VF-1S Super Valkyrie

 

VF-1S Super Battroid Valkyrie model kit by Testors

Got this one off ebay for like $10 on a whim. I'm not really big on gundamn but figured I'd take on building one of these at least.  Seemed like a good place to start off being as it's cheap and simple.

I'll be going over my experience with building things, just keep in mind this is pretty much my first time doing a model kit.

.

of course here's the little box it comes in. Says it has movable parts but really it only has 5 joints in all.  Pose on the box is also impossible as you'll soon see.  Not really sure why it says R.O.B.O.T. in big bold red letters, I mean it's a mecha but whatever. Something to do with this being an American made model based on 'robotech'

.

As you can see there really isn't a whole lot to this model. Came with some green dome thing for displaying but between being cheap and crappy and looking dumb I never messed with it. anyways, first things first of curse and that's cutting out all the pieces.

.

When cliping the parts out I made sure to leave a decent amount of the connector peg thing whatever it's called so I could trim it down neatly and sand it off smooth.

.

The head here was already glued together and had a seam line I had to sand off. Other parts didn't line up as well as you'd think and required similar treatment.

.

I think I bought a cutting mat just becuase of this project. I can't remember all that well, I started this a while ago.

Anyway here you can see most of the parts glued together. Wouldn't have made much sense to assemble it any further at this point of the project.

As you can see the hands on this guy are just pathetically awful. they're just donuts really.

.

This is when I start to really second guess my judgment during this project. Here I applied primer to all the parts in preparation for painting but I'm really not sure if that was necessary or even a good idea at all.

The car shown there was from a side project I was also working on at the time. You can find more on that here http://www.reallyneet.com/custom-rc-paint-job/

.

After the primer came time to paint all the solid color parts. This was actually pretty easy and they came out looking decent enough. The air brush gave them a very nice even coat.

.

This is another part where I think I went wrong. Here I used a regular brush to paint partially colored parts. But in retrospect I think it may have been better to tape off the parts I didn't want painted and also used an airbrush on them. problem with that however could be the primer getting torn off by tape. Even now I'm still very unsure about all this which is why I'd still like to get more practice in before going on to bigger things. I should also add that detailing something this small was a pain in the butt. if I had a gundamn marker on hand it would have helped a lot for something like this. I had to use toothpicks dipped in paint to paint all the panel lines and stuff.

.

This point was after I picked this project back up after putting it away and forgetting about it for nearly a year. The thing wasn't really all that far from completion, I'm not sure why I drooped it. anyway here was just some more detailing and added color. I believe it was playing Macross ace frontier that re-sparked my interest and made me want to dig it out and finish it up. Not a half bad game I must say.

.

This is after applying some decals it came with. I found some of these decals didn't fit well at all. there were some that I couldn't figure out where they were supposed to be placed and others that seemed obvious but were missing from the package. oh and a few that were wrong, like the ones on the shoulders which had red triangles when this model is supposed to have them yellow, so I had to cut the red parts out of the decals. Or at least I think so, I'm really not sure. A lot of images I used for comparison showed them as yellow, but the very image I used to start this post off shows them as red.

.

Here is what I guess you could call the finished item after applying a coat of matte varnish. I made the mistake of thinking matte and flat were the same thing so I bought a bunch of matte, but figured I might as well use it. In my experience so far matte seems to sit somewhere between gloss and flat. End result wasn't something I'm all that proud off, the matte varnish just makes the whole thing look sticky.

.

While I think I could have done a worse job on it, I think I could have done a lot better. Even if this thing is tiny it still looks rather cheap and sloppy overall. I should also point out the thing itself is rather cheap. as pointed out before the hands are like doughnuts and it only has 5 joints one at the neck the two arms and legs.  he extent of his possibility is pretty much just turning his head and maybe raising his arms or legs. also those intake things at the top of his legs don't line up at all which should be obvious. Not sure if there was anything I could have done about that.

.

I'm still very confused about the proper way to apply decals. These water slide decals wouldn't stay in place very well at all. once the surface dried up there was nothing keeping them in place for the most part. I fought a lot with the smaller ones which would fly off when I tried apply the final clear coat. I still have no clue what the correct way to go about that would be.on a related note I placed the '100' decal in the wrong spot. There's supposed to be a US Spacy decal in that area, but since this kit didn't come with one I put the 100 there since I didn't know where that went. I found out latter it goes on the little wings of his legs.

.

Even with all the sanding down of the seam lines, it still came out with some noticeable lines. These are however indented which makes me think I should have used something to fill them up like a puddy of some sort. I'm not sure if it's fair to call this completed since the torso isn't closed together all the way. The parts didn't line up right at the bottom and trying to force it was just screwing up the paint.

.

Finally here the thing is next to a 9V battery to give you some idea of just how small the thing is. 1/200 scale after all is what the thing is labeled as.  All I can say now is I hope my future models come out better than this one.  I do have a few other ones laying around. Recently got a 1/35 pzIV tank I'm looking forward to working on but not until I finish my current project which is a vf-1j also from macross.