Bandai Perfect Grade 1/72 《Star Wars》Millennium Falcon

[Centurion]

I think so but you may have to email them to confirm it.

That's very cool of them to offer that.

 

[Kamandi]

Issue 100a is available in the UK at no cost to subscribers. US and international are still being sorted out. Some small parts fell off the factory prototype and this accounts for the known parts

 

[Mandible]

My Bandai turned up today

Now to get it built and painted

 

[ETERNIA FOREVER]

Alright well the bandai is what 400 dollars, How much will someone with talent charge to build and paint it ?

 

[Mose Harper]

Hobbyworld USA has the Bandai PG kit for $302 shipped. A sweet deal for anyone that waited or was on the fence.

 

[Walls]

Took a break from the Falcon to work on the AT-AT, still have some painting to do but pretty happy so far.

 

[a7818239]

Took a break from the Falcon to work on the AT-AT, still have some painting to do but pretty happy so far.

it's a bandai's product,too?

 

[Walls]

Yep, they make great models.

 

[spindrift]

They make the finest plastic kits (SW series) I have ever seen and I own hundreds!

 

[spindrift]

Took a break from the Falcon to work on the AT-AT, still have some painting to do but pretty happy so far.

 

[Mose Harper]

They make the finest plastic kits (SW series) I have ever seen and I own hundreds!

I don't have much recent experience with these kits, but it's easy for me to see how much nicer the Bandai kits are than something like the Reveal/Zvesda Star Destroyer. The latter isn't bad, but when you compare the ease of taking parts cleanly off the sprue, the level of sharp, crisp detail, and how pieces dry fit together, the Bandai kits are clearly engineered at another level.

I just washed the trees for the AT At last night and will be assembling it over the next couple days. And this is the pile that is waiting after that-



I was intending to work my way through most of them before attempting the Falcon, but I think I'm going to be flipping back and forth, with the SD also in the mix.

I want to add lights/FO to most of these and figuring that out is going to hold me up.
By comparison, the relatively straightforward build of the Falcon is going to be relief.

 

[Mose Harper]

Took a break from the Falcon to work on the AT-AT, still have some painting to do but pretty happy so far.

I really like how you kept the weathering 'drips' in scale. I see a lot of people going overboard weathering this stuff and the biggest weakness is usually making the oils drips, and rust & soot patches , etc too damn big.

It's easy to go too large with that stuff when the models are this small. Keeping the weathering in scale is essential to making these not look like just painted models.

 

[Phoenixblazes]

I don't have much recent experience with these kits, but it's easy for me to see how much nicer the Bandai kits are than something like the Reveal/Zvesda Star Destroyer. The latter isn't bad, but when you compare the ease of taking parts cleanly off the sprue, the level of sharp, crisp detail, and how pieces dry fit together, the Bandai kits are clearly engineered at another level.

I just washed the trees for the AT At last night and will be assembling it over the next couple days. And this is the pile that is waiting after that-

View attachment 380987

I was intending to work my way through most of them before attempting the Falcon, but I think I'm going to be flipping back and forth, with the SD also in the mix.

I want to add lights/FO to most of these and figuring that out is going to hold me up.
By comparison, the relatively straightforward build of the Falcon is going to be relief.

The builds for Bandai kits are fairly straight forward.

It all depends on how far you want to take it, with the paint and weathering, and whether glue is necessary or not (can be annoying when parts fall off during handling etc)

 

[Centurion]

Awesome!

 

[Kamandi]

Anyone who appreciates the genius Alex Raymond is all right as far as I'm concerned.

My backlog (in addition to the PG Falcon):

The 1:144 warm up round:

A TIE I snuck in a couple weeks ago:

 

[Mose Harper]

Nice Stash! I wish I had the space right now for dedicated kit/modeling shelving. Proper organization is a boon to getting things efficiently attended to.
And Slave 1 is the only Banda kit left on my to get list. I'm hoping it will show up at Hobby Lobby eventually so I can use a coupon like I did on most of the others.

That TIE looks great. You do good work! Looks like you might have used some paint (or graphite) on the clips around the window? Any line washes you did look nice and subtle too.

For mine, I'm thinking of going with a blue grey which I'll have to mix. Value-wise, the tone of the plastic is probably what I want to stick to (30-40% grey maybe?), but I'll see. In some scenes the ships read as off-white/ very light grey (escape from the DS). But then when you see the asteroid chase, in some shots they look dark grey-blue.

I've got some big plans for those TIEs. I'd like to do quasi-shadow box dioramas with them and the Falcon, and then also using them for a forced perspective DS trench set up with the Advanced Vader TIE. The great thing about those is they are super light so you don't need a substantial rod to hold them up. I've got 9.5mm styrene tubes here, and even those are much more than I expect I'll need- though they do look like they will be perfect for sheathing a 5mm LED with some FO.

 

[Kamandi]

Thanks. Tamiya Nato Black and AS-26 Light Ghost Grey over that. Then dry brush Abteilung 502 Engine Grease with a bit of Starship Filth washed into a few lines. I kept knocking it back as I worked hoping to do nothing more than pop details. Wear and tear, not battle damage.

I don't know who built this but I kept the images because I dug the way the builder put this together:

 

[Mad Old Lu]

Wow, Kamandi. You do amazing work! Truly incredible.

I really wish I had the time to properly work on model kits. I did many years ago but there were no tutorials online or even people like you who had a great talent for it showing their work online. I would have definitely benefited from seeing it and motivating me to try harder. As it was, I always grew a little impatient with the painting process, or simply didn't know what the best paints or colors to use, or even that much reference material. I did a decent Falcon back then, and a crappy X-Wing, Vader TIE and Slave I. I'm totally inspired by your work. But sadly I just don't have the time I would need to devote to the project. Like, at all! My list of things to do during my retirement grows every day! My wife and I joke all the time that we would make GREAT retirees, especially when we hear about other retirees complaining that they're bored or have nothing to do!

As an aside, the Revell Falcon that I have is the second one I built (the first one when I was a teen, soon after ROTJ came out, so it was basically crap). But the one thing in common with the 2 is the really crappy landing gear. They were supposedly made to come off and on. But on both, the gear would get stuck and eventually snap in the slots so they were pretty much useless.

 

[Luminous]

Good lord, Kamandi. Your skill is on another level.

 

[Mose Harper]

I don't know who built this but I kept the images because I dug the way the builder put this together:

Apologies for repeatedly egging this thread off topic, but I find this really interesting.

Looks like the fellow that constructed that is using the Bandai DS panels. Gundam sells them (here) , but is frequently out of stock. At that scale, and doing it like that, it would make a lot of sense to kit bash your own panels and cast them.

However the big problem with the DS trench in general is that there are only two angles where you can see the ships- head on with an open front or looking down from above.
Unless you do a cutaway which could look cool (and would afford the opportunity to almost completely hide the ships supports). In that situation you would only see the ships from the side.

That might be something to brainstorm.

My idea was, because I have such a restricted amount of display space, to use forced perspective which would necessitate scratch building all the trench greeblies in decreasing scales, with the exception of the ones adjacent to the ships up front.

Utilizing forced perspective would also mean that viewing angles would be limited to head on with just a few degrees left and right.

At some point soon, before any of the ships are finished, I'm going to work up some tiny (like 5" square) models of what I'm thinking of so I can trouble shoot and see if it's gonna work.

The idea of a diorama is cool to me, but at the same time limiting viewing angles is kind of lame. I may just give up and find displaying these things as examples of studio models is all I need.

I picked up that Probe Droid over the summer and was very disappointed it didn't come with the snowcap that was on the first edition. I was cooking up ideas for a larger snowy base for that, but over the coarse of a few weeks I started to appreciate the simplicity of just the basic black base and how it kept focus on the prop itself. I still would like to get a clear acrylic rod for it though.

BTW- congrats on the Gentle Giant BW- one of my fave statues.