come to that realisation, I'm less excited about posting the "together" shots, knowing it likely needs to come apart again.

At any rate, here's a reminder that it's "almost" done:

Thanks for watching. Comments and critiques are welcome.