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Anasazi37

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    2018

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Everything posted by Anasazi37

  1. Anasazi37
    The full and minimalist sets are finalized! Preview pics are below. I'm not looking to make money on this activity, and we've already spent so much on the kit and shipping, so the prices are the same as what I used to charge fifteen years ago (roughly $20 per letter-sized sheet of printed decals). The full set takes up a little more than three sheets ($65) and the minimalist set takes up a little more than one and a half ($32). Please PM me with your order, including anything custom that you want. If it's simple stuff like different numbers, colors, and pilot names, I don't think that will cost you more because it doesn't take me long to make those changes. If you want something more complex, we'll have to talk. The limiting factor here is my ink supply, so I don't know how many orders I will be able to fill because I'm trying to keep some in reserve for the fighter kit coming out later this year. I will go through this thread and my existing PMs and make sure that I have accounted for everyone who has already expressed interest and the order in which they did so--just in case I need to put a limit on the print run and have to make some hard decisions about which orders I can fill. Prioritization based on order of interest seems like the most fair approach, unlike the completely broken who-can-refresh-their-browser-fast-enough preorder process for Bandai DX Chogokin valks. My desire is to help everyone, so hopefully it won't come to that. If I do hit my limit, I'm open to tracking down more ink to do another print run, but the sets will likely end up being more expensive as result.
  2. Anasazi37
    Okay, there are now *six* options for the display: blank (the original one), combat scene, tactical scene, tactical scene with DYRL Misa overlaid, just DYRL Misa, and just TV Misa
  3. Anasazi37
    None of us can believe it. I've added you to the list of people that I'll reach out to when the sets are finalized (hopefully later today). I'll also post something here.
  4. Anasazi37
    I had that display as an option, too, but it's slightly cut off no matter which frame I grabbed, which is why I went for the other one. That's a good shot of DYRL Misa. I'll see what I can do with both images.
  5. Anasazi37
    I received a great suggestion for the decals: add some kind of detail to the cockpit display, which is currently just grey. I came up with two options. The first incorporates a screen capture from DYRL showing the display during the Mars battle at the beginning, the second incorporates a screen capture towards the end of the series showing Misa (seemed like the safest character option). For the second one, there's a lot of red, but that is correct. Thoughts? I might be able to keep all three on the sheet.
  6. Anasazi37
    I'm not doing a large run of these due to limited printing supplies, so each order is essentially custom. I can add/remove names and numbers, and change colors (e.g., red instead of yellow) as needed.
  7. Anasazi37
    The one set of designs I was on the fence about including are the black horizontal stripes on either side of the cockpit. They terminate in points, but they wouldn't be hard to paint if you're good at masking.
  8. Anasazi37
    Okay, here is a preview of the minimalist version of the decal set. I took out all of the large designs, but left in the yellow arrows because those are not necessarily easy to paint. I'm still working on the exact layout of everything, but you can at least see what's included right now. I can pare the set down even further, if needed.
  9. Anasazi37
    That's what I'm dealing with, too. My stress level isn't high overall (it's more of a relative thing), and my marriage is great, but she knows me extremely well after all of these years and can tell when I'm not happy about something. She's noticed that I'm less and less excited about each release because it's gone from click-and-buy (good old Yamato days circa 2005) to thrill-of-the-hunt (last few years) to how-the-f-did-all-sites-sell-out-in-two-seconds. So, she's starting to ask why, especially given the prices, I'm continuing to do this to myself when I could be spending time on other parts of this hobby or on other hobbies altogether. I do feel very fortunate to have a wife that understands and supports my Macross Beast (that made me laugh, @apptt4). @seti88: Yes, I do need to practice my Macross poker face.
  10. Anasazi37
    My wife is reaching her limit. It's not just about the money for her. She's seen how the PO madness has gotten progressively worse over the past year, how I get increasingly stressed out each time a new DX is about to drop, how hard I have to work to acquire them after I get screwed on PO days, and how all of this is decreasing my enjoyment of the hobby. She keeps pointing at the unbuilt Plamax 1/20 Gerwalk kit sitting in my home office right now and saying, "why don't you go build that behemoth instead of worrying about getting more valkyries at scales you already own?"
  11. Anasazi37
    This was the exact thought process in my head when I decided to buy a marked-up one from NY when I got home from work. Waking up in the middle of the night on Monday to snag one, only to get cartjacked on multiple sites, wasn't worth it. It wrecked my entire day and I definitely wasn't going to do it again on Tuesday. I would rather hand over $100 now and not stress about trying to get one for the next five months, probably miss out right after the release because I'd be competing with a lot of other people, then prowl sites like Mandarake for weeks/months until I find one and end up paying at least $100 over MSRP anyway. Bandai's at fault because they make far too few of them, a practice that will continue to alienate collectors and drive them away. Many of the online merchants are also at fault because they encourage and support scalpers by letting them reserve large quantities without having to pay anything up front, don't reward customer loyalty (I've given HLJ a lot of money over the years), and don't think about how their practices impact those of us who don't live in Japan. I've debated giving up on collecting Bandai valks multiple times over the past year because the stress and frustration simply isn't worth it. This is supposed to be fun, and if it continues to not be fun, I have far better things I can do with my free time.
  12. Anasazi37
    I agree that those stickers look like crap. I'm basically done with the minimalist set, will try to post pictures on Sunday. I'm still waiting on my order of decal paper, which I'm now thinking is cursed. My supplier first sent it to my old address, then the next attempt disappeared into the ether while in transit. He's trying again tomorrow. If his paper wasn't the best, I would have moved on, but I don't want to use substandard materials to make decals for models like these.
  13. Anasazi37
    Another quick update for you. I finished adding the NO STEP decals for the wings. That ended up being a bit more complicated than I first thought. I had to unpack my kit, pull out the sprue with the wings on it, scan one of those in, and make sure that the text was at the correct scale. I used the 1/72 Hasegawa VF-1S Strike kit instructions as a reference. There are fourteen decals available for each wing. You really only need thirteen, but why not throw in an extra one? I'm also still waiting for my decal paper to arrive. He sent it to my old address, several states away, by mistake.
  14. Anasazi37
    I just wanted to check in and give you guys a status update on the decal project. I ran into some quality control issues with the latest test prints of the large format decals last weekend and was able to find a solution this weekend. It's been slow-going due to a lot of work-related travel this month, but the next few weeks are fairly open so I plan to finish up the minimalist set and add the name/number options folks are asking for. I'm also waiting for my large shipment of decal paper to arrive, which should be here any day now.
  15. Anasazi37
    This is actually pretty similar to how I got started with creating Macross decals 17(!) years ago. I put together a 1/55 set for folks making VF-1S Roy Strike customs (including me), then requests started coming in for sets that covered all of the other VF-1 variants, then Yamato came out with their 1/60 and 1/48 lines. By the end, I had something like 90 different sets available. I can pull from those sets to make sure that the existing 1/20 markings are the correct colors for the VF-1A Cannon Fodder (what @GMK just asked for) and VF-1J Max/Millia. (Most of the red stuff is either white or grey for Millia). There are some designs, primarily the number designations (e.g., Max is 202), which are different for those three valks on the TV show. First, they don't use the DYRL block-style numbers like you see on the sticker sheet. Second, they show up on the tailfins in addition to the leg fins, but not on the wing or the forward section on either side of the cockpit. See attached screen grab from my old v1 Yamato 1/60 Max/Millia set. None of these requests are hard to accommodate, but I'm trying to avoid creating a lot of different sets to cover all TV and DYRL variants, or even just One Set to Rule Them All. I'm not sure what the right answer is yet, but if I can help you guys make the exact variant you want, I'd like to do so.
  16. Anasazi37
    Thanks, @ChristopherB! It's been fun to get back into this. I wish Plamax had done the right thing and included decals, even just a minimalist set for expert modelers, but I'm glad that I can help everyone out. @TMBounty_Hunter and @Atrial: I'm leaning towards "Pilot" rather than rank for the optional pilot names, following the Hasegawa convention just to be safe, but if folks have strong opinions on that, please let me know. I can also create "NO STEP" markings for the wings. Thanks for catching that. I'm continuing to keep track of who is interested in ordering and what custom stuff they want. If I have time this weekend, I'm going to start work on the minimalist set. I'm waiting to hear back from my old paper supplier about the legal size option, which would make my life much easier.
  17. Anasazi37
    The full set of decals is *finally* done! Lighting in the picture isn't the greatest, but if you zoom in you can see that absolutely everything is there--including all of the white stuff. I ended up combining designs across all of the original sheets (A, B, C) in order to fit as many onto the decal paper as possible. As I mentioned in my last post, I had to use pure yellow for the large designs to print nicely. There is enough room on the second sheet from the right to include some extra numbers and pilot names. I'm annoyed at how large the wing decals are. They are on a separate sheet at the moment because I'm looking to see if I can get some legal-sized decal paper from my old supplier. If so, I can fit several pairs on a single sheet, which would keep the overall cost down for the full set. I'm keeping track of everyone's requests, especially for a minimalist version.
  18. Anasazi37
    I can look at that after I finish up the original set. As I mentioned when I started this project, I don't have a lot of printing supplies left, so I will likely only do a limited run beyond what I need for my own kit--especially since a Fighter mode kit is coming at some point in the future. I'm looking at two primary options right now: Full set, which includes everything you see on the sticker sheets. For the modeler who doesn't want to paint anything except the bare essentials. All markings once you take away the big stuff like the black stripes for the legs, wings, and forward section; yellow and black stripes for the chest, tailfins, and leg fins; and the black circles for the FAST Pack. Anything sitting on top of those designs, like numbers, kite symbols, and skulls, would be provided. For the modeler who is skilled enough with painting to take care of everything else. Update on the project: I'm about halfway done with the last and largest sheet. It's taking me twice as long as anticipated because I haven't been able to mirror many of the large designs, e.g., leg stripes. You should be able to draw one and use its reflection for the other side to save time, but the cut lines on the stickers aren't lining up well enough with that approach for me to feel confident that it will work, so I'm drawing every single one and matching the cut lines, just to be safe. It could be that the cut lines suck, I just don't know. Creating additional pilot names besides Roy's will be...fun. They used some sort of custom font I haven't been able to track down, so I hand-drew each letter in Roy's name for now. If I can't find the font, I'll have to do that for a lot more letters to include all of the pilots that folks likely want. (I just found a decent substitute for the custom font, so we're set). I'm also having trouble reproducing the mustard yellow on the sticker sheet, which is used for all the big stuff like the chest stripes and leg fins. This is a known problem with additive printing methods, which includes both dry resin and laser. I can make the yellow areas pure yellow and they print fine, so that is an option, but it's a lot brighter, along the lines of what you see on the Bandai 1/55 VF-1S reissues:
  19. Anasazi37
    Still working on the last and largest sheet. Life stuff got in the way the past two weekends. Should be done this weekend. I’ll be shocked if decals are included with the next kit. On the bright side, I should be able to repurpose most or all of the designs from this kit.
  20. Anasazi37
    In true Max Factory style, the release date and price are listed as TBD
  21. Anasazi37
    Finished drafting the "C" sheet this morning. Still not happy with how the yellow is turning out, will keep tweaking it. The black is spot-on, though. You see the occasional fleck of white in the big designs (everything is white-backed), which is normal and easily fixable with a light dab from a black 005 Micron pen (old trick). I try to take care of that before sealing the designs with Liquid Decal Film. Some of the decals will look a bit different from their counterparts on the sticker sheets (e.g., tailfins) because I'm following the actual cutlines. The final sheet ("A") is the big one and I won't be able to tackle that until next weekend.
  22. Anasazi37
    Quick update on the decal project. I spent a few hours on it yesterday, scanning in the stickers, drafting the "B" sheet, and doing a test print. The color saturation on the black, yellow, and red markings isn't quite there yet. One or two more iterations should do the trick. The black was an easy fix (bad color setting in Illustrator), so now it's the same deep opaque black as the decal numbers (e.g., B1) and the original sticker sheet. Yellow and red are notoriously hard to get right. Yes, those are white-printed skulls and UN SPACY markings. :-)
  23. Anasazi37
    I've done a lot of experimentation with putting white-printed decals on top of black and gunmetal surfaces over the years and they usually do pretty well. If you do a single-pass print, they have a *very* slight transparency to them that actually helps them blend in more realistically. If you do a double-pass print, they definitely stand out. Making a 011 shouldn't be too hard--it's a minimal swap of numbers and pilot markings. I want to get the full set done before I start changing things, though, so it might be a few weeks. I'm interested to see how the vinyl lettering turns out. :-)
  24. Anasazi37
    I've had pretty good luck over the years with producing decals that can effectively cover large areas, including all of the big ones on these sheets. Granted, they were for 1/55 and 1/48 valks, so I'm in new territory with 1/20. I'll likely try to make them and see how the they look, but yes, it would be good for those who prefer to paint that stuff to have that option, i.e., produce a more minimalist sheet of decals.
  25. Anasazi37
    I held off on having HLJ send mine until after the holidays due to the insane shipping cost. When it arrived about two weeks ago, I opened up the box and found *stickers* instead of decals. For a kit this large and expensive, that's an unforgivable choice by Max Factory. They should have provided both, so those looking for a "quick and easy" build and those looking to really take their time with it have what they need. It made me upset enough, because I actually want to build this kit and do it right, that I'm considering creating decals myself. I still have all of my equipment and should have enough supplies left to do a very limited run for folks that are interested. I want to say up front that I don't know what each set will cost, but eyeballing the sticker sheets, I'd guesstimate that it's going to require 3-4 sheets of letter-sized decal paper, so it's not going to be cheap. Since I'll have complete control over the designs, I can probably also offer variants for Hikaru, Max, and Hayao.
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