The Messer-Varauta AZ-130 - does anyone care about this planebut me?

[dialNforNinja]

Firstly, I have that rarest of things, the AZ-130 GERWALK screen shot - shown for all of a second and a half at long idstance in ep37, but there, and I haven't rewatched 39 and P*L*U*S yet to see if there's more.

Second.... Here's the AZ-130 with the head, lower legs, arms, gun, and most of all shoulders de-anime magic'ed to the rough size and shapes they should have with a purely physical transformation.

Compare to the original screen shot... now doesn't mine look a lot less over-the-top goofy?

Could still stand to shorten the shoulder lasers a tad I think, but they're more forgiveable since they don't hurt anything being longer than the official F-mode line art, and run off the screen in the original shot. I couldn't do anything for the chest being magically deepened, but it's not too bad in this shot, and transforms a bit in that direction to expose the big secondary sensor stripe in the chest. I'm not sure what that's supposed to do for it since the earlier FZ models have the same kind of spiritia displays as are shown in its instrument panels, but maybe it's got better range, or just the ability to read powerful sources without burning out like a Dragonball Scouter on Goku.

And... even if it's not the AZ-130, how do you like my new avatar, of THE ULTIMATE WEAPON!? It's an FZ-109A with a rock!

It is in fact Gigile's post-defection stolen 109, and he's deciding whether to bash the VF-19Kai to scrap with that rock or dig it out, while Basara uis still unconcious under the rest of them... so at that moment, it was actually the most threatening weapon in the show. Though his suicide attack in ep38 is a suspiciously lower-animation-budget version of what the Dimension Eater bomb did to Gaulia-4 in Macross Frontier...

Edited September 7, 2012 by dialNforNinja

[Benson13]

The head is what really ruins this one for me. It looks like a squid. Had they had the pointy part split and lay down on either side of its neck it would've looked way better. Oh and purple should NEVER be the primary color of anything that should be military.

[VF5SS]

Oh and purple should NEVER be the primary color of anything that should be military.

but it's used by whoere pilots brainwashed by space vampires

[dialNforNinja]

purple should NEVER be the primary color of anything that should be military.

Try this on for size.

[jenius]

Why is the pope so angry?

[dialNforNinja]

Well, Protodeviln are like devils, possessed the bodies of people from the Macross 5 fleet, and mind controlled a bunch more - they say so right in the dialogue. I imagine that's enough to make the Pope very angry indeed.

WRT previous poster's complaint about the long squid-head - I expect it's full of a heavy duty radar set and other sensors, possibly fuel tankage for the nearby vernier thrusters as well though I'd expect those to be supplied from somewhere more central to avoid changing the balance of the plane as it's depleted. None of these things admit to folding down flat on the sides of the head... you could split it like TF:G1 Cyclonus, maybe, but I don't think it would really improve things much overall and it might get in the way of the shoulder lasers when the head is turned.

Edited September 7, 2012 by dialNforNinja

[paramat]

Haha!

Yeah i care about it, it's a beautiful beast. I love the Varauta mecha. I agree the legs and feet are over-enlarged in battroid mode, which actully contributed to me disliking it when i first saw it, i disliked the head too at first. The teeth around the intakes are a brutal touch.

Edited September 7, 2012 by paramat

[anime52k8]

Oh and purple should NEVER be the primary color of anything that should be military.

Purple is the color of EVIL™

anyways, the AZ-130's cool and all, but the FZ-109F is better:

Edited September 7, 2012 by anime52k8

[dialNforNinja]

The 109's have just as much exaggeration of the arms, lower legs, and shoulders... and the double size gunpod as well. That thing is supposed to fit in a hatch on the side of the lower leg... and why don't any of them ever draw both at once for some double fisted mayhem? At least Giggles the boss among enemy pilots...

I like the 109's a lot, but the earwings on the F are kind of goofy, like big bat ears. I'd want an F with the A head and the cockpit pod refitted for EXGear control - my Skullfokker130 too.

Oh, I forgot - Mr. Mooch, if you like, feel free to use the GERWALK cap, as pathetic as it is, or the de-magic'ed battroid for your MMM site.

[dialNforNinja]

I didn't notice until just now, but judging by the screen shot it looks like the 130 leaves its shoulders facing forard in GERWALK rather than opened out to the sides. It's tiny, but the parts the upper arms connect to in that are clearly long, not wide.

[Mr March]

I find I enjoy the colors of the Varauta mecha more than I like the actual designs. The dark royal-ish colors do allow for some fun shadow and lighting effects when coloring. In defense of the designs, I will say that the Varauta mecha do resemble the oni/demon aesthetic that I think the designers were going for when they envisioned a villain army.

In the next update to the Macross Mecha Manual, complete revisions of all the Varauta mecha will be there. For now, here's some thumbnail love (and the Fz-109F in both styles just for anime52k8)

[dialNforNinja]

Beautiful, Mooch! I do wish you'd provide uncolored versions of your cleaned line art too, because you've certainly got a dab hand at it.

As for the nominal thread topic, having finished 7, and the Encores, FotSWW, and PLUS, there is no other shot of the AZ-130A gerwalk, not even reused stock footage of the same one. Dissappointing, but not a surprise given that I knew it was a raree going in.

[Mommar]

I actually prefer the FZ-109A, personally.

[paramat]

The AZ-130A looks stunning in attacker mode, it would be good to see it as a gerwalk, i was thinking a good project would be to modify this drawing, assuming the underlying structure is similar:

Those battroid drawings above i find the most extreme and ridiculous example of over-enlarged arms and legs, the chest is tiny with huge guns. I agree the proportions would work fine unchanged from fighter/gerwalk modes. These mechs seem to be the most under-appreciated and neglected, it's about time we saw models and toys of the VF-14, AZ-109s, AZ-130A and the beautiful flying wing bomber FBZ-99G. I'm actually very tempted to attept building a transforming LEGO AZ-109.

[dialNforNinja]

Where does the AZ-130 line art, what there is, appear? I was looking through Macross Design Works again in connection with this family of mecha and it's not there. It jumped out at me again, though, that the blue jet ID'd as the Air Cavalry Chronicles FZ-109A is obviously the ME-175 from the facing page... on p153 the 109A is shown in B&W with a plane that actually matches its shape, and very close to the first rough one in the 109's pages. I'm not sure what the plane under the 175's heading is, it doesn't

[dialNforNinja]

match any shown battroid, except maybe with a lot of stretching the lime green one with three horns on p24, though that's closer to the rough at the top left of p134, also like the ACC 109A. There's a small second angle of the 175 there as well as the b&w jet form... the color "175" might just be an intermediate step on the way to the 109 that was animated.

[VF5SS]

A lot of people don't realize this but the AZ-130 was designed by Kazutaka Miyatake and not Kawamori. The line art for it appears in his Design Works book.

[dialNforNinja]

That doesn't actually surprise me, the 130 is gribbly where Kawamori tended to keep things simple and clean, at least until the digital designs of Zero and F. Though, there's a lot of F history to be seen in MDW, from the long nosed Nightmare prototypes to the early VF-19 that's a mix of the 11, 19, and 25 when you look closely at the battroid. Especially if you look at the head, and that one hand-drawn VF-25 picture with his signature on it...

[VF5SS]

Though, there's a lot of F history to be seen in MDW, from the long nosed Nightmare prototypes to the early VF-19 that's a mix of the 11, 19, and 25 when you look closely at the battroid. Especially if you look at the head, and that one hand-drawn VF-25 picture with his signature on it...

http://collectiondx.com/blog/vf5ss/veef_files_origins_vf25

like dis?

[dialNforNinja]

Pretty much like that, though I hadn't considered it in that much detail. It makes me wonder if a Movie-colors Alto VF-25S could be kitbashed into that plane - I can take or leave the hip-wings style but the way YF-24 family battroids just dangle them off the back like the Macross II Metal Siren annoys me every time I see it, it's just awkward and bulky. If they wanted birdman references, they should have kept the SV-51 wings instead of going for VF-1 nostalgia.

Stuck on my PSP I can't do .torrents, could someone post the the 130 relevant pages of the design book, if you have them at good rez?

[Old_Nash]

http://collectiondx....es_origins_vf25

like dis?

This prototype remember the scheme of YF-24 Evolution saw in the Fontrier

[sketchley]

A lot of people don't realize this but the AZ-130 was designed by Kazutaka Miyatake and not Kawamori. The line art for it appears in his Design Works book.

Don't forget that the battroid mode of the Fz-109 was also designed by Kazutaka Miyatake (along with the gun pod, missile launchers & cockpit), and Kawamori Shouji designed the GERWALK and fighter modes.

[dialNforNinja]

Pretty much everything that radically changes size by anime magic, then...

XP

Little mechanical details add visual appeal to the basic shapes, but blowing them up to cram on more gribblies is unnecessary in my lights...

[Mr March]

Line art for the Az-130 does appear in "Kazutaka Miyatake Macross/Orguss Design Works", but the size and quality is not great. The contrast is so dark that many of the fine details within the line art are lost (a major failing of that entire book). Much larger and more superior quality versions of the Az-130 line art appear within "This is Animation Macross 7 Animation Materials". If I recall, these two volumes are the only two major art books that feature the Az-130 (aside from appearances in the Macross Chronicle and smaller, less comprehensive books). I've never seen GERWALK line art for the Az-130. It may exist, but with 20+ books in my collection I've not seen it. It is possible that GERWALK line art for the Az-130 (beyond concept sketches) simply doesn't exist or has never been published. More than once I've collected art from a Macross series only to find no officially published art for a variety of mecha. I've sometimes had to modifiy existing line art to inlcude a variant upon my website that didn't officially exist and/or was never published (the VF-1D Virgin Road Battroid/GERWALK, the front view of the YF-21 FAST Pack Battroid, and others). Maybe we'll see it one day

[dialNforNinja]

I was hoping for prototypes/development versions like the ACC 109s and 175, more than previously unseen gerwalk art. I'll do that myself.

Also, apologies for mixing up your @nick, "Mr. Mooch" is a regular elseforum and it stuck in my head.

[dialNforNinja]

I'll do that myself.

Regardez!

Mr. March, paramat, everyone, enjoy. I did put the shoulders facing outward, unlike what I guessed about the tiny little screen shot, because every other member of the design family, including the VF-14 and FZ-109F which have lasers there and don't have to mess with their airstream to aim them ahead if they kept the shoulders in F position, points them out to the sides. Eh, whatever.

Scanned superdy-huge so you can scale it to fit whatever fell purpose you intend.

[valk1j]

Someone (looking at Mr. March..lol) needs to do a a clean up of the VF-14, maybe an overlay with the FZ-109A. I have only access with paint but here is a quick and dirty of what I mean. I love this variable but it has long been overlooked.

Edited September 20, 2012 by valk1j

[dialNforNinja]

Might shoop it some later - this is almost a raw scan 'cuz time was short - to move the cockpit back by 1/3-1/2 the length of the hatch and diddle the knees some more, but I'm pretty satisfied.

[Flaming Guantlet]

Regardez!

Mr. March, paramat, everyone, enjoy. I did put the shoulders facing outward, unlike what I guessed about the tiny little screen shot, because every other member of the design family, including the VF-14 and FZ-109F which have lasers there and don't have to mess with their airstream to aim them ahead if they kept the shoulders in F position, points them out to the sides. Eh, whatever.

Scanned superdy-huge so you can scale it to fit whatever fell purpose you intend.

Wow that actually looks like real line-art made for AZ-130! Good stuff man. Mabe Mr.March can host this image at his fanart section.

[dialNforNinja]

Well, everything from the pose to the shadow is based on the 109 gerwalk image above, the only thing special about how I did it compared to, say, my Type 26 over in the Fan Works forum was this time I inked and erased the pencils, where that one needed some shoop to be in its current, inkable form. Thanks though, I studied technical drawing for several years so its nice to know it's not just me that thinks I picked up a bit of skill.

[Mommar]

Well I'm sold...

[Mr March]

Not bad. Interesting to see what it looks like.

[charger69]

Regardez!

C'est génial!

Edited September 11, 2012 by charger69

[paramat]

Regardez!

Very cool to see this.

[Zinjo]

I'm more interested in the UN Spacy versions of the fighters before they were adapted...