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Penguin

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Everything posted by Penguin

  1. Penguin
    Dunno if I'd call a suicide bomber "witty"... especially in the Macross II example where they're driven to it by musically-triggered psychological conditioning. Their commanders have the tactical brains... best the bombers could hope for is "dedicated" (or in the Mac II case, "helplessly manipulated").
  2. Penguin
    Ah, the White Dingos... I loved that game.
  3. Penguin
    I think you've done a terrific job! Everyone's recommending a wash to bring out the panel lines, and it certainly does bring out the detail. Question is, do you want to keep it clean and bright, and just bring out the panel lines, or go for a "weathered" effect? When I did my fan racer, I wanted a clean look with sharp panel lines, so I used a soft-tipped Gundam marker... though any water-based, thin point, soft-tipped marker will do. Since the fan racer is all painted in gloss, excess marker wipes off really easy with a small piece of paper towel. Just run the marker over a line, wipe off the excess straight away, and you're left with a really clean line inside the panel. You can achieve the same sharp effect with liquid washes, of course, but it takes a little more practice. Helps if you have a larger model, since mistakes won't mar the finish so much. Since the fan racer is so small, and this is your first effort, I'd suggest using a marker. If your goal is for a dirtier, weathered look, then a liquid wash is a much better approach, and there are lots of options. Here's the soft-tipped Gundam marker: http://www.hlj.com/product/GNZGM20 Finding something similar at an office or art supply store usually isn't hard.
  4. Penguin
    Adam Warlock, not Strange.
  5. Penguin
    Beyond all doubt. Just reading the title brings me down.
  6. Penguin
    Interesting, individual perspective-wise. When I look at the design, the first thing that I thought was "that's one heavy caboose". My first impression was to accept it at face value and imagine a back end packed full of heavy machinery, with a centre of gravity that justified the position of the thrusters. Must be the engineer in me that makes me think this way. This shot makes it look more like a workhorse than a sportscar. Some shades of a Firefly class in that silhouette.
  7. Penguin
    So we can accept physics-bending faster than light travel, unexplained suspended animation, and mysterious Engineers that created human life, but we insist on realism in the spaceship's aesthetics? Tough crowd. (Nevermind that saying it's unbalanced is unsupported unless you know the ship's weight distribution and centre of gravity. And how does one imply a centre of gravity?) "Humans and aliens get to know each other"
  8. Penguin
    The masking might get in the way of construction of the main body. You want to fill the seams on the joined halves before you paint, otherwise you just end up doing it over again.
  9. Penguin
    Someone must keep buying his books too. Wouldn't matter how on time he was if no one bought anything he did. The guy's got some fans somewhere.
  10. Penguin
    Cool... another member of the white robe crowd. Do you find that brown robes often defer to you or wait for you to take the lead? It's weird... I really feel a drive to help them find all the glyphs and symbols they can. I always get a kick out of some people's reaction when I lead them to the desert flower. You can sorta tell the people who've played Flower. I love Flower. It's the only game where everyone from my friend's 5 year old son to my mother have all loved it. A very different experience from Journey, but also designed around delivering an emotional arc rather than a competitive game experience. It's single player, and its goal is a relaxing experience. For me, it delivers in spades (except for one chapter... bit of a shock there). First time through it felt like I was floating through a Miyazaki watercolour. I absolutely recommend it to any sentient being. I think it's only $10 too. As for flOw, I didn't find that one engaging. 'Nuff said. Lead developer Jenova Chen's graduate project, Cloud, is worth checking out. It's available online as a free download, along with Vincent Diamante's soundtrack for same. I haven't gone that far, but I have sent messages to thank people who really added to the experience. Never done that before, but it just seemed appropriate for the game.
  11. Penguin
    Nope, nothing missed. Everything in the Alien movies takes place in the good ol' Milky Way. Either they misspoke/overstepped in the diagram, or maybe the "Engineers" are from farther afield than we know.
  12. Penguin
    Journey is simply amazing. Both it and thatgamecompany's Flower easily make my top 5 games of all time. I have a hard time thinking of either of them as a "game" per se. They are experiences. They are art. Journey joins Flower and Studio Ghibli films on my list of things that only the utterly soulless can't relate to (or what's left of your soul is tiny, shrivelled, and dying). I'm with you that the $15 investment is easily worth the experience... especially considering how many times I've shelled out $60 for something that I barely played. Journey and Flower are the only games I've ever bothered to or cared about getting all the trophies for (helps that they only have 14 of them each, of course). The multiplayer experience is one of the most engaging things about the game. Connecting to one anonymous person at a time makes it a truly unique experience. And the score... fantastic. I think Vincent Diamante's work for Flower speaks to me a bit more, but in no way does that diminsh Austin Wintory's superb effort. No offense intended to you A7, but I've read so many Journey game/Journey band attempts at cleverness, they just kinda come off as sad. Now if someone put the Sunken City chapter to "Surfin' USA" or "Surfin' Safari"... that would be clever.
  13. Penguin
    If you're looking for a base, have you checked out Bandai's "Action Base" series? If memory serves, the model has a small hole in the bottom for a stand (I think it was for Yamato's discontinued Mighty Block 1 displays), and the Action Base comes with peg-style mounts in a few sizes. Here are some examples. http://www.hlj.com/product/BAN952159 http://www.hlj.com/product/BAN950659
  14. Penguin
    I don't think I'd disparage Michael Bay that way. Whatever we may feel about the content of his movies, Bay is at least a compentent movie maker from a technical perspective. Liefield fails consistently in all aspects, technical and artistic. Maybe he's the Uwe Boll of comics... convinced he's skilled and therefore why should he try to get any better? I'd like to say how he keeps getting work is beyond me, but I've just known too many people with no identifiable taste. I have no doubt there's some group out there that thinks X-Men comics peaked with his initial X-Force run, or that Youngblood was the best thing Image ever published. At least Lee and Silvestri improved in their craft. Their initial Image titles were flimsy splash-page fodder too, but they were competent artists and they worked on their storytelling over time. Liefield has never gotten any better in 20 years. I took one look inside his Hawk and Dove for DC's "New 52", shuddered and then marvelled that they would bother to let him lead another book.
  15. Penguin
    Paint mixing is pretty easy. Materials: A couple empty paint bottles with lids (I don't recommend trays or palettes unless you're mixing a small quantity for a small detail), some plastic pipettes (for controlled adding), a bit of spare plastic to experiment on (the sprue of the model works well), and something to stir with (e.g. toothpicks). Simple Rules: Add dark to light whenever possible (e.g. red to orange). Typically, the lighter colour will tint to the darker with less paint. Lightening a darker paint usually requires a lot more of the lighter paint, plus the addition of white or clear to keep it from becoming a muddy mess (see the next point). Keep some white or clear handy to lighten up the result. Paint mixtures sorta tend towards brown the more you mix together. Clear will thin/dilute the colour, making it generally paler. White will lighten it more dramatically and with less paint, but will also change the qualty of the colour somewhat, and tend it towards pastel shades. Mix flat with flat and gloss with gloss. Mixing them usually results in an inconsistent finish in the paint. Semi-gloss mixes best with gloss, if you have no choice. And that's pretty much it.
  16. Penguin
    Great... I just had to read it all but I couldn't not look at the pictures and now my eyes are bleeding. MY EYES!!! THAT'S NOT GOOD!!!
  17. Penguin
    I don't know how Squadron makes money on that junk. Hobbylink Japan has the Tamiya putty for under $3.00, I've used it for years, and never had any problems with it. http://www.hlj.com/product/TAM87053
  18. Penguin
    If memory serves, I used Tamiya basic grey putty on the underside seam, since it was a bit more pronounced, and a pre-thinned Gunze putty on the top. The pre-thinned putty you just flow into the seam with a brush. The Tamiya putty, I take the wide end of a flat toothpick to scrape some off the end of the putty tube and apply it to the seam as smoothly as possible. Then, once the putty is dry, sand it down with wet sandpaper, starting at about a 300 or so grit, successively down to around 1000. I like to use the sanding sticks from Squadron.com for seam sanding, although they don't list a grit... just coarse to very fine. That being said, there's a trick that often works on well-made kits, if you're careful. While the thinner brush-on glue is recommended for most fine modelling, using good-old orange tube Testors glue to join big sections can save a lot of seam-filling work. You just apply a little more glue that normal, squeeze the parts together nice and firm (not too hard, of course), and don't wipe off the extra glue that squeezes out (although do wipe it off if it flows on to adjacent areas). When it hardens, the excess glue plus the melted plastic from the welding action will pretty efficiently fill most seams. Then you just sand down the hardened glue and you're good to go. This technique is only successful on kits that don't have big seam gaps or misalignment from poor manufacturing. For that, you got no choice but to use putty and gap fillers. But, the Fan Racer falls in the category of well-designed, so this technique should work fine too.
  19. Penguin
    Any figure under 6", I agree cloth just looks bulky and goofy. It just doesn't have enough weight to drape properly. The classic vinyl tended to tear, though (although Gentle Giant's 12" versions are plenty sturdy). Best small figure cape that I own: "Super Powers Collection" Darkseid. Still without a tear after almost 30 years, and drapes beautifully. Then again, he was larger than the rest of the series.
  20. Penguin
    Meh. It's all revisionist hate. "We Built This City" was a huge success on its release. Some critics slammed it as light fluff (i.e. part of pop music since its freakin' invention), while others bemoaned the transformation from psychadelic Jefferson Airplane to popadelic Starship (things change... deal with it). It's fashionable to deride the lighthearted stuff you actually loved when you were younger - unless it's swung around to retro cool or camp, then it's okay. It was and still is a catchy little tune.
  21. Penguin
    It's a pretty simple model, so there's not much too recommend. My only comments are use a good white base coat on the grey plastic, to get the red/orange to stand out, and fill the centreline seam well. It can be pretty pronounced otherwise.
  22. Penguin
    It's based on the semi-final script that became the alternate cut in the Quadrilogy/Anthology releases, which is to say ox rather than dog is impregnated, and it includes the successful capture of the alien until crazy-boy Golic releases it.
  23. Penguin
    I think WM is part of the set design / art department, not a CG developer.
  24. Penguin
    I've read the Aliens novelization, and there's no scene about Burke hiding eggs on the Sulaco. I read the Alien 3 novel too, though I don't remember it as well. I think the implication was that the Queen laid at least 2 eggs on the Sulaco when she stowed away on the dropship (her torn ovipositor, while used to lay eggs, is not the source of them and in theory she could still lay some without it). One facehugger cuts itself trying to get into Newt's tube, causing the acid damage that sparks the fire. That one or a second successfully breaks into Ripley's, implanting her with the queen embryo. The left over one didn't have a chance to try again either due to the ejection of the EEV or recovering from the cut, and got the dog (or ox, if watching the alternate cut) later.
  25. Penguin
    Oh yeah... forgot the YF-29. Sweet. Cavaliers, YF-29, and The Avengers. May-riffic.
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