HLJ Playing with Plastic Contest Winners.

I'm sure most of you have seen it already but if you haven't check it out here.

After looking at the winners I realized one thing.  I was in WAY over my head! LOL!  There are some really powerful modelers out there!  I can't hope to compete with them at my current skill level.

I mean just look at this!  That water is amazing!

However it got me to thinking... If you spend a long time on something and it's really good there's nothing stopping you from entering it into multiple competitions.

Anyway congrats to all the winners, including fellow bloggers, Z for his MG Blue Frame, Don at DC23 Mech Arts for "The Graveyard" and MatX for the Ice Queen. Totally worthy!  Definitely don't mind losing to this caliber of modelers.  Top Coat/Photo/Pose King and Gods of Kotobukiya Extra Parts and Pla-Plate respectively.  Well done gentlemen.

Some of the runner's up were very impressive too!  Definitely worth a look!

But to all of you who didn't win, I haven't forgotten about you.  Here's something from me to you.  Good job guys!  SALUTE!

HLJ VF-27 - WIP 3 - Arms

I seem to have been out in the city a lot recently (drinking, eating, dancing and... cosplay festivals?!) It's been cutting  into my modeling and blogging time!  I prefer to work at night and leave the day open for other things if I can but recently my nights have been... active.  Sorry about that!  Just a short post today being done for the sake of completion.  Here are the arms.

Similar contruction to MG frames here.  More moving parts though as you'd expect.

Not much to say here but please be mindful of which parts go on the left and which go on the right.  They look almost identical but they aren't.

HLJ VF-27 - WIP 0 - Intro / Preface

Well I've gotten my first 'job' as a modeler and here it is.  The VF-27 Lucifer.

This is what's been keeping me busy for the past couple nights.  I didn't do anything until I confirmed with the HLJ staff how they wanted to proceed and their expectations.  Now that that's all out of the way now I can get started on this fully.

I changed the banner to commemorate the event.  Kept it green because the MGIJ is still my main project but has temporarily been put on the back burner until I wrap this up.

Here are some shots of when I first received it.

From VF-27

From VF-27

From VF-27

Some of you may remember that I posted about this kit a long time ago when the mass produced version was announced.  Now I finally have the chance to build it courtesy of the kind people at Hobby Link Japan, who provided this kit for me (+stand!) free of charge on the condition that I make a build log at Hobbylink.tv of the kit.  Easily done.

Here are some pics of the stand.

From VF-27

From VF-27

Seems to have been made specifically for planes.

Please do check out their goods by clicking on the banner below.  They certainly do have an impressive inventory!

First I want to thank all the people involved who helped to make this happen.  Thank you.  I love you.

Second I want to mention some things about the history and the design of the plane.

The VF-27 is the successor of the VF-25 but looks like it's more from the SV-51 design tree as opposed to the VF-0 (which just happens to be on sale!) design that the VF-25 descends from.  Actually both planes share a lot in common as far as how the transformation mechanisms work which leads me to believe that the VF-27 is more like the VF-25 structurally and fundamental but takes some design elements from the SV-51 design.  I believe that's the most accurate way I can put it.

Now... building the VF-25G (shown here) helped a lot concerning what to expect from this kit.  The VF-25 was no joke.  It's a beautiful, beautiful kit and plane.  But it isn't easy and the VF-27 has even more movable parts so I'm pretty sure I'll have my work cut out for me.  During the entirety of this build process the VF-25G will be present.  At the end I'll do some touch ups on it as well as a comparison between the two fighters.

I've always liked the VF-27.  Simple armament and a design that harks back to one of my favourite fictional planes ever, the Falken (1/100 scale! Oh I'd love to build this!), because of the enclosed canopy and the bold colour scheme.  I also like the extra thrusters on the wings.  And don't get me started on the beam rail gun/gun pod...  It's an impressive machine.  Not the biggest fan of the fuchsia or the pilot but those are minor things.

Onto the kit itself:

Because this build is supposed to be a basic review of the kit I won't be doing anything radical and will be approaching it more from a beginner/intermediate stance, illustrating some of the most basic techniques that you can use to make a regular kit look really nice.  That's not saying I'm going to do all of them myself but I will show you how and where to do it if you're inclined to do so.  For that reason this build process/WIP will also double as my first tutorial.

If you're interested in picking up the VF-27 for yourself please do check Hobby Link Japan first.  It is a great source for all you're modeling needs!  They have just about everything!