MacrossJunkie

That looks pretty good. The scenery could actually pass for the island of Mayan!

Really nice repaint of the GBP-1S armor. Very cleanly done and even some extra attention to detail like putting the SVF-37 on it which was only in small print in the description.

@Lolicon It looks great! The extra decaling you took the time to do adds a lot to it as well!

You can get a preview of it here in GERWALK mode in this thread: http://www.macrossworld.com/mwf/topic/35120-whats-lying-on-your-workbench-mk-iv/?do=findComment&comment=1552367 That's all I took of it for now while the clearcoat is curing and I work on the super parts.

Anyone is welcome to give it a shot with putting in a background! I did it once with this old pic of my YF-25 Prophecy and it took me forever to do. I didn't even do the lighting right. The worst part was trying to isolate the valkyrie and trying to blend any anti-aliased pixels that were a mix of the valk's colors and the original backdrop's so that it didn't show in the new background. I'm no expert with photo editing (I wouldn't even call myself an intermediate user) and there's probably much easier ways to do that than going magnified pixel by pixel, but I really have no idea what that would be or if there are tools that make it a lot easier. I guess I could try getting a green chromakey backdrop and see if that makes it easier to isolate...

Thank you! I'll do a write up for the 0D as well as the one already requested for the 0S.

The 0A is planned. My 0S already does look like this, but I'm waiting to finish the conformal fuel tanks for the legs before I take more pics of it.

Posted these in the workshop thread but I figured it would be appropriate to share here also after mentioning how I went down that rabbit hole. I couldn't leave it as is anymore and went all in, so I worked on mine a little bit here and there over the span of the past few weeks. My inspiration being to make it look like this more or less

I thought it was snowing there for a second when I looked at the thumbnail. I'd love to see the finished thing in action. Perhaps you could take a quick vid when you're done? Thank you! It doesn't feel like it, but I guess it's been some time when I started. Seeing your work on the models and people's custom VF-1 toys back in the day really inspired me to try my hand at weathering and in general just make my toys look less... toy-like. My few years' break from MW and from weathering my growing backlog of toys was for a couple reasons. I was burned out and felt like I wasn't doing anything new or improving and I was just churning crap out in a few days. Also, I was getting major neck tension headaches every time I worked on something. The break did me some good as I thought about how I wanted to approach doing weathering and customizing going forward. I had new ideas, new techniques I wanted to try, and new products to test. I still get the headaches though... I've finally finished my 0D and 0S (aside from the conformal FAST pack for the legs, that's still in progress). I've taken some pics, but I'm waiting for the clear coat to cure before I do a full proper photo shoot. The wings on the 0S have already suffered some scratches because there are sharp scrape-y points inside the wing glove... Seems like a bad place to have such things. I sanded them down some so hopefully that won't be an issue anymore. I need to do that write up I promised you and will get to that after I finish up the super parts for the 0S.

I'm curious about how the fitment issues look as well.

Finished the hands and feet for my 0D. I was pretty pleased with how the feet turned out. I got the look I was basically going for. All that's left is some final touch ups and weathering the gunpod and I should be done with the 0D.

Oof... That's pretty unusual for a Hasegawa kit... Are you going to try to rescribe the panel lines?

Wow, I haven't seen this yet. That's incredible! And grats on your work getting highlighted @arbit!

Well, you shouldn't really need that thick of a top coat as long as the mediums you're using on top are not reactive to it. I just give it a once over using an acrylic for the clear coat, then the oil paint or enamel wash can be applied or removed without affecting it once it has dried and cured. I really do recommend those Oilbrusher products I mentioned. They can be used for both weathering and panel lining/washes. I'll never go back to using the gross, messy oil paints in metal tubes. I haven't used any AK products before so I can't comment on them. Also what are you using for your clear coat? Perhaps that could be affecting your results as well? I used to use Future, but have since switched to the Vallejo Mecha line of gloss/satin/matte varnishes as it is tougher and more scratch resistant.

What are you thinning with? Does it end up with micro clumps or something? I'm using the oilbrushers products from AMMO by Mig which are made for model weathering, if that helps to know. It's already pre-mixed and comes in a bottle with applicator. I just thin it further for my purposes. But it's great and there's no mess to clean up other than the brush you're using to weather with. If you're having issues with oil paints, I highly recommend these oilbrushers.

No, not at all. It shouldn't be if it's thinned down properly. You shouldn't feel any bumps, ridges, or whatever.

I have been using oils on top of a gloss coat, but if doing stippling, you probably want to got with a flat coat. The only oils I used here on the 0D was a white oil paint brushed on to the gloss surface that I had pre-dampened with turpenoid to give some visual texturing and partially serve as white filter (but most of the white filtering was done with airbrushed acrylic) and for the oil streaking. The oil paint dries flat though. Did I understand and answer your question correctly?

Almost done with the 0D. Redid some areas because I think I overdid the darkness over some of the lighter parts and wanted it more subtle. Selectively sprayed a white filter over some parts. Added streaks to the vent areas. Blended the colors more because the contrast of the worn areas was still too much. Before: After: Still need to do the hands and feet. I think I've just about finished decaling the 0S and need to move on to weathering the arms as they are still completely unpainted. I will also need to blend in the decals since they look clean and freshly painted. The yellow stripes on the 0S head bothered me. They were far too short and didn't look right. So I painted over them with black and and put better stripes on it. Added some additional markings to the head as well while I was at it. I think it looks tons better now.

Same here. YF-30 > VF-31A > other VF-31 variants.

Nice! I especially like the repainted 25 and 31 and the corresponding armors. Good use for a v1 25. What modifications did you do to the Yamato VF-0S to fit the Arcadia reactive armor?

Yep, will do! The way I look at it is that it's more dirt wear than paint wear. Like if you've not washed your car in a while and close the trunk door, leaving clean spots where your fingers were or something like that, except the dirt and stains are more stubborn than what you're normally dealing with on a car. It all seems to be along panel lines, or where moisture might streak and remove dirt or even wear down paint at high speeds, and also along raised surfaces where there may be friction. Due to it being a transforming vehicle, you wouldn't necessarily see some of this on normal jets, like probably this wear on the bottom (maybe). Also if you look closely at the patterns of the dirty areas, the edges are a bit darker. So it seems less the case of merely paint fade and more like the dirt getting pushed around from more exposed areas and collecting at the edges of where the dirt is, which I was able to somewhat replicate with my method since I'm literally pushing paint around with a swab after I've sprayed the paint on. I think it just requires the right lighting and such. Regardless, I think it looks very good. Regarding the canopy, I couldn't even spot where you had sawed it open at first and had to zoom in and look carefully to figure out where you did it. If you hadn't mentioned it, I wouldn't have noticed at all. You did a good job putting it back as it wasn't easy to tell. Is it possible to attach a canopy with magnets? Like with magnetic paint and embedding magnets inside the cockpit or something. Just brainstorming for if I ever put together a model like that as I don't think I'd want it permanently sealed. Love that show. Waiting for all the season 2 episodes to release so I can binge watch it. Are you doing set design or art direction on it? Edit: I'd say my VF-0D is around 80% complete now. Did the arms, legs, and head and applied a white filter with a brush to tone down the overall darkness and add more texturing. The 0S is being decaled. I kind of hate doing the decaling and wish I had the premium finish version with the tampos already on it. These decals are fragile as hell and the U.N. SPACY decals came apart while still on the sheet... ugh.

If you go to the decals library thread you can pick out one of the sheets with a black U.N. SPACY on it and resize as needed, change the background to white and print it out on clear decal paper. There are some 1:100 Wave decal sheets there, but I don't think the font matches. Worst case, you could remove the U.N. Spacy off both legs, print new decals and apply to both legs so that they match.

Made some additional progress on the 0S. I made some screwups over the past few days on the way there though. I clearcoated the top section to prepare it for additional weathering and waited a day for it to dry. Somehow some of the clearcoat was still wet so when I touched it, whole areas of my work came off with my finger... argh... So I had to redo some sections. Then I found I must not have sprayed enough clearcoat because when I tested doing some weathering with some oil paints and didn't like the result, I wiped it off with some turpenoid which shouldn't react with the acrylic and up came the weathering again... le sigh... redo and clear coat again. This time, I added some additional mottling freehanded with an airbrush to the top section and started on the sides and front of the legs and as a precaution, I added thicker layers of clear coat after finishing the first stage.

Try the Wanted forum? http://www.macrossworld.com/mwf/forum/10-wanted/

I tried to do the same thing with my PF VF-0D as I did with my 0S, but the pre-applied black filter they sprayed on it is difficult to remove. So in the end trying to do the same thing felt more like trying to sculpt a statue using a shovel and sledgehammer compared to using a fine chisel and sculptor's mallet. To get it off required pressure and a lot of scrubbing instead of a simple swipe. so it was harder to control and the result is not as fine compared to what I was able to achieve with the 0S. The underlying plastic was also a very light blue and looked odd, a shader had to be sprayed over the area I rubbed the filter off in order to tone it down. I can't say I'm totally happy with it, but I wasn't happy with how it looked out of the box anyway so I'm at least making the attempt. Only did the top minus the fuselage for now just to see how it would turn out. Edit: Additional WIP pic. Did the fuselage and added some additional mottling effects.