GBP-1S Armored VF-1 Valkyrie Kitbash?

[VF-1A Grunt]

Has anyone attempted (or considered) kitbashing a GBP-1S armored Valkyrie by combining an older armor kit with the newer Hasegawa VF-1 Battroid model? I have one of these older Arii 1/72 kits:

http://www.macrossworld.com/macross/models/arii/ar326-52-box.jpg

It's kind of disturbing to open up the box and see how crude the model is compared to today's offerings. The hands and head especially look like they were blown up from an old 1/144 scale toy; at a minimum, replacing those with leftover Hasegawa parts would be an improvement.

I've been thinking that it might be possible to hollow out the Arii armor components and apply them to a Hasegawa Battroid, although the backpack / thrusters would probably need to be scratchbuilt, since the original parts look very small compared to the line art. Some parts, like the Hasegawa chest, probably wouldn't fit into the armor, but the wings and back would definitely need to be used to upgrade from the Arii parts.

I've always thought there was some "anime magic" going on with the armored Valkyrie, especially around the... er... "crotch." From comparing drawings (and especially the actual animation), it just looks like the nose of the fighter would be too long to fit inside the armor, and the hips (intakes) look like they are spread out wider than they should be. That makes me think it would be challenging to fit the more scale Hasegawa Battroid model inside the armor without heavily modifying it. It would probably be easier to use the individual leg and arm assemblies independently of the actual Battroid body and develop a way to attach everything together, maybe to the original armored body.

In the end though, I'm not sure I'd be satisfied with the appearance of the Arii armor even after a lot of work. I've never really been interested in the Yamato toys, but this is one instance where I'm jealous of the toy version. It would be great to see a new, high-quality scale model of this interesting mecha.

Dave

[Gabe Q]

http://www.macrossworld.com/mwf/index.php?showtopic=9773&hl=

From what I remember, It's extremely difficult.

[VF-1A Grunt]

Thanks for the link. I did a bit of searching but didn't find that one (I still haven't gotten the hang of the search engine here). Looks like a lot of work but still doable. Grayson did a great job - it looks much better than the original Arii kit. I found the finished model thread:

http://www.macrossworld.com/mwf/index.php?showtopic=14522

I'll have to read through his WIP again to see if I want to tackle that project.