MacrossJunkie

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.

The white layer was just the bare plastic underneath, but the filter was easy to remove because it was mostly airbrush flow improver which slows drying time. The swabs I used to remove it were these Tamiya craft cotton swabs which are hard and have a point at the end, allowing for gentle yet precision removal of paint. So while the filter wasn't dry yet, I just used the swabs to rub it off. If the paint has dried, dip the swab in thinner, pat it down so it's merely damp and continue working. Now that I think about it, I could probably have used a bottle of MIG heavy chipping effects I had to achieve this also. You'd spray it on first, then spray the paint you want to remove. It creates a slow drying layer underneath the paint and makes the paint on top of it easy to remove. With just some water on the swab, I probably could have achieved similar results. This shows it being used to create dirt streaking effects, but same principle. Just removing paint after spraying it on: https://youtu.be/b2Zlf0i6h4s

These things need a GERWALK-like joint for the knee or something so that the knee could extend and curve in to allow for the leg to bend at the knee greater than the roughly 90 degrees the transformable VF-1 toys from Arcadia and Bandai allow.

+1 I can't even begin to figure out how to scratchbuild something like that. That's looking really good. That grill on the nacelle is a nice touch too. Looking great! I do like the Tornado pack on the VF-25F. Looking forward to seeing it completed. After I finished up my SV-51, I began to explore how I would weather its counterpart, Roy's VF-0S. Like with the SV-51, I am trying to take inspiration from the mini-series. I used a Yamato VF-0S as a test bed to try out different ideas but I just couldn't get that lighter colored wear shown on the 0S like so: It hit me that I was taking an additive approach instead of subtractive. So I sprayed the Yamato 0S with a misting of thinned black and tried various types of sanding, to remove the grey layer, but it wasn't precise enough. So I tried a slightly different approach... modify it while still wet. I loaded up the paint with drying retardant and thinner and sprayed my Arcadia 0S and then used those hard Tamiya swabs with the pointed tips to start removing paint. I think this time it's turning out like how I want it. There's a lot more work that will need to go into it, but I think I finally have a good starting point. Using a method like this was probably immediately obvious, but I'm a noob, so yeah...

I hope I can score one for a reasonable price on release. The improvements sound pretty good. Without the ratcheted swivels, the engines on the wings tend to droop with the super parts on and the bendy head lasers are hard to position because the ball in the ball joint doesn't move with it and often just ends up twisting the pvc when trying and then it slowly returns to its original position. Also the hinge that attaches the head plate is cracked on mine as well.

These would be my picks based on time spent on them, how well they came out in the end, and my like for the design overall. No particular order: Yamato 1:3000 SDF-1 Macross Yamato 1:60 VF-1J with GBP-1S Arcadia 1:60 Ivanov SV-51γ Yamato 1:60 Max VF-22S Bandai Macross Quarter Arcadia 1:60 YF-19 Bandai 1:60 YF-30 Bandai 1:60 Ozma YF-29 w/ super parts Bandai 1:60 Armored VF-25S Bandai 1:60 Tornado VF-25F

That "discount" is probably discounting from your original chance of getting it through the pre-order. so if it was 10% before, it's now 0%

The front doors should be straight down and technically so should the rear ones as well, but this is the first time (that I know of) where we have a VF-1 toy where the rear landing gear struts angle outwards which is not really canon as far as I can tell, but it is what it is. As such, you can't have one of the rear doors going straight down because they get in the way of the angled out landing gear so you really have no choice but to angle it out to give enough clearance. The air brake should be down once stopped. They work by increasing drag/air resistance to help slow down the plane so there's really no point in them being up once the plane has stopped or is just taxiing, unless it's undergoing some maintenance or something.

Wow... that's the most useless live support ever. They probably just couldn't be bothered. For order statuses, they'd probably just tell you exactly what you could already see on the website. Sorry...

That's pretty crappy. A store credit, at most, should only be given when returning something, not when the store cancels an order which is no fault of your own. They didn't make good on the order, they should be refunding you. Edit: I would try getting someone on their live chat and see if they can make it right. A store credit in this situation just isn't acceptable.

Glad it helped. That looks perfect!