Neova

Recon, You really want to split up and meet up like that? Unless you all have cell phones, we need name tags or tour shirts or something to identify each other. Or Sebastian can hold up a huge glowing light sabre with the Macross Kite Emblem and swing it around so everyone knows its him. The Macrossworld "Ducky Tour" as we say in Cantonese. Sinocenter is busy for a meet. I suggest meeting at Tsim Sha Tsui's MTR station or the hotel since it is literally a 3-5 min walk the MTR station. Real Name: Anthony BTW: Are any of you guys the "quiet" type in real life? You know, non-talkative, feels like there is nothing to talk about, looks at your feet all of the time? It can get quite boring with 10 guys, 3 gals and a baby if the majority of you just listen and snicker most of the time.

Good review. Pretty much spot on. Storyline and character development dragged a little but the animation, CG and planes were awesome.

How come you didn't put down Lan Kwai Fong in there since you guys are up at Causeway Bay? BTW: Where is this Shop in Tsuen Wan? Address? I live there! I'm think I'm in since I'm still here. I need to check on dinner though since I have promised friends to spend more time with them. Also, a tip for many of you folks who are planning on bringing home goodies: Bring CASH. Many of the smaller shops only take cash or will charge you the 3% charged to them by credit card companies. Or work on your haggling skills.

Aegis, I fully agree with you but you should re-read Hiriyu and sf648's excellent posts up a few screens. They nailed it on the head with amortized cost. The fewer units you think will be sold, the more you need to sell it for to break even. Since this Q-Rau is a new mold and initial production cost (design, molds, plastic, marketing) will be about the same as the initial 1/48 VF-1 but Yamato may think fewer people will buy it, they need to price it accordingly. If you compare the two lines (think initial production), the Q-Rau's cost is not that bad even though we may get less (less articulation, less posability). I would want to get one and hope sales for this will someday justify production of 1/48 Q-Raus. Yes, I WANT 1/48 Regults and Q-Raus to display next to my Valkyries and Yamato, I would like to pay no more than a 1/48 + FP combo price.

Make your own. I just watched Yukikaze 1-3 and the show has many squardrons, even if most of them get their ass' handed to them by the JAM (enemy). Ghoul Squadron, Witch Squardron, Nightmare, etc... I would take the Enigma concept and militarize it more. Think of the focus of your squardron : Air Superiority, Air to Land Strike team, Marine Operations (battroid), Space Superiority and etc... then pick the colors to match. Dark colors for space, desert for Mars or similar type planets, blue and greys for atmospheric air superiority, camos for special planet and eco system types. I would love to see a UN Marines "Force Recon" Battroid type team. Fly in a small strike team, switch to battroid mode, enter enemy structure, take the objective and fly out. ROE ignored. Team would do whatever it took to complete the mission. UN Spacey would deny any Black Ops mssions of course.

I saw this at the Gundam Exhibition here in Hong Kong. I took a lot of photos and was going to post that. That is a great custom Yukikaze. One of my favorites at the exhibition.

Wow! Great job! I love the Engima scheme.

Those decals are SHARP! Simply Gorgeous. Are you going to seal the decals with future or a clear coat spray before washing? I need to order multiple sets of decals for my 1/48s too.

Congrats Steve! I'm up for a screening to support a fellow MWer.

WHAT, I CAN'T HEAR YOU, I HAVE TUPAC SHAKUR TURNED UP!! OMG! Druna Skass just cracked me up! So I just picked up the TV series , Encore, Movie and Dynamites and wanted to see what the hoopla was all about. Which order should I watch them? I already saw Macross TV, DRYL, FB, M2, M+ and M+ Movie. I still have Zero to arrive from Japan before watching it. I'll post my comments after getting a taste for M7. I hear things about fruity characters and music, better than DRYL and Plus action and wonder if this will be the Brady Bunch of Macross with Jan whining about being the middle kid again.

I didn't intend for this to be flame-bait but wanted to help AncientAngel get things rolling faster. I looked at Star Shatter's features list and like the strategy part a lot. It feels ALMOST like Natural Selection for Half Life with space ships instead of Sci Fi FPS action. AA, could you possibly use the dev tools for FS 2, and strip the assets for your use? Just include the credits for all of the original authors until you can contact them. Also, you should checkout The Valkyrie Simulation project, checkout the source code there, and contact the main modeler, Dan Bickell for permission to use his work. It should help you speed things along really fast. http://valkyrie.sourceforge.net/ Good luck. Edit: Spelling mistakes

Incredible progress! That masking sure looks fantastic! Please post a gallery when you're done with this one along with your other customs! Keep it up Kurt!

LTSO, That is beautiful! Don't worry about how you over did this or did not do enough of that. We all have these days and your work is great. It is much better than I could ever do right now. I think you can actually skip the weathering as the clean look is very complementary to the lines of the VF-4. Now put your kids to sleep and lets see your next masterpiece! BTW: I really like your base. Could you post a detail how to on that? I would love to make some for my in flight Valkyries when I get to them.

Merry Christmas to Shawn, Graham and to all Macross Fans.

And that SDF-1 Macross at the top of the shelf is not valuable? /me faints I need to call home and check on my family and my car. Pat S, 3S-GTE owner?

I went parts shopping today and after checking out plenty of Wave and Kotobukiya parts, even tons of military grade photo etches, I'm still at a lost of how he did it. Most of Wave's parts are for Gundam 1/144 kits and some for 1/100. I was also looking at Zoid's line of addons and one part seems to match but would require a lot work to make it functional. I think you're right about lots of custom styrene. Most of the shapes are flat geometrics with a smooth surface. The nosecone and cockpit armor could have been cut from another cockpit, re-shaped and attached. The details such as the round recesses do look like photoetches or Wave parts tho. The hardest part to replicate are the hinges (there are no Wave and Kotobukiya parts that look anything like that - at least as I've found) and the skeletal frame he setup. Strip styrene would be my first guess and possibly supported by brass rods. There is a lot of peg work in there too (shaved plastic tubing) and I even thought he used lego parts for the missle racks but those were too big for a 1/72 scale. I'm currently hacking another kit for mobility so will come back to this later.

I was about to say this but Rob beat me to it! I have to admit, they do look nice. Specially with your model kit boxes, special issues of hobby mags and reference materials jammed in there or your whole Macross DVD collection. But as someone else said, you got models and toys. Build your own. Buy a full set of bootlegs, re-paint them or build up those old Bandai / Imai / Arii kits, pickup some slabs of rock, pose and glue = custom bookends that look better than anything on the market. Hmm.. thats a great idea actually... I think I need to revisit that 1/144 Arii collection I saw at the shop. Diorama bookends...

Why not work with an existing game with available tools that does support multiplayer ala Freespace 2? I think that game is still the best network space sim for now (next to classics like X Wing vs Tie Fighter and the Armada addon). If you would checkout the Freespace 2 Macross Mod, you might want to join the team and re-vitalize that project. Edit: Correction, its not a Macross mod but the R-word mod. Still, it is a good piece of work to review and consider your design issues as you go along. Link here

Great job there. The only that detracts from it is the shine. I think a matte overcoat will bring out the details more.

I wanted to ask if you had sanded, filled in or fixed any of the molding imperfections but I can see the imperfections were untouched in the nosecone / cockpit picture. I was thinking about tearing down my 1/48s to smooth out surface and detailing the panel lines too. Do you have a picture of the hands? I think that piece must be hard to preshade and paint. Good stuff here. Keep us all updated.

Great work! I was looking for an Arcadia. What scale is that thing? 1/1000?

Yes and how funny it is to see so many adults buying these products for themselves and not for children. I think every adult still has an inner child in them waiting to be or has been let loose, and Doraemon could be compared to Disney classics where there are no age boundaries.

Thanks for the info Valkyrie. I'll check them out and see how it goes.

So I just got done watching Yukikaze Operation 1 and want to know what models exist besides the Bandai 1/100 kits? The various reviews on the net says the value are ho hum. For the price of a Hasegawa, you don't get the size or the details. Are any 1/72 or (holds breath) 1/48 or even 1/35 scale kits considered for this series? The planes are quite nice in design and I would like to purchase a set of them in the future. I also checked out wmcheng and LTSO's build ups in the modeling section. Got me excited but the overall quality is less than desirable.

dyowelb, I can get wave joints here (2.34 a bag) or the Kotobukiya joints (2.00 a bag) as referenced by Andy Wacht's Legioss custom writeup. I just picked up a few sets to modify my Legioss. Other sizes are available. If you can't find any in the states, I'll send you some for the price of the joints, envelope and stamps. But shipping might be ~ 5-8 USD from here. I have to double check. Good luck on your project.