Space Battleship Yamato

 FINALLY!!!

Well I finally got around to building it!

I got this for Christmas how many years ago? Plus all the DVDs of the original series...which I still haven't gotten all the way through, although I've watched the first four at least twice each.

This is a really cool kit. Comes with a really cool book too.

Funny story here. As you can see it's all in Japanese. And now being in the 21st century we all have these really cool computing devices everyone refers to as phones but we rarely ever use the phone function. That's not the funny part. What I did was found what I thought was a free app 

that can translate using the camera. So I got the app, and it was really cool the way it worked. And I was able to get all the simple instructions that weren't totally obvious from the pictures but the best use was getting the color recommendations. Here's the funny part. Anyone heard of Columbia House? Well this app was one where you get it for free but if you don't say STOP you automatically get set up on a monthly plan. OOOPS! Six months and something like sixty dollars later we figure this out. Oh well, life tax!

This is my first BanDai model and I didn't really realize that it was pretty much a snap tite.

And it's molded in colors so you really don't even need to paint it if you choose.

But I'm going to paint it anyway.

And then you can disassemble it to work on different details later. Pretty cool feature.

I put the most work on the smallest details again. Not quite the dragon tracks but I did have 32 Cosmo Fighters to paint up.

Primed

Painted

Detailed

Here they all are with the disassembled hangar bay.

 

Then I got the idea to add magnets so they could be removed and shown off a bit.

Here's the back section of the hull for the hangar bay and the wave motion engine.

It required a bit of cutting and sanding to make the fit easier. The hangar bay is removeable but as it was it was a really tight fit.

Here's the finished fleet of Cosmo Fighters and the hangar bay ready to be installed.

Half of these are magnetized and removable for display.

Now on to the rest of the ship.

I didn't get many pictures of the build. I was too involved in the actual build, but the model does have some cool features like individual positioning of the guns and turrets.

All the disassembled pieces, superstructure, gun turrets, secondary bridge.

Primed and ready for painting.

I went with pre-shading and then also went back and used some panel liner as well. The bottom hull is standard red and I still had some panzer grey left from the Balkans project and the ship was kind of blue in the show. It turned out to look really good not being standard ship grey. Can't really tell in these pictures though.

Sorry for the brightness of the pictures. I decided to take the pictures outside on a sunny day for some reason thinking it would be good lighting. I guess I'll take more later with more controlled lighting for a later post.

Here's the model with the back panel assembled covering up the hangar bay and engine.

Another neat thing in the kit was a mystery sprue:

Turns out it is a whole other ship model. 

I really enjoyed building and painting this kit. I'll definitely look in to getting more Ban Dai models. Might try a Gundam later on down the line. 

Incidentally this was a project I finished up in August. I just didn't get around to taking pictures of the finished model until this year. 

Next up will be my February project. I already got pictures of that. No long delay (relatively speaking) on the next one. 

So until next time....

Thanks for stopping by and leave some comments if you like.

Other Stuff in the Collection

 What a month February has been!

Hope everyone survived the winter blast we had here in the US. I think I saw at one point that the central US was the coldest place on the planet for at least two days, including the arctic and antarctic. Wow. Just Wow!😲

We were shut down here for 7 working days due to excessive snow and then the city water main breaks causing low pressure and a boil water alert. That cold weather is not very conducive to clear coating or priming either.

So this post is going to be old pics of minis already done.

Here's part of my fantasy orc horde.

It's a mix of several manufacturers. Mostly these are Reaper.

And most of these were painted I'm guessing 7-8 years ago at least.

This pair are definitely Reaper minis. 

One on the right is part of an army pack so he has a few clones in the group.

Another Reaper mini. He's actually an Ogre in the catalogue but I painted him up with the orcs.

Many years ago - we're talking before high school when my painting first began - I had Ral Partha paints that was Orc Flesh. Since that pot is is long dried up - I may still have the actual pot somewhere - I've come up with my own orc flesh recipe I use on all my orcs now. My attempt at duplicating the Ral Partha color. It's some olive green with a bit more brown mixed in. Shading is a wash of dark green with a similar amount of earth brown mixed in.

I like it.

Speaking of Ral Partha, This is one. The orc rider is closer to 25mm than the Reaper 28mm figures.  This guy along with the next one (also a Ral Partha) are ones I picked up in a dusty old hobby shop somewhere outside Phoenix 19 years ago. The paint job is not much younger.

So here are all my "heavys"

I do have one Hasslefree mini in there:

 I really like the Hasslefree minis.

I've got quite a few of them, been buying them for years.

There is another Hasslefree mini that goes really well with this guy, Tiriel.

He & she go together in the display case when they're not on the table top.

And I'll finish up this post with a few more pictures of Tiriel.

She's been painted up for about as long. I wasn't much in to doing eyes back then. And I got all three versions.

That's it for this month.

Hopefully in March I will be able to get more recent projects photographed. I should be finishing up my February project in the next few days if the USPS ever catches up and delivers the last pieces I needed.

If the weather stays nice I can clear coat and photograph some other projects. I've got one from last August that I realized I never did shoot any pictures of the finished deal. I got some from the build but never did document the final bit. 

Maybe that will be next. 

So until next time...

Thanks for stopping by.

It's a New Year

 Well here we are in a new year. Hope everyone survived what was 2020 with your sanity intact.

If anything it has given me more time to spend on the hobby. And I've been a little more motivated to get some things done. What else ya gonna do stuck at home?

I haven't done much picture taking of the projects, I've been focused on doing the projects. I need to be more vigilant on that. I do have a stash of pictures taken earlier last fall of already completed minis to get things rolling for this year.

I got this guy a long time ago. He went missing for a little while - more than a year - maybe 7. Then he was found in mini-me's Lego box. How did he get in there? Only he knows - but he did get painted this past summer so he can now join his friends:

The rest of his crew were all painted up at least 5 years ago. I really need to start marking my minis on when I get them completed. Then maybe I can gauge and see if any of my painting techniques and such improve. Not likely but it may be neat to compare some. In this case I was trying to match #1 up with the rest so that they go together for reals.

#2 cultist is really cool. I did some free hand scribbles in his tome that from a distance don't appear all that bad. 

#3 obviously

and #4

And finally number #5

Being mainly D&D players, not real sure how I can work #4 & #5 into a game with guns and flamethrowers. They can still make good stand-ins anyway. I'm sure I can figure some way to get them on the table. 

Well that's my one of my cultist crews. 

I also painted up two not-Comissars to go with my not-Imperial Guard troops.

I can't remember where they came from. I do remember I was looking for other minis or something and they popped up in the ebay suggestions and I guess it was late and had already been working on a bottle of 19 Crimes which made it that much easier to Buy it Now.

MASK UP! IT'S A PANDEMIC!

And lastly I finished up a wolf pack that has been in my mountain of lead for a couple of years and had made one unpainted appearance in a game.

I really tried to get  a 'realistic' coloring on these instead of just some straight gray/blackwash/drybrush painting on them. Didn't turn out too bad for their small size - I think.

I still have a couple of larger dire wolves in the mountain of lead so we'll call this attempt practice.

That's some of the stuff I did this summer. I've got more. I just need to take some pictures of the finished products. 

Until then here's a sneak peek at the WIP Apocalypse Scooby Gang I finally finished up this summer:

I know you've seen Fred and maybe some of the others waiting in the background on other posts.

Thanks for stopping by.

Have a safe, happy, healthy new year!
 

Happy Halloween!

 

I finished up a new Halloween decoration!!!

I've had these figures for about two years. It was supposed to be a finished project for last year. But of course that didn't happen the way I planned. You may have seen some of the little guys on the work bench in other posts. 

I'm finally getting the base built.

For those interested....here's a few shots of the build.

Concept drawing for the cottage.

I made it out of foam core and matte board. Pretty simple. The hardest part was figuring out the angles for the roof and gable. I made an actual wood door with craft stix and the head of a push pin. The porch and gable supports are plaster bricks.

The base is some thick press board that came as packing material in our new TV earlier this summer. I have a few others which will come in handy in other projects. 

Save that packing material!!! Reuse!! Recycle!!

The roof was some textured, model railroad, styrene sheets.

Now for some landscaping using wall spackle for garden mounds, ground coffee and sand mix for dirt, and some natural stones.

Primed

Painted

Then add the foliage.

Cottage built, complete with a cat in the window, ready for the figures.

Thanks for stopping by.

Happy Halloween!

🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃