1/72 Hasegawa VF-0S Advanced Assembly and Painting Tutorial from Plamo Tsukurou

I really enjoyed watching the Plamo Tsukurou (Constructing Plastic Models) tv series posted on youtube, one episode had the assembly of Roy Fokker's VF-0S from Macross Zero. The kit built was a 1/72 scale VF-0S Phoenix (Fighter Mode) made by Hasegawa. Even without understanding Japanese that much I think you can still understand a bit what's going on. The master modeller in this episode was Noboyuki Sakurai. Sakurai-san's work has been featured in Hobby magazines and he specializes in the Valkyries of Macross.

Part I is here:


Part II is here:


Some interesting stuff I learned in this tutorial was the weathering technique. He used diluted Tamiya German grey to mark the panel linings then enamel thinner on a cotton bud was used to thin down further the excess. Afterwards he rubbed it gently with a cotton bud filled with fine grained compound to remove more of the excess and leave behind only the panel linings. Not sure what type of compound it was but it was called Compound No. 9800. It sure looked like a polishing compound to me, for belt buckles or brass perhaps? The panel lining's weathering streaks and shadows were made with 1/4 Smoke Grey + 3/4 Clear of Mr Color type paint and was applied using an air brush.

Then there was the part where he removed the parting line on the canopy caused by the plastic injection mold. He first sanded it off then used Compound No. 3000 to rub off the scratches from the sanding then polished it further with Compound No. 9800. .

Plamo Tsukurou is a tv series in Japan where they showcase a live model build of a model kit by a master modeller... wow, how many times did I use the word "model" in that sentence. Hopefully not enough to scratch it off the english dictionary *snicker*

Thanks to Youtube user sleepylafiel for posting it.