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OK, but do you think Frank Zappa looks that much like Captain Global?

(Not sure if this is really the right forum, but none of the others seemed much more appropriate) OK, so I've been bored recently, a lot of my modelling stuff is packed away and I watched the whole TV series over the course of last weekend - so I started on a bust of Captain Global. Why? Because he's awesome and as far as I can see there's zero in the way of garage kits in his image. I mean, honestly - keeps his cool through the scouring of the Earth, saviour of the human race, deals with alien tricks, thousands of random civilians cluttering his battleship, backchat from bridge staff, nothing. That Minmay tramp sings and shows a bit of ankle and everyone's all over her! Anyway, I've got to more or less the point where I want to start adding facial hair, seeing as it looks really weird without that huge moustache and sideburns, and that really means no more work on facial structure. So really, I'm asking "does this look OK to you guys as-is, or do drastic changes need to be made to get the likeness?" I find asking other people nearly always shows stuff up that I've completely missed... ;-) (I've got a huge collage of screencaps I'm working from, but the face structure looks significantly different from different angles and in different shots... :/) (I'm mostly happy with it, but I still think I need to lower the brow a little, if nothing else... and probably trim a little off the chin, now.)

I'm in the middle of buying a house, I packed a load of my modelling stuff away for christmas and now I don't want to get it out again only to have to pack it away when I move... so I'm limited to sheet styrene and putty, at the moment. Nevertheless, I spend a weekend watching Macross TV and I get to thinkin'... Can you tell what it is yet? ... OK, a bit of a clue: I've never done any sculpting entirely out of milliput before, so I don't expect him to turn out very well, but... well, it's something to do. And there doesn't seem to be nearly enough Global love goin' around. The guy is awesome, how has he not got as many garage kits in his image as Minmay? Hmm... still needs more chin... :/ [EDIT: Actually, while I'm here, I've been meaning to ask this for ages - how the hell do you people manage to keep your cutting mats so damned clean?! ;-)] [EDITEDIT: more chin... ;-)]

Sorry, I meant more to ask whether the bit that goes in the middle of the head you've shown already - where there's currently a gap - would be a separate part or the whole head cast all as one piece. Presuming that there's something in there at all, since you mentioned a clear facemask. The figure in the scene I have in mind is wearing a helmet, but the visor is broken and underneath a bare skull; having a separate gap where the face goes would obviously make it rather easier to sculpt in the skull without having to carve huge chunks out of the helmet first. Although going back and looking at the ep. again (29) it looks like it's the heavier kind of armour after all, so starting from scratch would probably be a better idea there if I carry through with that particular crazy idea... Ah, hell; put me down for one standing figure anyway, assuming you're OK shipping to the UK. I've no Regult to use a sitting pilot with, but it's not like random Zentradi soldiers would look particularly out of place on my shelves. ;-)

Any idea what the breakdown's likely to be like, if any, with the head? By which I really mean; the face? It's just that while half of me is kicking the other half under the table to tell him that I really have too many unfinished (hell, unstarted) kits already, the less sensible half has an odd urge to do a little vignette of that dead Zentradi soldier with the little Minmay doll at his feet from the intro/outro to one of the TV eps... I'm beginning to think I probably shouldn't have spent the whole weekend watching through the TV series, it's bad for my wallet and shelf space... ;-)

... or it could just be that the Corsair is the only sexy WWII allied 'plane people can name, but nearly every well-known axis bird has something going for it one way or another. ;P (Personally, I have a real thing for the Shinden, and I think they built something like two of those... ;-)

'Not bulky'? Which Bandai kits have you been looking at recently? The average plastic thickness, for example, on the Bandai kits I've had is about twice that of the Hasegawa kits I've had. They're typically fixed together with peg/socket joints that are 1.5mm or so wide... the mating surfaces are thicker, and that's not touching on the fact that the Gundam designs are bulky themselves. The edge of the wings on - say - the Freedom Gundam or the edge of the intakes on the chest of pretty much any gundam you care to name is wider and less 'sharp' than the trailing edge of a Hasegawa Valkyrie. Just to cite some obvious examples. And yes, a good deal of that is because the gundam kits have that frame and are posable... which is precisely why I'd rather have a fixed-pose Valkyrie. I'd rather have a good-looking 'plane and a good looking battroid as separate kits than one kit that transforms and also looks pig-ugly for it. More detail, though? I'm going to have to just laugh at that, I'm afraid. Just for the sake of idle comparison, here's a photo of some parts from the Strike Valkyrie I started earlier in the year and some parts (the most detailed parts I could find) from an MG Ez-8 Gundam. The contrast's turned up so you can see the detail easier under flash photography. The kits were boxed around the same period, although I'm under the impression that at least the Valkyrie parts are notably older. Note how there are hatches, vents, panels and so on on the outside of the Hasegawa parts (the white 'plane nose and the upper grey sprue) and practically no surface detail whatsoever on the Bandai parts (the lower bone-coloured sprue)... Yes I have, and it's not bad-looking... but it's still bulkier than your average Hasegawa aircraft. And as it goes, look through the parts, there are still polycaps in there. Less than in a HGUC kit, perhaps, but they're there. When I say 'bulky' I refer to things like the way that all the surface detail is very deep-cut. It needs to be that way because otherwise it won't be visible unpainted, (and the fact that Bandai still ships MG kits with stickers rather than waterslide transfers shows they're still aiming kits at people who don't paint them as much as people who do...) but deep-cut detail also betrays the illusion of scale. It looks more like an 20cm-tall lump of plastic than a 17m-tall robot. Bandai kits aren't toys, no, but that's not what I said; I said they're halfway between kits and toys. They don't have the attention to fine detail that a Hasegawa model kit has, but they have better detail than your average toy. They don't have the robustness of a Yamato valk, but they're more posable than your average model kit. In some ways it's the best of both worlds, you get a thing which you can pose all over the place and still has a decent amount of detail... on the other hand, the saying "jack of all trades, master of none" still applies. They don't beat out a toy toy for the things toys are good at and they don't beat out a more traditional model kit for the things model kits are good at. If Gundam kits are for people who want detail, why do they ship them with blunt v-fins with tabs behind the unpointy points? You can mitigate the problems with polycaps, sure, but the point is basically this - if a piece of armour is held on by being slid onto a pole, then it can be slid off of the pole. Handle it too much, play with the pose too much and you'll knock it out - guaranteed. If you glue it in fixed, then you're losing the whole bonus of the posable master-grade kit in the first place. Anyway, I don't want to sound agressive... I just get the distinct idea that a lot of people throw phrases like "Master Grade quality" around without really having any idea what they mean by it... they don't mean "I want a valkyrie that's made to the same standards and by the same method as a MG gundam kit", they mean "I want a valkyrie with all the advantages of a MG gundam kit and also all the advantages of a Hasegawa kit". Or, to be less subtle about it, they don't mean "I want a valkyrie with reduced surface detail, misrepresented proportions, no sense of scale, stickers instead of transfers, polycap posable and snap-together", they mean "I want a valkyrie with all the attention to detail, proportion and finesse of a Hasegawa kit that also somehow manages to transform between battroid and 'plane modes".

I don't want to sound derogatory, and I build gundam kits as much as I do other stuff... but surely the 'Gunpla quality reputation' is in the same way that you'd expect a Fischer Price toy truck to break less frequently or easily than a scale model kit of the same truck? Gunpla are built as half-models, half-action-figures, they're snap-together and have polycap joints all over the place and the price you pay for that is blocky, bulky shapes that sure, are durable compared to something like a Hasegawa valkyrie, but don't capture the same detail or feeling of scale. If Bandai did start making gundam-kit-esque valkyries, I guess I'd expect them to be a lot easier to assemble than the Hasegawa alternatives, but really I'd also expect them to look chunky and bare. No more fine panel lines and tiny hatch details, instead I'd expect a few surface details - the odd hatch or vent, every tenth panel line - exaggerated and bulked out, and the rest missing completely. [EDIT: And the bit that I was meaning to add but completely forgot the first time around... The problem with this positioning is that it is halfway between a toy and a model kit; it's more posable than you expect from a model kit, and less detailed to fit in that posability... but it's not as durable and solid as a toy that's constructed as a toy. Yamato make toys, and from what I've seen (admittedly very little) they're a lot more robust than your average gundam kit. Gundam kits are posable, but nothing more than that; attempt anything more and the joints slip out of their polycap holdings and you're half-posing, half-holding-the-arms-on, and accessory bits fall off in your hands. Do Yamato toys have that problem?]

Yeah - it's one of those "I will if I have to" things. I don't mind ordering from abroad, but getting stuff within the country is more convinient. And usually cheaper. ;-)

Just as an aside, which Milliput are you using? I seem to remember the box of standard I had years back doing something like that, but I've literally never had any problem with the superfine variety; I think the box I'm just about to finish - got about 6mm left of each stick - I've had for two years or so, it's still absolutely fine... Also as an aside, actually... does anyone know where I might get hold of Aves putty in the UK? I'm intrigued enough to want to give it a try, but my usual supplier's never heard of it...

Which Tamiya putty are you talking about, anyway? As I understand it, they do two-part epoxy, polyester and 'grey' putties... the polyester one is the only one that's remotely expensive enough it might be costing you seventeen dollars. Although from HLJ there it's about thirteen including shipping... probably less if you buy more than one tube at once. I've only tried the polyester one myself, which is... pretty much the same as other polyester putties I've tried, my local auto-parts shop sells a variety for bodywork filling, I can't imagine the same isn't true of stateside auto shops. Or stores, or whatever you guys call them. ;-) Isn't 'Bondo' something like that? My two-part-epoxy needs are covered by things like Milliput, MagicSculpt (seems to be the same sort of consistency to the Tamiya epoxy I saw in a video once) or Kneadatite, all of which I gather are available in the states to some degree. For 'grey' putty I use Italeri's above others, but pretty much every modelling company under the sun seems to make one and Revell's 'Plasto' is the only one I'd specifically avoid from the ones I've tried. Polyester putties give off toxic fumes, and 'grey' putties are often thinned with pretty evil things, but two-part-epoxy putty I think is only bad for you if you're stupid enough to eat it...

I'd figured you'd probably started with a ribbon cable, like the ones floppy drives and (up 'til SATA) hard disks are connected by in your average computer... is there any reason not to, or did you just not have one to hand? 80-wire IDE ("ultra-ATA") cables are pretty damn thin, and still generally stiff enough to hold a bit of a shape while being glued. Anyone who's been building PCs for any length of time probably has a halfdozen lying around spare. ;-)

Quite seriously, the more I play around with different putties, fillers and so on the more I don't understand why anyone actually uses squadron green putty at all. It's not robust, toluene is aromatic (making it probably more damaging to your health than everything else you encounter for the rest of the day put together - just read the safety warnings on the back of the tube!) and it doesn't even have a great finish compared to some. If you need large areas filling, you could use something like milliput; if you need scratches filling, then a thick acrylic paint (like, say, GW's) will do just as good a job as squadron green. I guess if you're using lacquer paints on a regular basis you probably have the set-up to use toluene putty safely, but do you?

Isn't pretty much all Hobbyfan sells recasts?

I think the best way to describe drybrushing is as a collection of all the things you should never do to a brush, all done at the same time. ;-) Imagine the bristles of a brush as if they were made out of tinfoil strips - once they're creased there's no making them straight again. Normally you want strokes with the bristles trailing behind the brush so the 'tinfoil' bristles don't get creased... if you push the bristles, they'll bend and fold and eventually splay and lose their point. Drybrushing is all the motions that would bend or fold the bristles, 'cause you're intentionally trying to push them sideways into the thing you're drybrushing. If you've ever painted miniature figures you'll know you can highlight raised edges easily by running the side of the brush along the raised edge/corner - drybrushing is like that, only in bulk. And careless. ;-)

Hmm... it's probably the nearest anyone's going to really be able to give you, though. I have a stack of about twenty model kits - some injection styrene and some resin - that I've not got around to starting. I know it's an insignificant number compared to some of the guys here, but... it's only 'cause I suddenly had to start putting new ones on a different shelf 'cause I'd run out of room that I even really realised how many I had, it just hadn't occured to me before. I buy model kits when I see a kit that I want to build - I don't sit back and think "Hey, I won't be able to make this kit until next April, I may as well not buy it 'til then", I just buy the ones that look cool. Right at the moment I'm having a self-imposed moratorium on kit-buying to try and reduce the number of unbuilt kits I have lying around... but still the other day I bought a FSS resin kit 'cause it was available cheaper (eBay auction) than I'd normally be able to get hold of it, a couple of weeks ago I snuck a MaK kit into a HLJ tools/supplies order 'cause I'd heard rumours they were going to stop making them, and even though it's just rumours I don't want to be caught out... and I know I'll build it eventually. I really think that you deal with two types of people when you see huge collections of kits like these... the collector type who buys them because he thinks that they'll increase in value over time (and is less likely to hang out on the modelling forums of MW ;-), and the low-willpower type like me who buys them because he thinks he'll actually have time to build them someday.

Aren't Vallejo's paints water-based? I hear about them a lot in the context of miniature figure painting, WH40k and BTech and so on, but not so much in the context of kit building... When you're airbrushing - especially when you're just starting - it really helps to use paints with a rapidly-evaporating solvent, 'cause the longer the paint is sitting wet on the surface of the model the longer it has to bead or run or fleck or pick up dust... Tamiya's (based in what, 'glycol ether'?) can be thinned with alcohol, for instance... I've never used lacquer paints, but I seem to recall they use something like xylene, which also evaporates really quickly. It certainly smells aromatic. (The downside to such a solvent is that the regular filters you get on most shop-bought respirators don't cut it, and you'll need to buy a set of organics filters to avoid breathing the stuff in...) The reverse can also be true, unfortuantely - if the paint dries before it hits the model it's equally bad for the finish, you need to find a steady median... it's just easier to find that median with something that dries quicker rather than slower. ;-)

Nope, your maths isn't far off - the exchange rate right now is 1.77 USD to 1 GBP, so 300 GBP is ~531 USD... I guess the real point is that HLJ isn't actually selling the kit any more, they have it listed as 'discontinued'.

It's perhaps telling that most double-action airbrushes feature that trigger-limiter on the barrel that allows you to set them up and use them essentially like a single-action... ;-)

Speaking of which, I'm thinking the lights and the cockpit windows. Maybe a bit more of an obvious lens on the sensor thing just above the waist... is there anything else I'm missing? After some discussion on CoM I'm gonna try a bit of cotton wool smoke behind the launching missiles, as well, give it a bit more of a focal point. It's the Fusion Models resin kit DP9 sells, yeah - 1/200th. On one hand, all of the joints are already ball-and-socket joints, just cast into the resin... on the other hand, I don't think it's really big enough to fit polycaps inside, at least not neatly; the gun is about 60mm long, it reaches up to the bottom of the missile bays on the Spartan, so I think it'll end up around the same size all told. This page has a load of pictures of the parts.

I clean out and keep my Tamiya acrylic jars as much to keep the corresponding thinned paints in. I tend to thin to about 50% with IPA before airbrushing, and they have those nice coloured caps and everything... ;-) (Obviously it helps to put a dab of white paint or something on them so you can tell which ones are thinned.)

*cries* Yes, it was, but... I'm not sure I can face the others anytime soon, to be honest... ;-) Seriously, though, I'm trying to get through my backlog of mecha models, and I can't spend all my time on Macross; a Jovian Chronicles Pathfinder is up next, I think... Well, I'd be happy to answer any questions, but I don't think there's really much I could tell you about 'em; it was pretty straightforward to assemble, before being hacked around, the majority of the effort by a long way was spent in filling and sanding the mould lines. I've got a 1/72nd Strike Valkyrie in my queue for sometime in the future... hopefully before I buy any more kits... but it's going to be ages before I get around to [finishing] that. I, uh, pieced together the cockpit and pilot? ;-)

Thanks! ;-) Damnit, that's what those things are! I spent ages looking at the old Imai box art thinking "I'm sure I should know why those bits are a lighter colour..." ;-) I'll try and fix 'em up a bit - I'm already expecting to take replacement photos when a not-so-overcast day arrives.

Finally finished the cursèd thing, about a week or two after I'd expected to. :/ I think this is the first commercial resin kit I've finished - I've cast stuff of my own in resin before, but that's obviously not quite the same. I've tried to make it a little more dynamic than the original, there's a progress page on my site with pictures from start to finish. There's a couple of places that mould-line filling/sanding didn't come off perfectly (and I didn't notice 'til after I'd painted the camo), I reckon in retrospect I probably should have filled and sanded flat the markings on the nose and painted them on instead, and shouldn't have mixed warm and cold greys on the base... any other critique I'm eager to hear!

The majority of them, as given away by the "VMFA-531" are nicked from a decal set for the 'Grey Ghosts' squadron. Annoyingly I can't find the buildup of a Hornet kit I was immediately reminded of, or any other clear photographs of a Hornet in these markings, but this Gray Ghosts site has a rather grainy image near the top of the page; the Hornet at the front of the picture with several 'planes. The kites I'd be guessing at at best, though. ;-)