The Minimalist Approach...Greetings, Starfighter...

"... You have been recruited by the Star League to defend the Frontier against Xur and the Ko-dan Armada."

Ah, 1984. The Last Starfighter was one of my favorites as a kid - and still a guilty pleasure today. Just picked up the Blu on the cheap and I was reminded why I liked this one so much. A great 80s flick. So, some posters resulted...

The first two are character posters for Lord Kril and Mags. I'd like to do them for all the mains but these were the best screen caps I could find so far. I tried to get an 80s vibe in there with the simple graphics and type. I think they look ok...





The third is a more traditional poster. I put in the Star League logo and the original movie title graphic. Pretty cool!

1/72 Ki67...It's a bird, It's a PLANE...

We are finally starting to resemble something that flies! Fuselage halves together, Wings and rear stabilizers glued on! I chose to leave the ball turret out for now since I can fit it in later after the halves have been glued together. This way I can get it painted without having to turn it around while stuck in the fuselage.







Here are two neat pics - I tried to get some light shining down inside the cockpit hole and took a picture from the back looking through the plane on the inside. If you look closely, you can see the ledge directly beneath the top ball turret location and beyond that, part of the pilot's console - but its kinda blurry.





The workbench.

Final Comics...3.23.13...A Fond Farewell...

This will be my final comics post, at least as far as single issues goes. I decided that after taking into account my limited storage space and money spent, that I had to stop getting so many. So I went this past weekend and picked up my last pull stack. Not a bad way to go out...

FINAL COVER OF THE WEEK...Fever Ridge 2. Like reading an illustrated history book of the Pacific War in WW2. An excellent book...and educational too!



New Avengers 4 - my favorite Marvel Now title. Dark and very grim...



Uncanny Avengers 4 - Red Skull isn't playing around anymore...yikes!



Batman 18...



ST Countdown to Darkness....here it comes...



ST Hive...excellent cover...



Daredevil End of Days 6...I might have to cheat and get the final 2 issues of this. My favorite Marvel book bar none of 2012-13.

1/72 Ki67...keep on keepin' on...

Over the last week I've been getting some minor detail and paint work done. Nothing fancy - just taking my time on different things. First off are the fuselage side gunner "bubble" windows. You choose to add these as whole pieces or cut them in half so the guns will stick out the sides - since I'm in no way attempting to slice those delicate clear parts...they are going on whole. A nice little detail on the inside are gun racks to hold the machine guns en route to target. These will prob never been seen again once the fuse halves go together so I thought I'd get a shot up now.





Wings and wheel wells/engines are together. Got some weathering done on the inside of the wells.





Some weathering on the cockpit - on the seats and scratchbuilt box tops...



Random clear parts and rear machine gun setup.



One of my favorite pieces of the kit so far...the top ball turret. The gun moves sitting in its cradle! Now all I have to do is mask it off and figure out how to paint it and whether or not I should do that with it inside the fuselage or added later on...





Nice detail can be seen here...

1/72 Peggy...Interior workings

Since I'm waiting on the replacement cone...I'm working on the details of the cockpit and inside fuselage...mixture of about 50/50 Olive Green and Black Green. Inside fuselage looks a bit rough, but most of that will not be seen once the two halves go together...just a rough covering.

Once I got the cockpit together and painted, I placed the two decals - one on the front dial board and one(two) on the navigator's table. Despite all of this, the cockpit still looked very plain to me...lots of open floor room behind the pilot seats.





Here you can see the bombardier's chair and a small black tube...



I added in an unused cockpit piece from another kit to the back of the co-pilot's chair - painted black and also two small pieces on the floor to add some detail. They reminded me of wooden boxes or supply carts so I painted the tops a wood color. Some light weathering will follow but for now here are the new finished cockpit pics...







The workbench at this point in time...

The Minimalist Approach...My God, Bones...

As stated in a previous post, last night was Star Trek III - I thought it best to dust an old poster I've had "in the pipe" for some time. Add a little headline here and some movie title fonts there...I like how this turned out. Sometimes its best to let things sit a while...

May the wind be at our backs...

My Star Trek movie marathon continued last night with Star Trek III: The Search for Spock. It has one of the best quotes in ANY Star Trek movie...EVER.

"My Friends, I can't ask you to go any further - Dr. McCoy and I have to do this, the rest of you - do not."
"Admiral we're wasting precious time..."
"What course please, Admiral?"
"Mr. Scott?"
"I'd be grateful Admiral, if you'd give the word."

"Gentlemen, may the wind be at our backs. Stationsplease..."

Hasegawa Customer Support...A+

Quick note here...given my terrible luck with the clear sprue on the newly acquired Hasegawa Peggy I'm working on, I tried getting in touch with their customer/technical support department in order to get a replacement sprue. Called and emailed on a sunday and by the next day I had been contacted and my part ordered free of charge! Only minus is, it has to come all the way from Japan so we could be looking at a 4-8 week delay. ARGH!!! Still though, that's top notch customer service in my book.

Here is a link if any of you need this in the future...

http://www.hasegawausa.com/techsupport.html

1/72 Ki67...Disaster strikes!

Well, as you can tell from the headline of this post, this is not my month for making models. I decided to remove the clear parts from the sprue in order to get a good coat of future on them so they would have a few days to dry prior to adding them to the model. The large nose cone was the first piece I removed - not only did it crack down the length of the cone but it also gave a nice curve across about a quarter of the diameter...the f@$&!@! is smirking at me...



I have already contacted Hasegawa about a replacement part via phone and email - hopefully they will get back to me quickly. If all else fails, I can probably make the piece work...most of the crack will be covered with paint - and I can always say it was battle damage - I just HATE starting off a model like this.

The day wasn't a total loss - I did get the cockpit put together which also serves as the bomb bay detail on the belly. Nice engineering here. The little round circle sticking off the front of that is the bombadier's chair!





Underside detail...



The workbench...

NEW PROJECT: Hasegawa 1/72 scale Mitsubishi Ki67 'Peggy'

Since I crashed and burned with the Pak Fa, I decided to return to a subject I love - WW2 japanese aircraft. I prefer 1/48 scale but since this is a bomber, the 1/72 scale won't be as limiting as it would be with a smaller fighter. Below are some possible camo schemes...

My favorite - I like the greenish brown overall color - its a bit different from the dark green of most Japanese aircraft. I like trying something a bit different.



Pretty much the same camo but with a white tail. This is very interesting but I'm willing to bet the white tail would make the tail decal almost invisible.



Typical green - this one also shows the long lance torpedo included with the kit. Striking profile...



One other small detail I may add - notice the white stripe on the wings in the upper left of this picture...it may not be historically accurate with this particular bomber, but I really like the "meatball" on top of the white. I will look into it when the time comes.