Neova

What a funny read in the morning. That just put a smile on my face.

From Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea! Holy! Just plain beautiful... you can see the interior and it's fully lit! Now we need some high detail 1/48 SDF-1 action going on here! Edit: Fixed the link!

Looks fantastic to me! Skinny legs? Add some fast packs or GBP derivative to buff the mech out. I wish we could see more.

Kurt, I can't believe how good those DYRL colored FPs look on a TV Valkyrie! You Da Man!

Wow! You are very good! The two lights on the legs are off I think. One should be red and one blue. Otherwise, I think you've got some really freaking good skills. Also, since you also live in HK like I do, can I ask you how your paint setup is? Airbrush? Paint outside? Paint Booth? Spray Cans?

Best I can do without opening the bags. I hope some good comes out of it. Anasazi37, let me know if you need the 600 DPI PSD file ~ 17 megs. From Arii 1/72 Armored GBP VF-1J Kit:

I have the 1/72 model kit here. I'll get a scan up for you guys soon. Damn, its still sealed MISB (bags). I hope 300 DPI is enough.

Jung, Fantastic work as always but before you pack it all up, can you PLEASE take some HIRES shots so we can remember them by? After all, a picture just last longer!

I finally picked up the full Legend of the Galactic Heroes DVD sets and was trying to figure which order to watch them. LoGH.net says Golding Wing movie first, Side Stories OVA, then both movies, then the 110 episode OVA. But anyways, while searching, I popped into their forum and found this tidbit: http://www.logh.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=16 And from Anime News Network: http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/convention.php?id=75 Can you imagine the excitement from the Macross team and author Tanaka who wrote that epic space war drama Legends of the Galactic Heroes? Sounds like a winning combo to: Great story writer, great engineer/designer/mech/aircraft love and great character developer all on ONE team. I hope its not gonna be crap as stated in Graham's sig... I'm so looking forward to more info on this. Just thought I would share.

i'd keep the Ipod hands down. i mean its your/planets entire music collection ready to go anywhere you go. bring a valk to play with on a road trip/flight is not the same as having some rocking tunes where ever you go, for the rest of your life. 40 gigs, thats how many songs? how many albums? if you'd like, i literally just got a 1/48 Super 1J hikaru yesterday if you want to trade for the IPOD. Yep i guess you are right. this thing is holding 1300+ songs of mine so far, and it only used up 2 gigs. what do i do with the rest of the 38 gigs? ugh! Dude, I'd probably hand over at least 2 of my 1/48's before I let someone touch my 40GB Nomad (like iPod, only bigger and IMHO, better). Seriously, I don't think I could live without it anymore. Of course I'm currently rocking about 250 albums, 5000 misc songs, and 10 audiobooks on mine. I don't think I could give mine up. Unless of course I upgraded to a 60GB sometime soon. Of course you're talking to a musician and former music store manager with close 4000 CDs on his shelf. I'm not even going to go into all my old vinyl... Personally, I would have gotten the two Minmay Guard Valkyries done. More unique, rare, can appreciate in value but folks are right in that you can't lug you collection of MP3s and other digital media around. I just pop my HD out and sling it around if need be. My cell phone/mp3 player/camera takes care of those little media transportation needs. All electronic items are commodity items nowadays and are outdated as soon as you get it. There is always something on the horizon every christmas. The same can't be said of Macross toys until recently in the past couple of years. I do hope the trend continues.

I'm mainly an acrylics guy and so is Kurt. You can do amazing stuff if you know how to use each to your advantage. Acrylics are super easy to clean up and you can strip it off your model with almost any soak in windex , rubbing alcohol (expensive), plastic safe cleaner and etc... Enamels are best for toys though since they are much more durable but clear coating and sealing in the acrylics would be ok for less handled display pieces. First, take the Valkyrie apart, put the screws away in baggies or a tray and think about if you will primer, paint over or strip the original paint. Do a search for paint strippers and note everyone's result. I've tried all kinds of stuff to strip paint and at this point, unless I can feel paint when I run over the paint with my finger nails, I'm going to leave it there and either primer it, or paint over it, unless I need that part to have the bare plastic show through. If the paint is thick, I will try to remove as much as it as possible with a toothbrush and an overnight sold in Castrol Super Clean (purple). It won't take it all off but it can help to thin the old paint down and is one of the FEW things that is truly plastic safe. Light sanding (600 - 800+ grit) would be ok if you are planning to repaint the WHOLE piece. If the plastic is bare naked, consider using primer. If its a paint over existing paint, it should be ok. Might want to scuff it up with some light sanding so it will stick better. But before you paint, WASH the valkyrie in warm water and dishwashing liquid. Rinse thoroughly and let it dry. This is to get rid of residue. Its funny that I still find oily, gummy crap on some of my newer Valks and it can be found inside of your Valkyries as well. After you've prepped the parts, and picked out colors, you will decide the size of the project. For small parts such as the arrows, you can hand paint it if you thin the paints enough or if have a good steady hand and nice brush. For an Enigma, its spray all the way. If you can get good with spray can paints (enamels) and if it has your colors, go for it. Acrylics have way more choices and are much easier to mix and thin using 91% iso propanol for Mr. Color and Tamiya paints. Better to use an airbrush though since have way more options, but I suck at that so its no different than can spray for me (for now). I do hate the orange peel effect from a bad spray job. I'm trying to control my humidity (freaking 90% here) with AC and will see how it goes. Light sanding and clear coating can fix that but its just more work. Get good masking tape to make the edges and cheapo tape to "extend" your mask. or use papersheets that won't soak in between. If you over soak the mask, you're laying down way too much paint. The rest is just like model building. Put pieces together, mask off areas, spray, let dry, second mask, spray, let dry. Followup with gloss clear coat, let dry Decal up Followup with gloss clear coat, let dry do panel lines and weather, let dry Use thinned enamels or artist oils on acyrlic painted surfaces or vice versa. Be careful when wiping off the panel lines so you don't RUB off the layers underneath. follow up with final clear coat, matte or semi-gloss for the look you want, let dry. This will seal up everything and have it look good. You would use the gloss coats to slide the decals around and to let the panel wash move down the panel lines easier. If you want to do to preshade, you can do it with primer (dark primer) and layer the top primary colors up to but not quite on the panel lines and edges. This a ton of work but looks really good. If you want to do postshading, you can do it after the panel lines. You just spray your shade colors (dark grey, light grey, whatever... ) along the areas you want. Let dry, then clear coat over. That the basics. There are more such as dry brushing, chalk weathering and etc... so do a search in this forum and on some model boards for more detailed how toos. My skills are the same as a 3 year with bowl of spagettie doodle set but that doesn't stop me from learning. If you're scare you'll ruin a Valkyrie, do what I do. Get a few junk pieces lying around and test paint it. Practice the masking, painting, shading and etc... then toss that piece of art out and get working on the real deal when you're confident or drunk Good luck. PS: I would love it if the customizing Gods such as Kurt, WM Cheng, Jung, Mike (mlz22), Devin, or others here would do a writeup for us newbs. In the meantime, I'll just keep hobbling along.

Mask the stripes, spray paint the entire blue stripe, let dry (say 48 hours). Then mask off again and spray paint the black stripe. Semi-gloss finish for factory look. Make sure to color test and match FIRST. That will get you the smoothest finish assuming you didn't rub too much paint off so you can see the layer beneath. If you did, remove as much paint as possible and cleanup the part so its smooth and clean. Then mask and paint. DO NOT HAND PAINT unless you are really good at it. Spray can paint is better than hand painting with pratice. Good luck

Master Cheng, I was looking at compressors myself at dixieart and was looking at the silentair scorpion 1. Is this the one you had purchased? Is 20 PSI enough? At 139 it seems like a deal.

Jin, Thanks for the pictures. I think I need to try that custom later. Crazy Canuck, Great job! Any more your creations you can upload back to the new board? I missed out on the old board.

to177, Nice collection and cabinets! Detolf from Ikea? I need a few of those...

The funny thing is, you already answered your question cuz your here. And I have to ask WTF is an 18 year old getting money to mod his car, yet moan about paying 3-5 bux to watch an episode of Macross SDF-1? You can drop 200 for springs, 50 for Tenzo R steering wheel, 300 for Borla exhaust, and not drop 109 for a re-mastered 9 disc boxed set of one of the most influencial anime in history? I was 18 once and I don't remember ever having that much cash back then. Go buy the full DVD set for 109 bux in that link above. You can always sell it back out for the price you paid, unlike your car or your parts.

Now that is a 20 year old model worth talking about! You did a great job on it. So clean! Now I wish Hasegawa would bring out a collection of enemy mechas in 1/72 scale! /dream mode on....

Beautiful and can't wait! 1/48 (and 1/72) RULES!

Great work there! And don't worry about those "Gundam" people. A lot of us Macross Fans appreciate ALL types of good work, even those outside of our primary circle. Its the openminds of this forums that allows the Macross community to thrive and evolve, and not stagnate. I'm also living in Hong Kong, among others like Graham, Lazy Man, Toy Wave, Valk009 and many others. Macross has a BIG following here in HK. Perhaps its due to the smallness of HK that makes Macross feel even bigger than the US or any other place. PS: Welcome and please continue to share your work! Looking forward to it.

You have anymore close up detailed shots of those decals? Anasazi can scan them and make the sheet for us. As for the confetti camo, while a lot of work, i would say a custom masking it would give the best results.

That kit is nice but can be found for a little more than half that if you look for it. Probably due to availability. I'll take my 2800 YEN Hasegawa kit anyday for bang per buck.

Kurt, Infuggincredible! Keep it up!

GBP = Garbage Pail Kids! hah! Brings back memories! US Parody Laws allows them to get away with it. Same thing applies to movies with gags of popular franchises. Austin Power being a more recent example along with the classic Space Balls. I guess a non-accurate but cool posing GBP Valk would be a nice ADDITION ala super posables and the KMS gashapon armored VF-1J. If it had to replace the removability of the GBP, then I would say no. You can always (try to) mod your Valkyrie for better articulation if need be.

NICE shots Hanzo! I need to break my Valkyries out asap after I get a display cabinet in place. Can't stand look at my empty crib with only boxed up Valkyries and cup ole noodle cups.

/me raises hand and waves! I got my Hasegawa 1/48 F-14D kit waiting for the Macross treatment! Thanks for your contribution!