armentage

You did that to get your panel lines?

Something I feel I should do on the rear-quarter is spray over the panel lines on the folded-up wings with a very light coat of gray, just to lighten them up a bit. They seem to be waaaay too dark. Any tips on doing something like that?

Thanks! I know it could be a lot better, but I wanted to finish it and move on. As for the decals, I do have 3-4 pieces of label-text left, but nothing major. Is there anything in particular you see as missing? BTW, the instructions say to only put a text decal on the left shoulder, but not on the right! That's a great idea. I've always been impressed by little details like that, they really make the model feel real. I have a can of Krylon Matte Finish. I used it on an F-14 I built and the results weren't too spectacular (the F-14 was painted with ModelMaster Gull Gray). I tested it out on a piece of Polly-S/Futured surface, and the results were horrible. I'll try to pick up some Testors Flat...

And a shot of the Battroid's back

Here's battroid form.

Here's a rear-quarter shot. I tried to add some weathering using the oils on top of the gun-metal engine pieces. There's some gunk I still need to clean out from when I was masking with liquid mask. UGH, do not let that stuff get into small crevices, its hard to clean out!

Here's some close ups - I used a mix of Gundam Marker, Sharpie Black, and oils to do the lines. I had a lot of trouble with the oil and was never quite satisfied, so I went back to basics with the markers. I used my eraser trick to lighten up the lines on the gray piece of the Super pack. The groves were VERY light, much thinner and shallower than even the 0.04mm Gundam Marker.

My first completed mecha model that uses some of the techniques I've learned here and around the web... This is the 2nd kit I've done since i got back into modeling these last few months, and spent a couple of weeks on it. It's no master piece, but I thought I would share. Sorry for the poor picture quality - I am digital camera challenged (long story) and was only able to get 5 decent shots. The rest were out of focus, but I didn't have time to re-take them before my camera's battery ran down (and I don't have a charger!) I painted the fusalage Light Ghost Gray (using VERY OLD!) Polly-S acrylics, and used Tamiya colors for the rest of it. I added a coat of Future before the lining & the decals. I haven't sprayed it with a dull coat yet, because I haven't been able to find anything that doesn't scare me in the NYC area. I haven't hit Chinatown yet, where I am sure I can get some Gunze Sangyo good-ness. BTW - there are some spots where my first attempt at weathering/lining with ACRYLIC blacks (thinned with Polly-S airbrush thinner) ended up wearing away some of my paint. I sort of liked the look of the worn edges, so I painted over them very lightly with a brush and left them there!

I hate you all

Exactly - it was a rumor that Intel squashed earlier this week. Hehe, its funny to see the sort of paranoia rumors can spawn!

Mac OS was not "written for RISC" or whatever. Operating systems haven't been written for one particular platform for a LONG time. The current MacOS is a heavily updated version of the old NeXT Step operating system, which Apple aquired along with Mr Jobs in the late 90's. NeXTStep ran on the Motorola 68000 series of processors, before being ported over to the x86. MacOS X was a port TO the PPC! MacOS X was running on Intel chips years before it ever made it to the PowerPC. Anyway, these points are all very moot and uninteresting. They haven't mattered in decades. The OS "kernel" is ported to a new architecture, and most programes/code should run just fine with a little tweaking and a recompile (which is exactly what Apple is saying about the transition) The trouble is that you will have to get Intel-Mac versions of all your apps, and that's going to be a lot of work for developers, a lot of expense. Aside from having to replace their (generally) expensive developer boxes with the new Mac-Intel boxes, they will have to go throught their programs with a fine-tooth comb looking for the few small differences that do exist between the x86 and PPC as far as real user apps are concerned (the Big-Endian vs Little-Ending bullshit debalce that has been hampering cross-platform development for decades) From what I understand, Apple is already releasing a "Mac-Intel preview" CD, which, I am just guessing here, will be MacOS compiled for a standard, everyday IBM PC (or Dell, Gateway, HP, etc.) That will go a long way towards helping with the transition. Also, since the x86 is a very well known and understood platform, with extremely efficient compilers already available, you can bet developers will squeeze every drop of power out of it right from the get-go! Personally, as a software developer, I can't think of a more fantastic development! For users, it'll be a rough road for a few years...

Well... Let's not get carried away here. It's just UNIX underneath the covers, with some device drivers for the graphics hardware and such, and then the display system. It's not X-Windows (thank god) and I'm not sure if its Display Postscript or something new, but whatever it is, I'm sure it makes no difference what platform its compiled on You could say the same thing about WinXP. In fact, it was written to run on many different CPUs. It used to run on the DEC Alpha, PowerPC, HP/PA, etc etc etc. I mean, in the end all its doing is adding up numbers and jumping to registeres. Who cares how the code is pipelined or optimized??? Users certainly don't. Hell, Linux is the same way. Jobs is just blowing smoke with that talk.

You know, i tried cleaning it up with my Tamiya air-brush thinner, and it came right off EDIT I spoke too soon... I tried the air-brush thinner again to remove a minor marker blemish, and it took my Future and underlying paint right off. It was a tiny little drop of thinner too... BE CAREFUL WITH IT!

Unforetunately I am camera-disabled ATM I'll try to post some before/after picks of an erased area.

That is pretty funny, right? Apple switches to Intel the same time that Microsoft switches the XBox to PPC! Stop the ride, I want to get off!

Also remember that the FIRST thing Jobs did when he took over in 1995 was to cancel all of the Apple 3rd party licenses. There was a time when in the early 90s when Apple was allowing other companies (PowerComputing among others) to build Mac Clones, that used the same PowerPC chips and could boot the old MacOS system. Apple was making money charging for the OS and some of the firmware only. As soon as the NeXT merger happened, Jobs canceled all those contracts, and re-focused Apple as a hardware company. This was also around the same time Bill Gates gifted Apple a few hundred million bucks... God I hope Apple farts MS. I love Windows (vs Unix) for crazy reasons, but lately WinXP has begun to suck. Too complicated, bloated.... not like Win2K and NT were back when they first shiped. Maybe the competition will do MS some good.

Itanium is long dead, and so is Intel IA64. Intel is going to start shipping 64-bit chips that use AMD's 64-bit specification. This was announced a few months ago. My friends that know anything about CPU architecture always swear up & down that IA64 was total garbage from the start, where as AMD64 was much better. Did you all read today how Laptop sales have outpaced desktop sales for the first time this last year? Intel Centrino based systems are pretty awesome, maybe Apple is looking to the future already!

Personally I don't care if a chip is "better" if it costs much more and runs less software. The PowerPC is a loser in my book. AMD Athlons manages to CRUSH Intel chips in terms of performance and cost, while still being 100% compatible with the x86 instruction set. Now we have to wait and see if Apple does anything stupid to tie you into Apple hardware only (i.e. some sort of funky closed chipset). I'm sure the hackers in Taiwan will find ways around any restrictions Apple comes up with!

Why's that so crazy? You can't find them anywhere, and brand-new Roy 3rd Editions are going for around $180 everywhere.

Rubbing Alcohol? I coat with Future (acrylic). I once used Polly-S Black w/tones of Polly-S airbrush thinner to panel-line, but I found that the thinner was eating through both my Future under-coat and my paint. Isn't acrylic thinner usually standard rubbing alcohol? I was using my eraser technique specifically to avoid damaging my paint or undercoat.

Gundam markers are basically pens to draw on fine detail with. The Bandai stuff seems to do better than generic felt-tip markers (even the ultra fines), as the color is more of a solid black than an inky-dark-violet. Sharpies are great too, but these are even finer. I noticed that red Sharpie runs if you spray Future on it. I am pretty sure the red was dry when I sprayed the Future. Hopefully this stuff doesn't have that problem. I used to think using markers was a "short cut" or cheating, but after I saw WM Cheng using them to do fine details, like the wheel-wells on his YF-19, I was sold. It's just SUCH a time saver, and it they're alot easier to get right than a wash (if you're like me and not particularlly skilled with such things) You can get them from Image Anime for about $3... they ship!

Heh, that Valk on the run way is reversed! All the text is backwards!! Fantastic pic though, Just set it as my Wallpaper

I've been slowly finishing up my 1/100 Bandai VF-2SS I began panel lining, initially with an oil wash, but I was unstatisfied with the results. I decided to try a Gundam marker, and I must say I am VERY pleased with the results! Anyway, the Gundam marker was not all fun & games. Using the ultra-fine pen on some of the finer lines is a tricky business. Sometimes ultra-fine just isn't fine enough, or perhaps I sanded near a panel-line and broke the smooth groove that the pen slides through. I experimented a bit with different ways of cleaning up badly penned lines, and found that a simple white rubber PENCIL ERASER does a FANTASTIC job cleaning up Gundam Marker! With an under-coat of future, my paint is perfectly safe, and I can clean up any bad surface gunk. It's even a great way of lightening a very thick line, as the paint deeper in the grove can stay safe while you erase around it. I'll try to post some pictures. I'm sure the advanced modelers know all about this (and probably can get the same result using a wash), but I figure a lot of us (relative) newbs might benefit from this knowledge!

Clone wars?!??!?

What is animation is that frame from? Macross TV?