SteveTheFish

My friend from America came to visit Japan for a couple of weeks, and we spent a weekend together at the start of Golden Week. We scoured the various Book Off, Hard Off, Hobby Off, Surugaya, and Mandai Shoten locations in Gunma and Tochigi Prefectures. I bought a Y-Wing sofubi kit by Argo Nauts at a Book Off Plus in Maebashi. It is mostly vinyl, but also has brass, pewter, and resin parts. Here is a quick dry fit of what it looks like so far. I didn't tape the pieces together or anything, but just quickly assembled it for this picture. I have not yet begun to bend copper wires to put on the ship for its piping. The kit does not come with any decals, so I gave it my own, unique paint scheme. The main body is vinyl, the tail ends of the nacelles are resin, the nacelle beams are brass, and the guns and landing gears are pewter (I think).

I painted the vinyl parts with V-Color paints, which are made specifically for painting sofubi kits and toys. I first mixed Light Gray in with Black to make my own German Gray color which I used as an undercoat. I splotched Mr. Masking Neo in areas with a sponge for paint chipping, then went over it with Light Gray. I used Blue and Pastel Blue for the trim, and Orange Yellow to have one panel be a replacement. For the non-sofubi parts, I used Mr. Color 325 (JASDF Gray, IIRC) which is a good match for the V-Color Light Gray. Since it is a sofubi kit, I will have to use an acrylic wash rather than enamel because enamel paints and thinners react badly to vinyl.

This reminds me... I have a Macross Valkyrie sofubi kit by Kaiyodo I bought a few years ago. I'd first need to cast one of the arms though, since that part is missing. Fortunately, the seller on YAJ gave me a partial refund after I realized it was missing the piece and both arms are identical to each other anyway.

EDIT: I just realized that I had hastily attached the nacelles upside-down. I just threw this quickly together to take a photo before I left for work this morning.

This is just strange because Max Factory gets its name from Max Watanabe. I assume he will no longer have any work done for Max Factory. It's just strange because he had his own brand going and now he's the CEO of Wave.

Got mine today at the Bunshindo bookstore in town.

1 hour ago, Big s said:

Where’s the Skull 1 Lobster?

Their website is still offline... https://www.fujimimokei.com/

18 minutes ago, Beltane70 said:

Those look absolutely fantastic!

Thanks! Nadia is my most recent work. There are different bead makers: Perler in the US, Hama in the UK, Nabbi in... Denmark or somewhere, and lately I've learned of Artkal in China. Hama kind of complements Perler because they offer different shades of color that Perler does not, but I don't like how glossy their beads are after melting them. Artkal has the best range of colors, and I've only recently learned about them. Artkal has the yellow/brown colors I needed to make Nadia.

One of my hobbies is making iron beads from pixels taken from 16-bit video games. Since there was an abundance of anime-related video games. When we were still living in America, I found packages of Perler Iron Beads at a craft store and I thought, "I could totally make pixel art from retro video games with these!" Before I knew it, I'd stumbled upon a hobby popular online. You just take game screenshots, enlarge them, and replicate them pixel by pixel from the screen to the beads. It's meticulous, but not tedious. It's fun.

Since this is a Macross forum, I'll start with these from the game Macross: Scrambled Valkyrie on the Super Famicom. 

Lum from the Urusei Yatsura game on the Mega CD. She is particularly tall.

Nadia from the PC Engine game.

There are also Nano Beads, which are 1/4th the size of regular iron beads. These can sometimes be frustrating because a slight bump can send them all flying because they are so small. 

Here is Devil Hunter Yohko from the PC Engine game. This one was very big as the sprite took up the entire screen in the game. It would not have been feasible to make this with regular iron beads.

Rei from Evangelion, done in Nano Beads. I just found pixel art of her on Pinterest and used it to recreate her.

Fujimi won't have a booth at the Shizuoka Hobby Show. They will have a booth at Wonder Festival in July. Possibly the Ani-Chara event this summer too, but I am not sure. 

9 hours ago, Thom said:

We need a Star Trek transporter, so I can just pop into places like this at a moment's notice!

Sure! Just be mindful of the time difference. You wouldn't want to appear in a store like that after midnight and the alarms go off!

Not really an "on the bench" picture, but today I went to Yodobashi Camera in Utsunomiya with my friend who is visiting Japan. Here is me in the Macross section of the model department. This is the first time seeing the new Q-Rau model in-person. Wow, what a big box! I have enough Yodobashi points that I could have walked out of the store with this kit without paying for it, but unfortunately I have to buy my daughter a crappy Chromebook for her schoolwork and I will need to use those points on that instead.

Stuff I have on my workbench. The two 1:100 scale Arii Regults are finished.

The 1:144 Bandai/Imai Q-Rau is mostly finished. I want to rework the pilot. I articulated the hips with ball joints.

The 1:72 Hasegawa Armored Valk is mostly done. I still need to assemble the hands.

The 1:100 Imai Armored Valk is mostly finished. I want to do a bit of weathering on it. After finishing the decal work on Hasegawa's Armored Valk, it has several unused decals and conveniently they are smaller-sized version decals which work just fine for this 1:100 scale kit! I was amazed. Since I went with Millia's color scheme, hers is unit 303 rather than Hikaru's 101. The kit's worn, aged decals were mostly discarded, but I did salvage that hammer/torch emblem for the waist area. That's all I ended up using from those decals that have seen better days. The rest of the decals are aftermarket from HQ Parts as well as aftermarket Macross decals I got on eBay from some seller in China. I used ball joints for all the main parts of articulation and unfortunately the shoulder joints protrude a bit too much. It was hard to guess the size. It doesn't look too bad, I guess. I replaced the hamfists with Hobby Base mecha hands.

Finally, the Hasegawa 1:48 Lightning. I ended up redoing gloss black on those panels after extensive masking and then reshot them with Mr. Color Super Metallic 2 201 Super Fine Silver 2. It looks a bit better. I'll do a clear coat with Aqua Gloss before decaling.

Oh yeah, and I'm also working on all four Zentraedi ships by Arii. I'll show those another time.

7 hours ago, Thom said:

Nice looking Scout @SteveTheFish. What scale is it? And it looks like it is missing its right canon?

It's 1:100 scale. There are no cannons on the scout pod. That one thing you see is some sort of antenna or something. I still have a few more places to paint, I now realize. I'll post better pictures when I'm done.

I finished the old Arii Regult Scout Pod from Macross yesterday. I placed it next to the Heavy Missile Regult I finished last year. I used Wave's H-Eyes lenses on both of these kits for the little red sensors. For the Scout, I filed down the piece offset from the center and replaced it with a big blue lens. (I painted the red and blue with Mr. Color Clear Red and Clear Blue colors.) I used Kotobukiya's M.S.G. vernier thruster pieces for the side thruster pods as well as the thrusters on the backs of the knees. Scattered about are parts for Haegawa's Armored Valk and Bandai/Imai's Q-Rau kits.

1 hour ago, Big s said:

Wave kinda does almost more stuff in 1/72 scale. I think the only did the multi modes of the VF-1 in 1/100 with a few minor variations. Other than that they were all larger scale. 

Yeah, what I meant was the VF-1 Valkyries. Wave has done Destroid, VF-4, and Vampire kits in 1:72 scale for sure.

Oh wow. So Fujimi has inserted a coin and pressed start. Here comes a new challenger! I think I may have mentioned on this forum before, but Fujimi is a sort of "black sheep" among the Japanese modeling community. Shizuoka City is the plastic model capital of the world, home to Tamiya, Bandai, Aoshima, Fujimi, Platz, Sweet, Asuka, Ebbro, Rocket Models, RC Berg (although they only do resin garage kits), and Hasegawa (in nearby Yaizu). Fujimi is blacklisted from showcasing at the Shizuoka Hobby Show and the All-Japan Model Hobby Show because they stepped on Tamiya's toes many decades ago. Fujimi only has a booth at the Wonder Festival events. Up until now, you'll see how the various kit makers refrain from directly competing with identical products. While Hasegawa makes 1:72 scale Valkyries, Max Factory's 1:72 Valkyries have rounded, cartoonly-proportions, Wave sticks to 1:100 scale, etc. Hasegawa refrained from releasing a VF-4 because Wave was planning to make one.

So there is a sense of camaraderie and cooperation among the Japanese model companies, but Fujimi does their own thing and are not concerned about harmony. Their business model is more akin to an American company's. So with Fujimi entering the fray, I believe the phrase is "no holds barred"? Or unless the Macross Modelers association sets forth rules for others to abide by. Fujimi did not follow the established rules with the 700 Waterline Series of battleship models in association with Tamiya, Hasegawa, and Aoshima, and were thus blacklisted. Tamiya made a Yamato kit and Fujimi did too, and were subsequently shunned.

11 hours ago, Thom said:

If you have some Tamiya Smoke, you could try using that to shade some selective panels. And mask and spray some other ones with the same silver from the wing flaps, or even mix the MC8 with MCSF2 for a third shade.

I actually thought about maybe doing that. Or Gaia Notes Clear Black would do it too. I did a Hasegawa Eggplane Girl wearing a bunny girl costume, and I used the Clear Black on her pantyhose to give it a sheer look. The effect was pretty nice.

4 hours ago, Big s said:

I think it looks great, I can see the differences in the shown pictures between the different metals. I’m not sure if you have a real world example that you’re trying for that has a bigger contrast. If you’re personally not satisfied though then go ahead and give it another darker coat, but I think it looks great as is.

Thanks. the panel variations are more pronounced in the example model photo on the box. I'm afraid of losing some detail if I was to do yet another gloss black coat and redo the silver. There might also be bleed-under. I was lucky to have clean masking lines the first time. The way it is now, it is subtle. I guess I'll be satisfied with that.

Sorry for the double post, but I figured that I would include a pic of my Imai 1:100 Armored VF-1J Valk. Instead of Hikaru's, I'm building it as Millia's. I know there is an old 1:200 scale Millia Armored Valk by Nichimo, but their proposed color scheme is just a bit weird. I've decided to make mine uniform with Hikaru's, particularly because I have leftover paint mix from my simultaneous Hasegawa 1:72 Armored Valk build. I just realize that I need to paint the head cannons and mono eye too. Other than that, I'll be ready to do a clear coat and apply some aftermarket decals. The decals this kit comes with are most likely toast.

As you can see, I have articulated the crap out of this, using Wave's ball joints, Hobby Base's mecha hands (I don't like the silly ham fists the kit comes with), and some polycaps leftover from Gunpla builds. I'm too chicken to put them together just yet, and will wait until I'm ready to do so at the end after the decals are down and sealed. Hopefully it won't look awkward, but at least it won't be in such a stiff pose as it would be built straight out of the box without augmentation.

The gloss white/gloss black scheme is interesting, but unfortunately I think I applied too many layers of silver paint, making the black panels a bit too subtle. The wing flaps are Mr. Color 8 Silver, while the rest of the plane is Mr. Color SM201 Super Fine Silver 2. You can barely see that the nose, engine cowlings, rear parts of the nacelles, and vertical stabilizers are a bit deeper color. I should not have applied too many layers of paint and let them show the darker color more. It was my first time attempting this, and I thought that after the paint dried, they would be more visible.

So... I dunno... Do you think it's worth re-masking and giving these panels another shot? Or just fall forward?

BTW, in the background you can see the old Imai 1:100 Armored Valk that I am building up as Millia's red VF-1J.

I was hoping for a Glaug or a Gnerl, but perhaps those will be slated for November/December if they do come out.

Macross Plus Battroid and a blue Max Q-Rau!

Less than 24 hours from now, at 12 noon local Japan time, Hasegawa will announce their summer release schedule for June & July, ahead of the Shizuoka Hobby Show next month. 

https://www.hasegawa-model.co.jp/202406_7new/

I've finished airbrushing my P-38 with gloss white with gloss black panels. When I spray the kit with a silver overcoat, these alternate panels will show through differently.

An update on the modification I'm making to my old 1:100 scale Imai Armored Valkyrie. I'm adding ball joints to enhance articulation. 

https://odysee.com/@stevethefishdotnet:2/Imai-Macross-1100-Armored-VF-1J-Valkyrie-plamo-build-2-マクロス　アーマードバルキリー:2

On 3/16/2024 at 12:42 AM, wm cheng said:

Hey @SteveTheFish DO NOT USE lacquer thinner straight on the model, it will eat into the plastic.  Sometimes people use lacquer thinner as liquid cement. 

Big S is right; I was talking about using lacquer thinner to clean up metal parts.

Yes, it looks like that to me.

So the order of the pewter (?) landing gears for the P-38 Lightning. Am I supposed to prep this somehow, or just apply some metal primer and just paint it? Do I need to soak these in lacquer thinner or something first?