May 4, 2006: Ok, I got bored and decided to work
on this kit. Still on my anti Gundam kick right now so I'm avoiding anything
Gundam related. I picked this kit up a few weeks ago and must redeem myself
from the horrible failure that was my SV-51. Right now, the parts are
glued so I did a quick throw together. Next up is sanding and rescribing,
since the sanding will marr some of the panel lines.
May 9, 2006: A small update. I'm taking my time with the
sanding process. Due to the nature of these kits, alot of rescribing needs
to be done during the sanding process. Some of the pieces have some warping,
and then there are the circular mold marks. So I filled those with some
Mr. Surfacer 500. The fingers of the hand have individual ball joint,
but are also joined together. To increase some posability, I detached
the fingers from each other. More progress to come.
May 17, 2006: Finally get to do an update. The following
pictures document the filling of little "pot" holes that are
the results of the molds Hasegawa uses to create these kits. Seams from
all the half joining pieces have been puttied and sanded down. I finally
finished sanding all the parts and then got down to priming tonight. There
are only a few areas where I need to resand and then reprime, but these
are limited to about 5 or so pieces.
May 21, 2006: Weekend update.
After priming, I need to wet sand the parts to smooth out
the surface. The below picture shows the difference between freshly primed
and wet sanded. Wet sanding used a very high grit sand paper and water.
After sanding, the intial preshade color was painted.
Next up the internals were painted using Alclad II Steel
over gloss black. Polished aluminum was used for the thrusters and feet
thruster fans. Smoke grey was used to darken the edges of the thrusters
and feet/plane exhaust.
Below are a few progress steps in the preshading technique
I use for shading my kits. The images are from primed > preshade color
> initial center coloring > darkened edges > and final blending
of the edges.
May 24, 2006: Midweek update. Finished the majority painting
process. Just got a few touch up areas to do like the clear red on the
wing tips, tail tips, and the clear pieces. I finished spraying future
on all the pieces, so next up will be the ever fun decals and panel line
wash. Going to be out airsofting all weekend at LC5,
so no more updated until Monday at the earliest.
A few pieces needed some masking, so that was a fairly simple
task. Next up, I drilled a small hole into the top of the head antenna
guns. Then future floor polish was sprayed onto all the pieces.
June 1, 2006: The decaling progression is fairly slow on
these kits due to the fairly large amount of decals. Then again, I've
been running a bit slow anyways. But got a few progress shots of what
I've completed so far. Still got lots of decals to go. I should have a
bigger update this weekend.. no plans of yet to go anywhere.
June 5, 2006: Weekend update. Started working on the base
this weekend. Going with a smoked acrylic sheet with the Macross logo
and the Macross Zero logo together. The wood base has been sanded, stained,
and undergoing the polyurethane treatment - that will progress for a few
more days to get that nice ultra shiny surface.
I also finished the decals and added a final coat of future
floor polish.
Last thing done was a dark navy gray wash for the panel
lines, painting the clear parts and the small detail areas. I'm going
to try to leave the kit alone for the next week so the future floor polish
can cure. Next up will be flat coat and weathering.
Macross VF-0S Battroid Progress
