1/72 VF-1J Valkyrie Hikaru type

1/72 VF-1J Valkyrie
Hikaru

This project actually took over a year to finish, not because it was overly difficult, but instead because it kept evolving, I kept losing interest and couldn't find the necessary parts I wanted to use on it. It began as a simple task to add more posability to Bandai's very outdated kit, but ended up much more heavily customized than that. I never intended to give it a perfect transformation, so it still retains the pull-apart-and-reassemble transformation as before. As for the aforementioned added posability, this Valkyrie now has ball joints in the waist, neck, hips, upper thighs, and ankles. However there are quite a few other modifications as well:

Body:
This was the first thing I worked on, the body/jet nose piece. I thinned it down by cutting out some big chunks, and rebuilding it smaller, as well as sanding a few millimeters from the inside of each half. I also gave it a ball joint at the waist, allowing it to rotate and flex front to back and side to side, and ball joints were added to the leg connector pegs. Here you can see it detached from the main body.

Arms:
Not a whole lot done here. A tab-and-slot was added to the forearms to help hold them together. You can also see the holes where the gunpods attach (more later). I thought about adding ball joint shoulders and wrists, but decided they were were unnecesarry.

Legs:
Whew. This is where most of the work came in, and what kept slowing my progress. For starters,the sides of the feet were splayed out, and the lower legs were widened about 1mm. The mid-thighs were completely rebuilt, and given an extending ball joint for much better articulation. A ball joint was added in the feet as well, (in a method I'm quite proud of) the ball is on the inside of the leg, and the socket replaces on of the poly-caps inside the rotation joint of the foot. Allows for MUCH better poses, and thrust vectoring looks. The only thing I'm not happy with on the legs is the skinny rod (seen here ) that is so obvious in Gerwalk mode, however there was just no room for me to add some kind of joint cover. I also gave the leg a tab and slot attachment point to hold it more securely.

Head:
Built up the face with epoxy putty, and gave the neck a ball joint. I think the chin is a bit too big, but I really like it.

Gunpod:
Anyone who's ever built one of these kits knows there is absolutely no way the kit's Gunpod will fit underneath it in fighter mode. My solution: modify a 1/100 scale gunpod it fit instead. See it(and the normal one) here . The 1/72 gunpod is still used in Battroid and Gerwalk mode. Both gunpods attach to the arms by small pegs.

Fuselage:
The fighter mode fuselage/nose section sat too low originally, so I cut new grooves/filled in the old grooves, so it sat at the proper height. Putty was added so it was flush with the chest/fuselage piece.

BTW, this VF-1J was created with parts from a 1A, D, and Millia's J, with some decals coming from the 1/72 Battroid 1J, all Bandai kits.