honneamise

I´d like optional landing gear and extended/retraced missile bay covers on the sides. And I´d like to add lots of panel lines and access hatches to match the surface detailing on the Hasegawa kits. The whole thing should be more than just the lineart made into a model. Definitely a lot of work, but I don´t want to waste an opportunity to make it look as cool as I can.

After I did the Oberth kit there were quite some ideas about new projects and it seems a TV Ghost in 1/72 will be a good choice. So far everything about it went into the old Oberth thread but I guess it is time for a new thread dedicated to the Ghost. From what I expect this one could be made into a very detailed replica, it will not be too hard to cast and it should be quite a poular subject as it can be displayed alongside the Hasegawa Valkyries. Moreover, with the M+ X-9 Ghost resin kit and the upcoming MZero Ghost from Hasegawa, a kit of the TV series Ghost will kinda close the gap and allow the modeler to display all three stages of unmanned fighter design as seen in the various series/OVAs. There is no reliable data about the size of the "real" craft so it will be guesswork based on the sketches in the Miyatake design book/ Perfect Memory. So far I´ve settled on about 13,4m in length - this will make it about 18,5cm in 1/72. First sketch with VF-1 as size comparison - the man in the pic is slightly smaller than in the Miyatake sketch, making the Ghost slightly bigger (or one could argue that the man in the original sketch was probably Roy... ) but I find the size differences between the two fighters quite convincing now. What do you think about it guys? Would you be interested in a Ghost kit? Any input welcome!!

That´s right LTSO! - it´s kinda off-topic to talk about the Ghost in an Oberth thread. I´ll start a new thread for the Ghost and keep this one for Oberth stuff - by the way, has anyone finished the kit yet? I´ve had no time over the last weeks but it won´t take too long now..

Here is the screenshot. The Ghosts are not too detailed and the one in the background has a different colouring with an all white nose. Proportions do not look as elegant and sleek as in the Miyatake book, it seems to be quite a bit "beefier". I think this is the only scene in the series where you can actually see the Ghost in action.

I´ve been considering all the artwork, made-up facts, thoughts and opinions and I ended (or started) up with a sideview sketch. It is based on a length of 13,4 m which is still a rather small craft, but as you can see from the figure on the left, it does almost fit the Miyatake design sketch: the guys head is almost level with the Ghost´s nose. In 1/72 this makes it about 18,5cm in length and as you can see it is not that much smaller than a Valkyrie and it looks pretty compact. I based the "head" (the "cockpit" with the big sensor) on screenshots from the first episode but I think it appears too rounded. I will make it less pronounced like the one in the Miyatake sketches, looks more menacing IMO.

Must have.... please count me in for one, Chad!!!!

Another thing to look at is the Sucessor X-9 from Mplus. Steelfalcon.com states 10,80 m in length. Chad I know you´re the proud owner of a perfectly built X-9. What scale (1/72 I bet) is it and how long is the model? Maybe this can shed a little light on the subject. Speculations again but I find it quite likely that the TV Ghost should be about the same size or maybe slightly bigger. 8 meters are too short for me when compared to a VF-1 but these 16 meters is way over the top - this is not a bomber!! I´d say it looks best at about 15 cm - smaller than a Valk yet still slightly bulkier, but that´s just my imagination....

Big confusion I mean, 16m is 2times the size I figure out from the Miyatake book! One of the sources states the TV Ghost was big because it was based on the "Super Bird" (see P. 46 of the Miyatake book). While this design resembles the Ghost in having a lifting body, it seems to have nothing to do with Macross and any similarities do not maen it must have a similar size - to me it seems all these sites are just making up their own stats to fit their RPG needs. On the other hands, as cobywan says, I think I should take the figure next to the plane as a fact - but was it an average japanese male Miyatake had in mind or did he base his figure on Roy Focker? My thoughts are that the Ghost should be considerably smaller than a Valkyrie based on: -the figure of course -the landing gear which seems to indicate a light plane, at least smaller than a Valk -the "fact" that there was a Ghost in M0 and it was much smaller than a VF-0. OK, I must admit that the VF-0 is bigger than the VF-1 but that has something to do with bigger engines and other systems. Same "miniaturizing" could have happened to the Ghost design so it might have become somewhat smaller too.

Thank you for the scans Chad!!! I´ve also found the lineart in my Miyatake Design book. Next to these "finished" linearts there are some early sketches of the thing, slightly different with only one fin on the back but otherwise similar overall. What´s interesting is there is a man standing besides the plane for scale, and if I measure correctly the Ghost is not longer than about 8 meters. I always thought it was about the size of a manned fighter but it´s obviously smaller. Makes sense since the new, "old" Ghost for the VF-0 is pretty small as well. In 1/72 that will be about 11cm. Are there any published stats which contradict or confirm this size? I can only find artwork but no hard facts so far...

Well it is quite a poular subject, it should fit my pressure tank and I wanted one since the 80´s when I watched the 1st/2nd episode of Macross for the first time... If I can gather enough lineart and screenshots to make a plan out of it -which shouldn´t be too difficult- I´d say this is the one!!

I thought I make it in 1/67, fits the Revell ARC-170 fighter..... Just kiddin´, there is NO way other than 1/72!!!! Maybe ´48 but I´d like something that fits my own shelf too

The resin colour changes by adding different powders like aluminium (grey) for extra strength and styrene (white) for weight and cost reduction. Almost no manufacturer uses plain resin (which is a creamy tan) but in cases like Verlinden they have means to keep the mixtures perfectly constant. There is no rule for the amount of filler to be added, it is just that if I add too much white powder, the resin thickens and cannot flow properly, or if I use too much alu it gets very heavy. I only use small amounts of the stuff to avoid making the resin to brittle or too soft. Even though it might look a little different I think the resin (from Ebalta, Germany) is comparable with the Verlinden etc. stuff meaning it should be quite hard yet easy to work with but not too easy to break. I hate the porcelaine-like stuff that breaks when you look at it too long! The worst material I ever had is the stuff they use at Warp/Comet miniatures, London. It looks like green pasta, it breaks so easily I have hardly ever seen a kit with non-broken parts, if you need to heat it it will NOT bend instead you will see your fingerprints imprinted on the surface! Funny stuff, I bought several of their kits but after building - and breaking- one I found out there are better ways to ruin my nerves! By the way Chad has there NEVER been a (TV series) Ghost kit???? I´d love to build one but I thought there had already been one..

ARMD is still an issue for me although I´m only interested in making the TV Version. While I have the same pressure-pot-size-problem as Valkyrie, I´m working on a way out of that by maybe CNCing the flat side walls and decks instead of making solid cast pieces.... and I still want to go micro-size and make some Valks and Lancers to fit alongside the big ships!

Chad I´m soo relieved... why am I always so nervous when a parcel is underway ? Must have something to do with the german postal "service", they suck big time while getting more and more expensive! They once lost a small packet on its way to a part of Cologne 6km away from where I live! But NO international parcel/letter/etc ever got lost on its way and I´m very happy that this one is no exception. I really hope to see some built examples of the Oberth in the near future, maybe my own one will not be the first one finished cause I don´t have much time these weeks... I will definitely try to continue with Macross kits in the future! Making the Oberth was a very pleasant experience with so much input and support from the members here... kinda different from the usual work I do with deadlines pressing.. While I´m not yet decided on what to do next, as you might have noticed, HWR MKII wants to make a master kit of the yellow plane from my painting so this might result in a kit. Even though this is not a Macross subject, I hope some of you will like it as I do, I am totally excited about it

Just saw your awesome REX Sean, guess I already know who will win the SSM"legs" contest! Hope I can earn enough money to own one of the kits when they´re done...... And of course I´m now totally excited about the yellow plane idea!!

The plane is from my own imagination, the honneamise designs were all canard- winged like the japanese Kyushu Shinden fighter of WWII. I wanted something that could fit within the "look" of the film but I went with a more conventiomal plane design but with strange looking engines and a bubble cockpit like on the Gunship in Nausicaä. The yellow is supposed to be a prototype colour similar to real japanese planes in the ´40s. HWR MKII has expressed interest in making a model of the yellow plane - maybe even as a kit - I´m very excited about it, now you´re the second MW who is asking about the design.. What I "stole" from the WoH movie is the railway station beneath the plane, it is based on the hangars and factory buildings they had in the movie. What I also liked were all the airships and balloons over the cities, maybe I´ll get the brush out again and add some more to the picture... I also liked last year´s "Sky Captain" movie for the designs, but still WoH stands out in that it is supposed to be taken seriously. Maschinenkrieger.....Bromgrev I hate myself for having my basement full of them but not having built even one I WANT to have them all on my shelf but I never find enough time to build. The only one that I got half finished is one of the planes - the one with an actual cockpit instead of the PKA in front. I spiced up the cockpit and spent hours just to paint the pilot. I was very fond of it, don´t know why I haven´t finished it, guess this should be one of the first on my "to build"-list

Thank you HWR MKII I like the idea of retro style SF - in fact Wings of Honneamise was the first (and IMO still the best) movie I saw that featured a completely different yet familiar world where everything down to door bells and money was newly invented! This one fired my imagination and it still does, even more than star wars or anything that jumped the retro train ever since. The yellow plane was an idea I had for a scratchbuilt model, but as I never had the time to build it, I thought doing a painting with the plane and its supposed surrounding was just as good without taking too much time. So if you want to make a model of the plane I´d be really excited. It is actually an honor that you consider my drawings worthy of trying your skills on them and I´d love to see my plane in three dimensions! But don´t forget to post pics

Thanks guys! I did most of the stuff on my website for my customers, the Tornado was a commission for a mechanic who maintains the real plane in Nörvenich airbase not too far from Cologne. If I had more time I´d try to paint Macross stuff. I´m a great fan of Tenjin but even more of Takani but those guys have set a standard in their paintings (OK Tenjin is more of a 3D-artist) that scares me somewhat. Still, I want to do it someday - or just give me a commission and I´ll do my best! I calculate my prices strictly by hours and I charge 23,20 EU /hour including all the lousy taxes here. A painting starts somewhere at 250 with an open end of course, that retro style pic with the yellow plane in front took me about a week just for the city underneath so I´m not going to sell that I guess. But I´m much faster in my usual working progress even it the work is very detailed. And of course my clients only have to pay if they are satisfied!

Sorry no building/painting progress over the last few days. I had no time cause I was busy getting my website started. For those who are interested to take a look at my other work besides the Oberth, there are lots of pictures here. Text is mainly German but the pics pretty much speak for themselves. Not much Macross stuff here, most of the kits I built are too old but of course I hope to change that in the future! Here is the link: scaleworks

I fully agree that the IMAI 1/72 Destroids are in fact very good models despite their age. But the ARII-manufactured Tomahawk is the dark side... , the legs are much fatter and somewhat squatty although they should look like the Defender´s, the details are crude and the whole thing is very toy-like. Features like openable cockpit and shoulder-mounted missile bays are there but it is all too clumsy and toyish to excite a modeler! I think the best way to get a reasonable Tomahawk is to use the legs and lower torso from the Defender and detail the hell out of the crappy parts that remain. On the other hand that will cost you a fortune considering today´s prices so we might depend on a reissue (Bandai SHOULD own the molds!!) after all....

My thoughts and feelings are with all you guys who live in the areas affected by the storm and I strongly hope all of you are safe and your property remaining intact. I´ve sent the kits on Saturday so they should be on their way to Chad. I hope they arrive in a few days and all of you will like them, but of course I know that some members here will now have other concerns than model kits. On the HLJ main page there is a link to the USPS listing all the affected areas with restricted or suspended postal service at the moment. I was very sorry to find that some of the postal codes of the addresses I sent to Chad are on it. I hope everything will return to normal in a forseeable timespan and everyone will be fine in the end.

Well to be honest this is just a cardbord model. A friend and I wanted to make a movie with walking mecha and stuff blowing up on 8mm - that was in 1989! We had already made 2 short films that cost the lives of a 1/100 Tomahawk, an Armored Valkyrie and several Zamac mechs (at the time we had never seen more than the first two episodes of Macross so we mixed it all up). For our third film we wanted something huge for close-up-shots and detailed explosions (we did NOT want to kill more of the IMAIs because they were already getting rare at the time). So I scaled the 1/72 IMAI up (don´t know if I just doubled all the measures so it might be actually 1/36) and built it out of cardboard. The thing was built with frames which hold lots of little blow-away panels to get some cool destruction effects, the guns are aluminium and could be loaded with explosives from the rear, the radar dish turns with a little motor and the "searchlights" were of course lighted. The "rounded" edges were made of evergreen tubes to take away the paper feel of the model. All joints move to allow stop-motiom movement of the Defender. We were almost finished and did some test shots only to realize that our model landscape was too small for this monster! Then we began to study/work and we never got the time to further carry on with the project - only the model remains and some weird little 8mm movies - we plan to get them digitized one day to preserve them before they fade too much - hop it´s not too late for this!

Agreed, I think it's best to treat valks as aircraft and destroids as tanks when it comes to weathering. Muddy feet and rust stains look great on destroids. The metallic red on your Cangrid looks fantastic! Not sure how it would look on a pair of shoes, though ... 326177[/snapback] Yeah those shoes...I would have felt sorry if my girlfriend had bought them By the way sorry for posting these pics here, in the morning I was so confused I thought this was the "what is lying on your workbench" thread instead of a dedicated "monster and defender" thread. Now here is one closer to the topic. It is a 1/35 Defender, the sorry little guy next to him is a 1/100MG GM from Bandai. The Defender needs refurbishing and a new paint job, but it is at least BIG.

Unfortunately the kit was partially started when i got it, and i had to leave some seams because the plastic was actually shattering with the slightest amount of pressure, I think the guy kept the kit in an outdoor shed where heat and cold exposure made the plastic brittle. The hips were the worst. One crumbled and had to be rebuilt, so i did the best i could considering the age of the plastic. If i could get a new one or a Tomahawk i would be able to handle the seams better but this one tied my hands. It didnt even come with decals i had to hand paint all the markings. Thanks for sharing these great pictures, HWR MKII!! The decent colours and the weathering look perfectly "real" and it seems really useful to have a lot of experience with armored vehicles when tackling the destroids! Concerning the cracking plastic, I had the same experience with a Gunze Dorvack Cangrid kit which was perfectly stored and with the parts still in sealed bags! I bought it in the late 80s so it spent most of its life on my own shelf. When I attempted building it I wanted to open some intakes, rescribe panels etc. but the main body cracked with the slightest impact of my hands! I had to build it very carefully and mostly out of the box to avoid any more damage but of course the fiddly legs broke several times during construction. Now it can stand on one leg but falls over easily. Each time it does the feet break so I need a little diorama where I can glue it on to provide a better stand. At the time I built this I started having concerns about the long-time-durability of polystyrene. I guess it has something to do with the softeners moving out of the plastic over the time. Will all kits get like porceline after some decades? I hoped my Cangrid was an only example of what happens when bad plastic is used but your Destroid proves there are more kits with these problems. On the other hand, I have several much older kits which are still perfectly sturdy. Here is my Dorvack Cangrid Harbla. I did not like the silver/gold colour scheme so I went with silver/blue/red. My girlfriend forced me into a shopping mall one day and I saw this scheme on a pair of shoes. My first thought was "how awesome must that look on a mech" - and of course it had to be a real strange looking one! :DThis is how it turned out.

Good questions but I don´t know yet As for panelling I will change the colour shades a bit in places but I do not intend to make it kind of an "aztec pattern" like on some trek ships. The colour scheme as it is reminds me of a US warship camouflage, in 1943-1944 it was quite standard to have all upper surfaces, including even wooden decks, painted in dark blue. I will probably deviate from the simple anime scheme and paint the upper halves of the gun bulges and the upward surfaces of the little front "wings" blue as well ... The Spacy symbol... well there are no hints as to where to put that cause in the anime they don´t show these little details. I want one but I have to dig my spare decals for the right size. If I have a small one I might put it onto the bridge sides. A bigger one will look better on the enigine sides and maybe I will pick a "low visibility"style to match the grey. I´ve also thought about putting something like a big number or letter on the engines to resemble a WW2 bomber.... I will decide that as I come along but I will definitely use a little artistic license here - just sticking to the one screenshot will make it look kinda plain I guess.