Armor... Sci Fi... the lines get a little blurry sometimes. Techniques from one genre carry over quite well into others. Your battle damage work looks good on this mecha suit. Although it does look to be in better shape burned out than many Russian tanks in Ukraine these days. 

stikpusher

Armor... Sci Fi... the lines get a little blurry sometimes. Techniques from one genre carry over quite well into others. Your battle damage work looks good on this mecha suit. Although it does look to be in better shape burned out than many Russian tanks in Ukraine these days. 

-Thanks stikpusher. Dougram was definitely more well maintained by The Deloyer 7 than Russia's armor. And, those Russian tanks were usually wrecked by multiple external entry events rather than an internally-originating event. Yes, I am taking your comment too seriously ;)

If there's anything, choices, technique, etc. that I could improve I'm open to suggestion.

p.s. What stik do you push?

It looks good to me. I was first introduced to this series when Revell released various Japanese mecha kits as part of the Robotech Defenders line of kits in the early 80s. Of course, I had no idea what the kits were actually from.

Many of the Revell releases were done in pseudo modern military camouflage paint schemes and not in their cartoon correct schemes.

I built the 1/48th scale version of this kit Revell called "Zoltek". I have quite a few of them still left, but they are worth a whole lot more than I paid for them at Woolworth's back in the day.

Rob Gronovius

It looks good to me. I was first introduced to this series when Revell released various Japanese mecha kits as part of the Robotech Defenders line of kits in the early 80s. Of course, I had no idea what the kits were actually from.

Many of the Revell releases were done in pseudo modern military camouflage paint schemes and not in their cartoon correct schemes.

I built the 1/48th scale version of this kit Revell called "Zoltek". I have quite a few of them still left, but they are worth a whole lot more than I paid for them at Woolworth's back in the day.

-Ha, we must be the same age. Those kits (and Robotech on tv) were what got me into art and models. At one point or another I built most of those kits, very badly I'm sure. But, and this is telling of how society has changed, it was really cool to have a model shop as an elective class in jr. high! When I went away to college a lot of my old toys (like all my vintage Star Wars and G.I. Joe!) got "mom'd". And most of my old models went too. In the past couple years I've gone back and repurchased most of them, including some I had forgotten about - like Orguss, and the 1:12(?) Southern Cross characters in their armor. Looking forward to building them! (except well this time)

Also, if you haven't watched Dougram, it's remarkably good. Very adult content in terms of complexity and plot (still fine for kids, no nudity or graphic violence). It goes places no American cartoons for kids ever do - like showing multiple sides of a political struggle, validating opposing belief systems, showing the humanity and tragity implicent even in victory, etc. High level themes, but in a very accessible wrapper.

p.s. How long does it take before my posts on this forum don't require a 24 hr hold to be reviewed by a monitor? Really bgus me not to be able to give them a final once-over because I inevitably find errors and hate [my own] typos. 

First off...as a dedicated 'tiny scale' fan (at least for as long as my ageing vision holds out ), it's great to see 1/144 anything; the jewel-like nature that is that scale at its best really shows in your model.

Second...your weathering and battle-damage are quite beautifully rendered. Your artist's background really shows.

First class work!

Yep, what they said!  Great finish on an unusual kit!

Dougram was one of the early "real robot" shows to air, and I thought the mecha designs were really good.  I think Kunio Okawara, the guy who did the mobile suits in Gundam, was responsible.  I liked the "stats" the Dougram mechs had - they were powered by gas turbine engines turning electrical generators, and thus had realistic limited endurance (like 1-1/2 to 2 hrs).

Now See!

        I am not so nuts doing Gundam kits of The smaller mechs! This is a fascinating area of warfighting that needs to be emphasized . They are Plausible and different. Who would think that the Smallest soldiers could be selected to pilot one of these powerful Machines. If you have gone to Airshows and seen the cockpits and gunner positions in early W.W. 2 Bombers you would know what I mean.

     I used to own and fly a Warbird from this era. I can just barely fit in the cockpit now! Oh, and look carefully at the D.C.7C and C 54 and other planes of the propeller era at the Smithsonian/Udvar-Hazy museum complex. They were cramped ! So much so that the idea of a Mech for ground troops isn't a far fetched thing! Might save a life or two til we learn that war is not the answer!

Oh wow, awesome job! You did a great job on the weathering and I love the abandoned dejected mood you've got going there too! 

-Thanks very much you guys. I needed a reality check on this little guy...too much time focusing and thinking I was going in the right direction to be sure. Nothing beats fresh perspective.

gregbale

First off...as a dedicated 'tiny scale' fan (at least for as long as my ageing vision holds out ), it's great to see 1/144 anything; the jewel-like nature that is that scale at its best really shows in your model.

Second...your weathering and battle-damage are quite beautifully rendered. Your artist's background really shows.

First class work!

-I really like 1/144 too. Coincidentally the only [tank] armor I've ever built was 1/144 scale, a T-34-85, and a KV-2 diorama. 144 is in that weird middle ground between full model and miniature, and can pull techniques from both genres.

Real G

Yep, what they said!  Great finish on an unusual kit!

Dougram was one of the early "real robot" shows to air, and I thought the mecha designs were really good.  I think Kunio Okawara, the guy who did the mobile suits in Gundam, was responsible.  I liked the "stats" the Dougram mechs had - they were powered by gas turbine engines turning electrical generators, and thus had realistic limited endurance (like 1-1/2 to 2 hrs).

 

-On the note of smaller mecha, do you know Votoms? It's my favorite of all the mecha designs, about as small as you could make a mech before it would become an armsuit (GITS or Appleseed) or power suit (Fallout, Starship Troopers anime). Votoms' design is small enough that it could enter buildings the size of a warehouse without causing damage. It was totally modular like a real military would have designed it, and with grab bars and lift points in the right places for alternative loading and boarding. All the little details, including that instead of sealing the Mech's cockpit from space/water the pilots' suit has the life support role. This allows the mech's hatch and vision system a wider range of situational functions. and alternate egress if damaged.

Gamera

Oh wow, awesome job! You did a great job on the weathering and I love the abandoned dejected mood you've got going there too! 

 

Palantirion

Rob Gronovius

It looks good to me. I was first introduced to this series when Revell released various Japanese mecha kits as part of the Robotech Defenders line of kits in the early 80s. Of course, I had no idea what the kits were actually from.

Many of the Revell releases were done in pseudo modern military camouflage paint schemes and not in their cartoon correct schemes.

I built the 1/48th scale version of this kit Revell called "Zoltek". I have quite a few of them still left, but they are worth a whole lot more than I paid for them at Woolworth's back in the day.

 

 

 

-Ha, we must be the same age. Those kits (and Robotech on tv) were what got me into art and models. At one point or another I built most of those kits, very badly I'm sure. But, and this is telling of how society has changed, it was really cool to have a model shop as an elective class in jr. high! When I went away to college a lot of my old toys (like all my vintage Star Wars and G.I. Joe!) got "mom'd". And most of my old models went too. In the past couple years I've gone back and repurchased most of them, including some I had forgotten about - like Orguss, and the 1:12(?) Southern Cross characters in their armor. Looking forward to building them! (except well this time)

Also, if you haven't watched Dougram, it's remarkably good. Very adult content in terms of complexity and plot (still fine for kids, no nudity or graphic violence). It goes places no American cartoons for kids ever do - like showing multiple sides of a political struggle, validating opposing belief systems, showing the humanity and tragity implicent even in victory, etc. High level themes, but in a very accessible wrapper.

p.s. How long does it take before my posts on this forum don't require a 24 hr hold to be reviewed by a monitor? Really bgus me not to be able to give them a final once-over because I inevitably find errors and hate [my own] typos. 

 

I'm 58 and a half. I've been on this site since it started twenty years ago; it's never had a monitor for posting. You can always re-edit your original post, even years from now.

I still have remnants of many of my Robotech kits. I've also repurchased a few of them. I've tried to track down original instruction scans so I can build them as intended and not in the pseudo-modern camouflage schemes that Revell marketed them as.

I loved the sets that came with other little vehicles like the helicopter that could transport the robot and the spider looking tank.

I still have most of the large camel-looking "commando".

Rob there are alot of us in that age bracket . I will be 59 in Nov. And a few younger and slightly older. Like Tanker Builder.

Palantirion

p.s. How long does it take before my posts on this forum don't require a 24 hr hold to be reviewed by a monitor? Really bgus me not to be able to give them a final once-over because I inevitably find errors and hate [my own] typos. 

I think it only took a few days to get that released on mine when I joined.  I think these days they just want to moderate brand new accounts to minimize bots, promoters, and trolls.

Dougram is pretty kid-friendly, but I was taken aback just a little by the excessive male toplessness, especially the big guy who looked like a Pacific Islander!    I don't think he EVER wore a shirt!

Votoms is one of those "forever anime" series that seems to keep on going, despite being eclipsed by the mega-properties like Gundam.  New products, including model kits, continue to appear with fair regularity.  I was not a huge fan of the series, but it does have a pretty loyal following.  That being said, if Wave did a 1/35 Testarossa, I'd be all over it in a second!

Like others here, I'm also an older fart (57), but consider myself lucky to have been around in the early days, when modern Japanese anime was relatively unknown here in the US.  I had a sense of smugness when Robotech aired - I had bought all the Macross kits I ever wanted a year or two before, ahead of the crowd that had to suffer inflated prices!

There was this shabby local shop, Japan Video, which provided us with seemingly endless pirated VHS tapes to watch every week.  Back then, that was pretty much the only way to watch the shows.  I had been building Gundam kits for a few years until I was able to rent the three movies from the original series.  My friend Jon who has a sister that regularly travelled to Japan for work was our other source for anime.  He would ask her to buy laser discs(!!!) and then transfer them to VHS tapes for us to watch.  My first taste of modern anime was courtesy of Jon, and what an intro - it was "Macross: Do You Remember Love?" and "Nausicaa".  And the rest, as they say, is history.  

Oh and by the way, anime mecha kits are the gateway drug to MaK for the unsuspecting.

And MaK is the gateway drug into anime mecha for the armor guys.  

Real G

Oh and by the way, anime mecha kits are the gateway drug to MaK for the unsuspecting.

And MaK is the gateway drug into anime mecha for the armor guys.  

 

Rob Gronovius

 

I'm 58 and a half. I've been on this site since it started twenty years ago; it's never had a monitor for posting. You can always re-edit your original post, even years from now.

I still have remnants of many of my Robotech kits. I've also repurchased a few of them. I've tried to track down original instruction scans so I can build them as intended and not in the pseudo-modern camouflage schemes that Revell marketed them as.

I loved the sets that came with other little vehicles like the helicopter that could transport the robot and the spider looking tank.

I still have most of the large camel-looking "commando".

 

-Been trying hard to avoid MaK, and didn't know about the Hard Graph kits, because I have too much on my plate as it is. MaK's designs are really really cool!

I think the waiting period probably had something to do with a former poster here. After he got temp banned he created a series of alternate accounts and came back and started harrassing the mods. I have a feeling the waiting period was to keep him or anyone else from creating a new account after being banned and jumping back in to create more problems. 

Palantirion

 -Dude, you have a Maximillian! I had that kit as a kid too, now gone. I re-bought it (for too much) a couple years ago off eBay. The Buck Rogers ship it really cool, also on my list. Nice Orguss too (also an anime with a very unnusual setting and story - and surprise ending). I've been periodically seeking all the old Revell Battletech kits (never mind that I have the "better" modern Dougram kits by Max Factory) and there are only a few now that I don't have. If you want instructions I'd be happy to take pics and post them. Just tell me which ones and I'll see if I can dig them up.

Thanks, I appreciate it. Yes, I still have a Maximillian that I built as a college kid in 1982. I also have a V.I.N.CENT kit that was a clearance aisle purchase but never built.

I've bought a couple of Robotech kits on eBay and buy/trade/sell forums that I particularly enjoyed as a college kid.

Hey Lurch!

         Didja have to pick me as the older? You young Whippersnapper!

Yep, it sure was hot on Deloyer.  But why did the bad guys, who "Never approve your independence from our Federation", always dressed up in snazzy orange jumpsuits with sharp white trim?  Maybe they had air conditioning in their Combat Armors.  Or the good guys' ones were broken. 

It would seem that "early adopters" of anime share similar stories of scrounging around sketchy foreign video rentals to watch pirated VHS tapes without subtitles.    My parents sent me to nine years of Japanese school, which I resented and consequently did only well enough to graduate.  I had successfully flushed all that knowlege out of my brain by college, but instantly regretted it when I found anime.  It took a long time to piece things back together to regain even a rudimentary understanding of the Japanese language.

When my friend showed me the Macross movie, I was stunned.  When he showed me Nausicaa, I fell in love.  While Macross had the techno-wow factor in spades, the softer, more human story of Nausicaa really moved me, and it has been my all-time favorite anime ever since.  I got to see it in the theater recently, and it was like watching the movie for the first time all over again.

And then there is the other stuff, like Crayon Shinchan.  

I learned a LOT of inappropriate words watching that show.  It was both a TV show and movie series.  Perhaps Western sensibilities won't get some of the humor, but I found it hillarious.  For the curious, the best Crayon Shinchan to watch is the first movie "Action Mask vs The Highleg Satan" (Akushon Kamen tai Haigure Maou).  The opening scene is one huge tokusatsu meme, and the song that followed had me in tears!

Here's a Votoms machine:

Someone in Japan actually built one full size in a warehouse and I think it was powered by V-8 engines. It may have been destroyed during the Tsunami but I'm not sure.

Very cool Ikar! Love the camo!