This here is the kit I’m using to get back into the swing of things.
This is the first Bandai Macross kit I’ve tried. All my others have been ARII. The kit is straightforward and I’ve already pieced together the main body and started on the legs. Will try to grab some of photos of that tonight.
This will be a fun one to paint and weather.
Any thoughts on the strange “headlight” head? I would think a missile platform would need to be equipped with radar equipment, i.e. scan and track antennas. Or I suppose you could go modern and just have a single phased array scanner.
So the day I posted this the company I work for announced they would be conducting layoffs. They finished the process near the end of the week and thankfully the cuts didn’t include my team. For the moment gainful employment continues to be mine.
Stress levels have dropped sufficiently and thanks to a beautiful day out here in Washington I am back at the bench. Minor progress made.
A photo of the mess of parts I’ve started working on.
Started priming the missile arrays and the exhaust vents.
For the bell I am going to leave the inside black but will once again attemp a heat discolored steel for the outside. Similar to what I did for the space submarine. Going to attempt to make it a little stronger this time as the affect on the sub’s engine was a little to subtle in my opinion.
I glued together the leg on the left before remembering the accordian joint on the inside is supposed to be a different color. There are challenges to painting the joint before assembly as well as after assembly. Haven’t come to any conclusions as to what I’ll do.
Most of the main body is assembled. Looking at it I am left wondering about several parts on it. Are they engine exhaust? Backup lights? Turn signals? These things are supposed to be protoculture powered so why would you need exhaust?
From the boxart the circled above look to be the pilots windows but the shape doesn’t really lend itself to being painted as such. The windows stick out instead of being recessed. Possibly an engineering mistake.
Hi RealG,
I think they are actually lower tech than that. Taking a close look at the boxart they look more like floodlights than radar.
I’ve misplaced my copy of the Robotech Visual Archive which might have given a clue.
The paint directions suggest a silver color for them. No clear plastic parts in this kit either. I’d say it can be whatever we want. Let our imaginations roam.
As with many things sci-fi, sometimes looking cool trumps practical. [:D]
Wow, now that is cool! Looking forward to more Phoenix!
I’m looking forward to it as well! [:)] Per my usual I’m going to try something new/different with it. In the boxart I noticed the artist used shades of green for the shading rather than black. I’m thinking I can do some preshading around the major edges with a dark green before applying the main sand/buff color. No idea how it will turn out but I am curious to discover the results.
Long term goal is to someday build this guy with all those missilles firing at once.
Working my way there.[:P]
Ohhhhhhhh, having the missiles firing sounds awesome!
The cockpit windows are just below the flood lamps. This machine as well as the others used in the series were designed to fight invaders and defend teh very large space craft Macross. This ship had crashed on an island and as they inspected the wreck they realized that there were still a couple aliens on boars who were quite large. This made them build their various heavy fighting machines large enoiugh to stop an attempt to take back the ship.
The day of the dedication ceremony of the rebuilt ship they got a surprise when its sensors discovered some ailen shout ships near Earth and it activated its main weapon and destroyed them as they neared Earth. It also destroyed a good piecd of the island in the process. They didn’t know the ship as well as they thought. Everything went diwbhukk after that.
Those anime missile volleys are much fun!
Ohhhhhh sounds cool guys!
Hey PG, cool project. It looks like you are making progress and it looks good. Keep up the good work
Construction & painting resumed this week. Started picking out the missiles nose cones in red.
Began painting the inside of the missile pod covers red but stopped after the first coat. Decided I liked the sloppy look of just a little red showing on top of the black primer.
Next up will be assembling the missile pods and priming them and cleaning up the searchlight to get it prepped for priming.
Hoping to get some of the pre-shading done on the other parts of the body this week.
Ohhhhhh, looks good!!! [Y]
Did the preshading for the majority of the body and started blocking in the main sandy/buff color. The green wasn’t as dark as I expected it to be but that doesn’t appear to be an issue. Most importantly, the colors seem to work well together. Meaning I won’t have to strip it back to plastic. [:D]
Looks good to me! Looking forward to seeing she looks assembled.
Continued preshading and blocking in the main color. I noticed after the fact that I forgot about the heel of the foot. Just finished cutting them off the sprue. They’re the small pile of bare plastic parts.
The initial coat of the main color is a mix of Vallejo Sandy Yellow + Buff. I thought it was too light so added a couple of drops of Dark Earth to the mix and added that as another light coat. You can see the difference it makes. The main body only has the initial SY+B whereas the legs have final coat with DE included.
Really enjoying the subtle effect the green has on the overall look of the model. It’s coming along nicely.
Looks good!
I’m assuming you’re doing colour modulation by spraying with the the yellow/buff with dark earth and then spraying again with plain yellow/buff from the top down too?
It had not crossed my mind, but now that you have called it out, it is absolutely something I will be doing. Can’t go wrong with zenithal highlighting. Thanks Gamera!
Minor update. The missile pods and searchlight have the main color blocked in. The front fairing on the missile pod will eventually be painted a dark greeen.
The heels of the feet have been primed and preshaded. I’m hoping that this weekend I’ll be able to finish painting the major areas and start working on the detail.
Looks great! You’re making some solid progress there!