by the fans for the fans

So what do you do when you have a beat up, discolored 1:72 Gakken Alpha that’s not worth restoring? Well if it’s at my work desk… it gets customized.

I’d had these pieces for some time and I knew what I wanted to do with them. Every now and then I would tinker with them, but just didn’t have the enthusiasm to finish it up. Then, this crazy ass Robotech fan and friend of mine sends me a commission piece to work on and it inspired me to complete my 1:72 Shadow Fighter.

The idea was to do the conversion in the Gakken style so that it would appear as if Gakken had produced it… perhaps even an unreleased Prototype.

This is a pretty simple conversion as far as the body goes. The donor figure was missing a few pieces, but it still had the major pieces it would need to display in battloid mode.
Now the head is where the hard work came into play.

It took a lot of work to get the VFA-6I head to look like the VFA-6X. The square “eye” was rounded as well as the small square boxes on the sides of the head. I added styrene to the lower portion of the head. The “fin” was removed as well as the back of the head. The resulting hole was covered with strip styrene and shaped. The top of the head was also cut down and reshaped. Gap filling Gel super glue from loctite was used to fill seams. The results, I feel, are a close match to the VFA-6X head without being exact.







The body was disassembled and decals removed and glue residue was cleaned. The parts were then scuffed to help promote better paint adhesion and wipe with alcohol to remove any contaminates. Prior to painting I warmed the paint in a cup of hot water from the tap for about 5 minutes. This helps the paint go on smooth and aids in speeding up the drying process.

The main body, upper chest, lower legs, thruster covers on the arms, and wings were all painted Dupli-color’s Universal Black acrylic Lacquer. The upper legs, lower chest, arms, and hands were painted using Dupli-color’s Medium Gray acrylic lacquer.












After the parts were painted I used a blow dryer to help speed the curing process. On small parts like this you can achieve a nice finish this way. If the pieces had been much larger I would have allowed several days curing time before handling. I was pleased how the pieces turned out. I tried to give the parts a “vintage” quality to the paint leaving some areas under painted with a mist coat and irregularities similar to how 80s toys were painted. The intake rings were hand painted white with irregularities. I also hand painted the front, back, and sides of the arms to mimic how Gakken painted the originals.


So here he is complete.. my 1:72 Gakken Shadow Fighter standing proudly next to my original Gakken trio. He looks right at home with the Gakken Alphas.











Thank you all for looking and I hope you enjoyed this.

Mark

Isn't it supposed to have a big red eye? Or is it sleeping?

Oh yeah, great lines. They look really crisp and clean. To bad they didn't make the Beta's to go with them.

Benson wrote:

To bad they didn't make the Beta's to go with them.

not quite right, but yes the tread line was never released.

www.macrossworld.com/mospeada/tread_toy.htm

Benson wrote:

Isn't it supposed to have a big red eye? Or is it sleeping?

Yes, the Shadow Fighter does have a red "eye" but Gakken didn't paint the eyes on this scale Alphas so I followed along the same line. I will be going in and putting some gray on the head though.

Oh yeah, great lines. They look really crisp and clean. To bad they didn't make the Beta's to go with them.

Thank you. After I painted the head I thought I could have taken a little more time with it.

Yeah, the Singapore line had developed the Betas (tread), but only a dozen or so prototypes and test shots exist. They're out there though and I aim to bag one.