stevethefishdotnet

I am a nerd who lives in Japan. I enjoy plastic models, science fiction, retro video games, and classic anime. My YouTube channel is youtube.com/stevethefishdotnet, my Odysee channel is odysee.com/@stevethefishdotnet and my personal homepage stevethefish.net. I do not follow accounts that put their pronouns in their descriptions. I reject this simultaneous war on the sanctity of women and the English language, as well as anyone who facilitates it with this absurdity.

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Zero Creative Works 1:6 Priss sofubi figure set from Bubblegum Crisis build photoset May 23rd, 2026

Here is my completed Priss sofubi figure. I used both V-Color and Mr. Hobby Sofubi Color vinyl paints. The gray/black metallic paint was Mr. Hobby Sofubi SVC08 Metallic Black. The rest of the paints were V-Color. As usual, I used Flesh B for pre-shading and then Flesh A for her main skintone. I added a bit of white to red for the pinkish red trim. The hardsuit main color was a mix of Clear Blue 60%, Blue 30%, and Silver 10%. Besides that, I used Gloss White, Flat Black, and Silver for the rest of the colors.

Priss's left hand is swappable between a fist and a palm to have her hand rest on her hip. She has two heads too which can be easily popped out. Her helmeted head is two parts: the neck and head. I employed strong magnets from Daiso (100 yen shop) between her neck and head to make her helmeted head movable.

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Article on Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water from Animedia Magazine, 1991

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Nadia and Jean on the cover of Animedia Magazine, May 1991

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Bandai/Imai 1:144 Macross Queadluun Rau plamo build photoset 超時空要塞マクロス クァドランロー プラモ May 5th, 2026

This is the old legacy Q-Rau plamo kit by Imai from the '80s, repopped by Bandai. The main green body color is Mr. Color 66 Bright Green and the white/light blue color is Mr. Color 314 Blue. I modified the hip joints with Hobby Base ball joints, thus giving the mecha the ability for a more natural leg pose instead of a stiff, straight forward movement. I also took a mold of the opaque sensor eye, cut it out, then backfilled it with clear UV resin to give it a better look.

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3D-printed Lynn Minmay from Macross photoset April 26th, 2026

My friend Gary printed this tiny Minmay figure for me several years ago. I primed her first with Gaia Notes Surfacer Evo Flesh. The rest was all hand-painted. Her sexy red dress is Mr. Hobby H3 Gloss Red. Her hair is Mr. Color Lascivus Aura CL103 Black Hair. I used Mr. Hobby H9 Gold for her dress's trim. The floral pattern is leftover decals from a Haku Rinpha Eggplane Girl resin figure by Hasegawa. That kit provided extras in case of mistakes, and these decals look elegant on Minmay for sure. The UN Spacy logo is a decal from a sheet of Macross decals I got from China, and it was the perfect size for the base this figure came with. And considering how tiny her eyes are, I think I manged to do a decent job.

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3D-printed Buck Rogers Starfighter photoset April 26th, 2026

My friend Blake printed this for me. When he offered to make one for me, I asked him to make a 1:144 scale version, pretty much like a Bandai Mecha Collection size. I even used a spare Mecha Collection stand from a Yamato kit I wasn't using.

So after priming, I sprayed Mr. Color GX2 Ueno Black on the engines before spraying them with Tamiya LP-61 Metallic Gray. I masked off the engines and sprayed the main color of the ship, Mr. Color 69 Off White. After giving it a semi-gloss clear coat, I applied the decals. I scanned the decals from the original Monogram Buck Rogers Starfighter kit, then shrunk them down and printed them on Fine Molds clear laser decal sheet. After applying them, I used Tamiya Panel Line Accent Color Dark Gray to bring out what small detail this tiny ship has. Then it was time for a flat coat. Finally, I painted the canopy Mr. Hobby H-2, Black to give them a gloss black look. It's a very small ship, so getting up close with a camera reveals the flaws very easily. Still, it was a fun mini project. Thanks to Blake for sending me this a few years ago. I've finally completed it.

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Introducing Sofubi Color paints by Mr. Hobby for sofubi (soft vinyl) garage kits April 15th, 2026

I've covered both V-Color and Sofvi Color paints by Nagashima. In recent years, Mr. Hobby has entered the paint market for sofubi and PVC subjects. So far, there's only about a dozen paint colors. At first, I wasn't very excited. However, the usefulness of these new paints are becoming more and more apparent to me. First of all, these are matt paints. V-Color doesn't really specify if a paint is gloss or matt, except for white and black colors. V-Color's blue, yellow, red, and so on are all gloss and if you need them to be flat, you'll have to add their flat base to it.

A couple of very useful colors are the metallic black and gray. V-Color only has a light gray, but Mr. Hobby has a medium gray color. Plus the metallic black is proving to be very useful to me.

What's more, although they say that the best thinner to use is the Acrysion Solvent for Airbrush, since these are water-soluble I have been able to successfully airbrush these paints with tap water. So not only is there not a strong smell, you don't even need to buy any specific thinner that is blocked in your country by Customs. Very cool! I had a bottle of Acrysion thinner, but it's become cloudy and heterogeneous. The last time I tried using it, it started turning the paint to a snotty texture and I gave up. There is now an Acrysion Solvent R (reformulation), but I have yet to buy some.

Unfortunately, the palette remains limited. There is not much in variety in colors. No light blue, no fleshtone colors, not even any fluorescent colors to mix your own fleshtones. Other than that, these paints are nice, for what they're worth.

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Hi Greg, how is the Tumblr really works?

Who are you? Do I know you?

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Panda Kopanda pencil board (shitajiki)

Panda Kopanda is an earlier Miyazaki 2-part animation that is a sort of predecessor to Totoro. Plenty of flooded, underwater adventure similar to Ponyo as well.

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Air Gallet (Banpresto for arcade, 1996)

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Tsukuda 1:6 Rei & Asuka sofubi figure set from Evangelion build photoset September 30th, 2025

Sofubi figure kits don't get enough love these days. Tsukuda's 80s figure kits were not very well-proportioned, but their kits from the '90s are considerably better.

I painted these exclusively with V-Color sofubi paints. Their base flesh color was Flesh B for pre-shading. On top of that, Asuka's face was Flesh A while Rei's was Ivory. The satin black arm sections is a mix of Blue and Flat Black. For their outfits, I wanted to do a mix of flat and gloss paints. So Rei's bodysuit was first sprayed with Blue for preshading under her boobs and such and its main colors are Gloss White top and boots with Flat White legs. In the same way, I used Red (which is gloss) and added Flat Base to do the flat red. Trim for Rei's outfit was Yellow and Rei's was Emerald Green. Rei's collar is Red while Asuka's collar is Blue. In many pictures I've seen of Asuka in her plugsuit, her tits are orange. For that, I mixed in Bright Red with Orange and went easy on airbrushing on her underboobs in order to establish a bit of shading.

Rei's base hair color was Sky Blue. I just added more and more white to create a nice gradation, then used dark blue artist's chalk to bring out the detail in the recessed areas of her hair. Asuka's base hair color was Brown. The rest of her hair was Orange, Flesh A, and Light Brown. The highlights on top to provide further gradation was just straight Orange. It looks nice! For the recessed areas of Asuka's hair, I did not have luck using artist's chalk, so instead I mixed Turner Acryl Goache Permanent Red with Burnt Sienna to create a wash. The effect was nice.

Oh yeah, and I guess I lied when I said that these kits were exclusively done in V-Color Paints. For their suits' hose attachments or whatever they are, I used Mr. Hobby's new line of Sofubi Color paints. I used Metallic Black for those plugs. (I guess that's why they're called "plug suits," duh. I admit: I am not really an Eva fan. I just like the characters!) The interesting thing about these Mr. Hobby Sofubi Paints is that you can thin them with Acrysion Solvent for Airbrush.

For panel lining, it is my understanding that enamel paints must be avoided on vinyl kits. So, I used black Turner Acrylic Goache and thinned it with Mr. Hobby Weathering Paint Goache Solvent. It worked fairly well.

I painted their eyes with Delta Ceramcoat acrylics. Rei has red eyes and Asuka has blue. I used Tamiya Pink for their mouths.

As for construction, I filled the legs that are posed standing with plaster and since Asuka is standing on one leg, I filled the other with paper clay since it is lightweight yet will still hopefully help the leg maintain its shape. I used that same clay for their arms and I used epoxy putty at the joints to use for pinning. Some of the parts separations didn't make sense, so I had to use some putty work to make it happen and sanded it smooth.

Their heads are simple plugs, so no glue necessary. So yeah, I'm not an Evangelion fan, but I love Sadamoto's character designs. I am glad and lucky to have bought this double figure set kit many years ago before sofubi kits have gone up in price again.

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Hasegawa 1:72 Armored Valkyrie from Macross plastic model build photoset September 30th, 2025

Complete! I had actually finished this kit before I finished the old Imai Armored Valkyrie I posted previously. I had begun this kit before beginning the smaller Imai kit, so the paints used for this one are the same paints I used for the other.

Unlike the smaller kit however, for this one I spent a lot more time weathering it. I sprayed different colors through an oven filter to give this more depth and detail.

I have never built Hasegawa's regular Valkyrie Battroid kit, so I have nothing to compare this build to. The leg joints could stand to be a bit stiffer though, I must say. I think I've heard that about Hasegawa's Battroids. Poseability is lacking, but then again the armored parts make this robot a bit clunky.

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Space Channel 5 game flyer (chirashi) for the Sega Dreamcast

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Earthion (Ancient, Megadrive/Steam) Some animated GIFs I made of this fantastic Megadrive shmup, now available digitally on Steam. There are more that I couldn't include here due to file size limitations, but can be seen on my blog here. If you visit there, leave a like (no Wordpress account required). Thanks!

@shmups

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Kaiyodo Secret of Blue Water 1:15 Nadia mini resin garage kit figure build photoset July 21st, 2025

This is a single piece resin figurine by Kaiyodo, said to be 1:15 scale. Since this figure comes in one piece, a lot of masking was involved in painting her. Her skintone is, once again, my custom Nadia color, which is a mixture of Mr. Color 7 Brown, 173 Fluorescent Orange, and 62 Flat White.

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Imai 1:100 Armored Valkyrie VF-1J plastic model build photoset July 21st, 2025

I began building the new 1:72 scale Armored Valkyrie from Hasegawa which was released a few years ago. Since I already had the paints mixed, I decided to also build this old kit I've had for many years. This is the old legacy Imai Armored Valkyrie plamo kit from the '80s, which Bandai never repopped for whatever reason.

Instead of building another Hikaru Armored Valk, I decided to go with Millia's red Valk. This was never shown in the anime and yes I am aware that Nichmo had once made a 1:200 Millia Armored Valk, but I didn't care for the colors they used. I figure that these armor parts would be pretty uniform in color, so the armored parts are the same color as what I had already mixed for the Hasegawa kit, which was a mix of Mr. Color 72 Medium Blue, 331 Gray, and a tiny bit of 67 Purple.

Decals? Well the ones which came with the kit were filthy, old, and pretty much shot. The only one I managed to salvage, with hot water and plenty of coaxing, is the winged torch emblem on the waist. The UN Spacy logo on the wing as seen from the back, as well as the "UN SPACY" lettering on the right leg, came from an aftermarket Macross decal set from China I bought on eBay. I also used some decals from HiQ Parts and Hobby Japan. The interesting thing is, the 72nd scale kit by Hasegawa comes with many extra decals that don't get used for that build. These are smaller decals, which so happens to fit this kit perfectly! Was this intentional or just a coincidence? Either way, thank you, Hasegawa!

The thing with these old Macross kits is that they tend to be a Stiffy Stifferson. There is very little articulation, so their arms and legs remain pretty straight. I implemented ball joints by Wave to achieve better articulation in the head, waist and shoulders. The elbows already swivel, so I left those alone. For the knees, I used Tamiya pla plate to recreate the armor covering you see in the Hasegawa kit so as to cover the big gaping hole. Lastly, the big ham-fists this kit comes with look too silly, so I replaced those with Kotobukiya's M.S.G. Normal Hands 2020, something I learned about from a customized Arii 1:1000 scale Valkyrie kit build article from Hobby Japan Vintage. I used some spare polycaps from previous Gundam builds for the hands to fit into. These are far better-looking and to scale.

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Sega merchandise store at night Nanjing Road, Shanghai

Photo by my friend SuperGenki. Check out his YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@SUPERGENKI