Random crap.
This time machine replica was on display at Aoshima’s booth. Unno-san has made a completely all-new tooling for a new model Delorean! It will feature gull-wing doors that can be opened and closed. They will be hinged with pins so that you can position them as you like. Fantastic! I’ll have pictures of it in a photo gallery of the event in my Greg’s Life section soon.
Painting eyes is the most nerve-wracking part of building garage kits. One can do an excellent paint job and assembly on a garage kit (aka GK, or gareki in Japanese), but if the eyes look weird, it’ll ruin the entire figure. You’ve gotta paint the eyes well, otherwise it’s crap and the whole build is no good.
I’m using Delta Ceramcoat acrylic paints, which are typical craft store paints. White, Black, and Mediterranean. I added some white to Mediterranean to add highlights to her irises. I didn’t notice imperfections in the molded surface of her face until I started painting. I tried to imitate Sadamoto’s art style. His distinct eyes are always great. I’m probably going to upload this build’s videos directly to Odysee rather than YouTube.
Yes, I’m a Hasegawa fanboy. Two 1:12 retro vending machines: ice cream and toasted cheese sandwiches. Two 1:72 Regult battlepods: the Scout Type and Heavy Missile Carrier Type. Two 1:12 resin figure kits: Yohko Asagiri from Leda: The Fantastic Adventure of Yohko and Kei from Dirty Pair. The only non-Hasegawa purchase is Max Factory’s 1:72 VF-1A/S Valkyrie, which disappointingly only came with stickers and not decals.
Arii’s 1:100 scale model of Roy Fokker’s VF-1S. Well, actually Hikaru is piloting it at this point in the story. It’s rather nice box art, but notice that the thruster pod in the center is facing the wrong direction! Oops. The decals for this kit do not seem to be usable. I am thinking I might build this up as Jetfire from Transformers instead. I have plenty of Autobot emblem decals to use.
I’ve been slowly working on this project for seven years. It started out with me just wanting to build and light up the Rebel Transport. This was back when I worked for Aoshima. I had wired it for lighting, took it to work to show a coworker, then placed it on the front seat of my car so as not to upset the bosshole because that grumpy dingbat bitched about everything. But the sun shone on it for many hours, causing the air inside the empty shell to overheat and warp the plastic. It was a lost cause, but fortunately my friend Steve (SMKR on YouTube) sent me a replacement!
These model ships came from the old MPC/AMT Rebel Hangar diorama from the early ’80s. There was the Hoth Battle and this hangar, and both came with lousy vacuform bases. I had the battle with the AT-ATs and Snowspeeders when I was a child. The Falcon isn’t too bad when looking at it from the top and bottom, but the sidewalls are crap. The back engine is completely featureless, as are the docking rings on the side. I added greeblies and pipes to the sides to spruce the kit up. The same for the X-Wings, where I added sewing pins to recreate the laser cannons properly. The Snowspeeders aren’t too bad, but the Y-Wings were sculpted without proper reference material and were obviously made going off of someone’s memory. Nothing is really in scale with others, although the X-Wings are in scale with the Falcon. I’ve been chronicling the process of this build on my Tumblr account and will update it again once I am finished. I envision this as a scene between the events of A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back.
I had posted a scan of the box art in an earlier post.
I completed the old 1:100 Arii Heavy Missile Regult plamo this week. Surface detail is in some ways better than the old Imai kit, with how there is molded detail for the lights on the head for this smaller Arii kit, whereas Imai’s larger Regult model only provides decals to represent those lights. As it is though, proportions on the missile pods is off and makes the model look a bit awkward because they are too large. I drilled out the cannons because those parts instead had protruding ends rather than resembling actual gun barrells. I used Wave’s H-Eyes parts for lenses and Kotobukiya’s M.S.G. verniers for the thrusters. This kit has molded detail for the lights on the feet, but they protrude way too much. I cut them off and used Wave’s lenses instead. The mono eye is simply molded into the face of the pod, so I first painted it silver and then clear red to give it more of a lens look.
I used Mr. Color 323 Light blue and 311 Gray for the white parts. The gray was a mixture of 32 Dark Gray and 72 Intermediate Blue. the decals were still usable after all these years. They were a bit yellowed, but I taped them to my window for several days to bleach them. They went on fairly well. I have a pre-order for the 1:72 Hasegawa version of this kit, which will be released after the first of September.
The proportions on the Regult itself seem fine, but Arii made the missile pods a bit too tall. It makes the model look a bit awkward. Also, there is no ball socket articulation with the cannons. They must be glued into place. I might add a bit of weathering to this. One thing I need to do is repair the knee joint. I had to replace the broken piece with brass rod, but the 2-part epoxy putty I used turned out to be soft because I didn’t make it the proper ratio. I might try polyester putty instead.
This bizarre plastic model kit by Imai comes from the days when Japan blatantly plagiarized stuff. Here is the “Command Robot VR-1” kit from their “Star Command” series, also known as “Nazi R2-D2.” I’ve actually seen this kit in person (at an IPMS show in Phoenix) and it comes with swastika decals. Sieg heil, you overweight glob of grease.
I started working on this old 1:100 scale Regult Heavy Missle Carrier plamo by Arii yesterday. Hasegawa is releasing 1:72 versions of Regults, with the standard and the light missile variant. I’m sure next year they will make this heavy missile variant too. I’m sure they will have a 1:72 Glaug officer’s pod eventually too. Back in the day, Arii made a 1:72 Glaug while Imai made a 1:100 one. Bandai has repopped the Imai molds, but the larger Arii kit is a thing of the past and must go for a lot of money.
I’m currently building Hasegawa’s 1:72 scale Armored Valkyrie Battroid kit and featuring it on my YouTube channel. Although I may not buy them, Hasegawa is already releasing variants on this kit, which is cool.
Imai did the same back in the ’80s. I have their standard VF-1J Armored Valkyrie kit in 1:100 scale, but they made others. from Macross. The artwork on these old model kits from the ’80s were fantastic and unfortunately once built, these models never really look as great as the box art. I found these box scans on the old legacy Macrossworld site.
Imai 1:100 scale Armored VF-1S Valkyrie Battroid. Macross fans will notice that an Armored VF-1S was never seen in either the TV show or the movie. This is an original design. Check out the cool “nose art” on the leg! I don’t have this kit, so I cannot confirm if it comes with a decal for that.
Another design not seen in the show or the movie: a VF-1A Armored Valkyrie. Neat stuff.
Here is my hobby room, late at night. This is where I keep my retro game collection, my plastic models and hobby bench, and my Linux desktop. You can see my Pac-Man lamps, my Dragon Quest Slime lamp, and on the wall my Pac-Man LED neon lamp. The pixel art is done with iron beads. The posters from left to right are: Puyo Puyo 2 (SFC), Cardcaptor Sakura Tetris (PS1), Bubblegum Crisis, Sakura Taisen (Sat), and Dead or Alive 2 (DC).