MacrossJunkie

For the loose arms, I find that simply re-tightening the screw on the bottom of the shoulder block does the trick. If not, then just unscrew that one screw, pop the arm out and dab a little superglue in the socket. Wait for it to try and put the arm back in and screw the screw back in. After working the arm around a bit, if you find a loose position, hold it in that position and tighten the screw further.

I really don't think they ought to be blue either. Otherwise why aren't we arguing that the white areas on the VF-0D and the VF-0S aren't blue also? I mean in lots of scenes, they're have a very blue tint to them. I mean look at this for example: Clearly Arcadia has got the VF-0S prototype very wrong and the body should be a bluish white!

If you're ever in doubt of your color calibrations, you can always do a screen grab and open it in a photo editing program and use the color picker to see what the actual values are since those aren't affected by incorrect calibrations. This way you have a completely objective quantification of the color.

It's better they didn't. Their (well, Yamato's) out of the box weathering never looked good to begin with. I'd rather they'd have spent that effort applying more tampo printing to it since it's sorely lacking.

Okay, cool. I wanted to get everything in at once to save on shipping, but maybe I'll get some basics first just to have something to pose with for single shots until then if it will be a few months.

Will you have a restock of the clear ones at some point?

If this topic were for recommending which one to get, I would definitely recommend the Bandai one as well unless you really wanted the markings to match what was in M+ or all those missiles and attachments. Otherwise they are both pretty close, but then when you look at the price, the Bandai version is a whole lot cheaper for what is, engineering and detail-wise, a better toy.

Thanks! That's helpful to know. Looks like the dual arms are currently sold out. They must be pretty popular.

I believe high compression can cause a noticeable loss of color fidelity.

Thanks so much!

I really want to get a stand, but I really have no idea what to get in order to hold up to 5 valks like as pictured here: Skulls revisited by Wm K, on Flickr I can't really make out all the pieces being used and I don't want to accidentally buy the wrong parts or find I'm missing some that are needed. I feel dumb...

Ah, sorry Sildani. I hate turning people down, but I just don't do any commissioned work for various reasons.

Proportionally, I like the Arcadia version better. The fighter mode just looks better with its curvatures that aren't as pronounced on the Bandai. I like that it has the back seat as well. Bandai is a close second with all the panel detailing they added, having a proper crotch piece flip, and better lip for the intakes. GERWALK mode, I give it to the Arcadia hands down. The swivel at the knee just looks a whole lot better than the swivel at the thigh. It just makes the Bandai version look like it's ready to ride a horse. Battroid mode, probably a tie. Proportionally, I prefer the Arcadia again due to it being closer to the Macross Plus animation proportions. However, Bandai gets dibs for the ingenious filler for the gaps in the legs and the proportions are certainly more fitting for a CG model where things stay more consistent. Customizing wise, even though I haven't done so yet, I give it to Bandai all the way. There's just so much less work for me with all the tampo printing already done, where I have to spend hours and hours applying the stickers first before I can do anything. Also, their panel lines aren't shallow like a creek in the Sahara desert. It's easy to panel line them whereas the Arcadia version not only can't be given a wash, it requires you to squint and put it under various angles of light to see if you're imagining if a panel line is actually there or not...

Hmmm... I'm not sure. I'm just not seeing it in the scene you're describing. Here's Shin right after coming out of the water. This is the only part where you can get a decent view of the fin after he has come back up. Other than the blue light surrounding the valk, the fin itself is not very blue. Instead of relying on my eyes in case they are mistaken, I opened in GIMP and used the color picker to get the RGB values on a part of the fin that wasn't covered by the blue light. I got 32 Red, 11 Green, 16 Blue. Here's just before all those feathers are released. It's about as close to being able to see it clearly as you're going to get from this angle. It has a golden color reflecting off of it, so not blue. And finally after the feathers stop obscuring the valk enough to see much of it again. Can't really see the fins at this point:

It's not really a matter of stiffness. I'll illustrate the difference in the implementations for having the swivel above or below the elbow joint: Here, Ozma can swing his arms outward and make use of the double joint and do a flex. Isamu can only make use of one and can only go a max of 90 degrees. Using the second joint would only cause the arms to fold forward.

You know, I didn't play around with the battroid mode much, but now that you mention it and after thinking about it, it does limit the range of motion that putting the swivel above the elbow joint affords.

I think that one is one of the CF versions based on the color and modex (as in not Shin's 311).

I meant it in the way of "On the bright side, at least the rest of it looks good unlike the 0D that had the wrong color blue which covered much of the surface" and not "Well I don't know what people are talking about, but the color of the rest of the valk looks right to me!"

Comparison between Ranka from Brera 27 and Ranka from Ozma 25S. Amputee Ranka also has a peg up her butt that goes into a hole in the back seat of the 27. So she won't seat properly in the other valks since they have no holes.

I think aside from the dark blue on the fins and back of legs, the rest of the valk's colors look pretty accurate. If they have to screw up a color, I'd certainly prefer it to be limited to a small area rather than over the majority of the valk like with the 0D.

Since I apparently have nothing better to do than to overanalyze things, here's another screenshot that may help. This scene has less colored ambient lighting than the other shots although there is still a slight bluish tint to everything, it is set above the clouds with direct sunlight hitting various parts of the valkyrie. The little triangle of sunlight hitting the white section of the fin shows that to be white. By the same token, the sunlight illuminating the right corner of the fin shows the area to be roughly the same gray as the heatshield. So take that how you want. A few more scenes where it looks grayish: In any case, whether it is blue or gray, I'm going to make mine gray because I feel it looks better that way.

Hmmm, yeah... I believe I will be repainting those fins and the back of the legs if they come blue like that... I swear they must hire people with abnormal cone mutations in their eyes or really strange lighting in the office that makes these look right to them.

Thanks, Mickyg! I don't have Illustrator, but I used Inkscape (is open source so it was free ) to create a vector graphics file based on that image. I'm not experienced with these things at all so I'm sure this could be done better by someone who knows what they're doing, but here's my go at it. Close up image: The actual vector graphics file is attached, resized (I think) to the proper dimensions to fit the VF-19Advance. Anyone can open up the file and change the colors or whatever for each object. VF-19 HUD panel 1.zip

Thanks! Yeah, I got tired of messing with the light tent and the dusty velvet backdrop that was near impossible to get the dust off of. Not to mention the 24" light tent was often too small and the 60" light tent was unwieldy and a huge PITA to fold back because there's a certain way you have to fold it and sometimes I mess with it for an hour trying to figure it out and then give up in a fit of rage. The umbrellas are a little under 3 and a half feet across and the stand can extend up higher than my ceiling so I don't know how high it goes. I think the lighting looks better than when I was just using light tents, although the new setup has brought its own set of challenges to overcome. Such as the room being small so there's limited space to position the lights, my backdrop cloth is too small, can't move the table too close to the backdrop to make room because then the light illuminates it too much, can't move the table too far away or the backdrop doesn't cover what I need, etc...

Thanks guys! I know it's been a while. I recently put pics of my 29B in the Perceval thread also. Yeah, part of the reason I got a second one was because I wasn't satisfied with how the first one turned out, although I was able to correct some of the deficiencies with the clear coat with a different product. The first 27 was probably my last time I used the Tamiya flat base before I switched to using the Vallejo matte varnish. It's just so much better that it's unbelievable. And yes, I started using 5500k LED bulbs instead of flourescent ones. Also got some light umbrellas to use with them although they are far bigger than I thought they would be and hard to use in a small room. It's also why my 29B pics look a bit off in color. It's because I forgot to adjust my white balance using my new setup so everything turned a few shades bluer.