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Robotech and REMIX by Titan Comics


Old_Nash

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1 hour ago, blackconvoy_D01 said:

I thought the deviance in the depictions of the valks and characters were in preparation for them to lose their claim to SDF Macross.

It might still happen.  All that garbage news from convention panels this year might be an old man’s last ditch effort to save his job.

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2 hours ago, blackconvoy_D01 said:

I thought the deviance in the depictions of the valks and characters were in preparation for them to lose their claim to SDF Macross.

Nah,  when it comes to comics (which are legally merchandise not derivative works) they don't really have any obstacles to using the original Haruhiko Mikimoto designs.  The reason the art looked so f'ed up in the Titan Comics was Titan was trying to do their gritty reimagining of Robotech.  

If they lost the rights to Super Dimension Fortress Macross then even reworking the character designs wouldn't save them as long as they were visibly based on the Mikimoto designs.

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19 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

I did; he pretty much ruined the G1 comic by trying to "continue" it. I simply dismiss his later "work" and don't bother with it.

Has anyone noticed that Minmei looks like a dude in drag in this version? O.o

Maybe the artist is a dude in drag...and doesn't believe in vive la difference. :(

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31 minutes ago, pengbuzz said:

That's not "gritty"...that's a dude in drag.

So... would it be better to call it "stubbly" instead of "gritty" in recognition of Minmei's five o'clock shadow?

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21 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Nah,  when it comes to comics (which are legally merchandise not derivative works) they don't really have any obstacles to using the original Haruhiko Mikimoto designs.  The reason the art looked so f'ed up in the Titan Comics was Titan was trying to do their gritty reimagining of Robotech.  

If they lost the rights to Super Dimension Fortress Macross then even reworking the character designs wouldn't save them as long as they were visibly based on the Mikimoto designs.

I know the guy who created those VF-14 designs used in the comics.  He used to sell them, but got screwed in this case.  The common license he sold them under allowed them to be used by the comics, but IIRC (it's been a while since he and I discussed it) he's never gotten proper credit for them, but "fans" of the comic have gone after him for selling them.  Hence he has pulled them down.  He has also gotten some hate from Macross and, yes, Robotech Purists who don't like the new design.

Personally, I think his design is fine, for a fan creation, but never should have been misused by the comic "Artists" this way.

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Just now, Knight26 said:

I know the guy who created those VF-14 designs used in the comics.  He used to sell them, but got screwed in this case.  The common license he sold them under allowed them to be used by the comics, but IIRC (it's been a while since he and I discussed it) he's never gotten proper credit for them, [...]

From what I saw him say on Facebook before the various Macross and Robotech groups I'm on kicked and/or banned him, he was claiming that Titan Comics had been using his VF-0-derivative CG model without his knowledge or permission and that Titan Comics only bought a license after he threatened to file a lawsuit for copyright infringement.  Frankly, given how sh*t-awful the comic is, I'd argue he should be grateful to not have his name associated with it.

TL;DR he claimed Titan Comics stole his work... completely unnecessarily since there was nothing stopping Titan Comics from using the original designs if they weren't lazy f*cks who just wanted to trace things.  (They later turned to tracing photos of VF-1 toys.)

 

Just now, Knight26 said:

[...] but "fans" of the comic have gone after him for selling them.  Hence he has pulled them down. 

Goodness... I appreciate quality irony, and it doesn't come much better than that.

He commercialized a thinly disguised ripoff of someone else's work, only for someone with better PR to steal his ripoff and claim it as their own, leading to him being inundated with right-for-the-wrong-reasons accusations that he was selling thinly disguised ripoffs of someone else's work. :rofl:

Simply beautiful.

 

Just now, Knight26 said:

He has also gotten some hate from Macross and, yes, Robotech Purists who don't like the new design.

He did a LOT to earn that hate by making a spectacular arse of himself on various Macross and Robotech Facebook groups... and, of course, reacting extremely poorly to having people point out how questionable it is to commercialize a CG model heavily based on someone else's copyrighted work without permission.

 

Just now, Knight26 said:

Personally, I think his design is fine, for a fan creation, but never should have been misused by the comic "Artists" this way.

Personally, I think his design skirts the edges of copyright infringement given that he was selling it while freely admitting it's heavily derivative of the VF-0.

Also, IMO, it's ugly as sin... but taste is subjective.

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1 hour ago, Seto Kaiba said:

From what I saw him say on Facebook before the various Macross and Robotech groups I'm on kicked and/or banned him, he was claiming that Titan Comics had been using his VF-0-derivative CG model without his knowledge or permission and that Titan Comics only bought a license after he threatened to file a lawsuit for copyright infringement.  Frankly, given how sh*t-awful the comic is, I'd argue he should be grateful to not have his name associated with it.

TL;DR he claimed Titan Comics stole his work... completely unnecessarily since there was nothing stopping Titan Comics from using the original designs if they weren't lazy f*cks who just wanted to trace things.  (They later turned to tracing photos of VF-1 toys.)

 

Goodness... I appreciate quality irony, and it doesn't come much better than that.

He commercialized a thinly disguised ripoff of someone else's work, only for someone with better PR to steal his ripoff and claim it as their own, leading to him being inundated with right-for-the-wrong-reasons accusations that he was selling thinly disguised ripoffs of someone else's work. :rofl:

Simply beautiful.

 

He did a LOT to earn that hate by making a spectacular arse of himself on various Macross and Robotech Facebook groups... and, of course, reacting extremely poorly to having people point out how questionable it is to commercialize a CG model heavily based on someone else's copyrighted work without permission.

 

Personally, I think his design skirts the edges of copyright infringement given that he was selling it while freely admitting it's heavily derivative of the VF-0.

Also, IMO, it's ugly as sin... but taste is subjective.

I get what you are saying.  It is an ugly design, but I get the aesthetic we was going for, a sort of post VF-11 design that was hybridizing a lot Zentraedi tech.  Yes, selling it was wrong, and I sort of told him that, given how closely it is based on the VF-1, but he saw it the same as a lot of other 3D Modellers do, selling his work for others to use and enjoy.  When he sold it to the "Artist" for Titan comics they never revealed it would be used in a commercial work, hence his claims of theft, as it was not intended for that.

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42 minutes ago, Knight26 said:

I get what you are saying.  It is an ugly design, but I get the aesthetic we was going for, a sort of post VF-11 design that was hybridizing a lot Zentraedi tech.

... really, I'm not sure why "hybridized with Zentradi tech" has to mean "ugly".  Practically every VF built after the VF-4 uses Zentradi overtechnology to some extent and I wouldn't call any of them "ugly".  The VF-2SS and VF-22 are halfway to being a Nosjadeul-Ger and Queadluun-Rau respectively and I'd call both of them quite beautiful.

What it looks like is pretty immaterial to the matter though... except for the Robotech fans who were incensed that Titan Comics dared tamper with the sacred cow that is the "Macross Saga" designs, which is to say "most of them".  

 

42 minutes ago, Knight26 said:

Yes, selling it was wrong, and I sort of told him that, given how closely it is based on the VF-1, but he saw it the same as a lot of other 3D Modellers do, selling his work for others to use and enjoy.  When he sold it to the "Artist" for Titan comics they never revealed it would be used in a commercial work, hence his claims of theft, as it was not intended for that.

That's substantially different from the story he was telling all over Facebook before the various Macross and Robotech groups had enough of him and banned him.

He was claiming that Titan Comics somehow obtained his 3D model without his knowledge or consent AND without compensating him for it.  The story he told was that Titan initially denied having appropriated his 3D model and only reluctantly admitted having stolen it and agreed to pay him for it after the threat of a legal action.

If your version is factually correct, then your friend wasn't just operating in dodgy and probably-illegal territory commercializing a derivative work based on copyrighted material that he did not own or have permission to use for commercial purposes, he capped it with a days-long binge of actionable defamation all over Facebook.  Titan could easily sue him over that in any court in the western world and expect to win handily, and Big West could easily sue him for commercializing a ripoff of the VF-0 design as well with every expectation of winning as he credited his "inspiration" right on his website.

Your acquaintance (friend?) is not a smart man, to say the least.

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17 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

... really, I'm not sure why "hybridized with Zentradi tech" has to mean "ugly".  Practically every VF built after the VF-4 uses Zentradi overtechnology to some extent and I wouldn't call any of them "ugly".  The VF-2SS and VF-22 are halfway to being a Nosjadeul-Ger and Queadluun-Rau respectively and I'd call both of them quite beautiful.

What it looks like is pretty immaterial to the matter though... except for the Robotech fans who were incensed that Titan Comics dared tamper with the sacred cow that is the "Macross Saga" designs, which is to say "most of them".  

 

That's substantially different from the story he was telling all over Facebook before the various Macross and Robotech groups had enough of him and banned him.

He was claiming that Titan Comics somehow obtained his 3D model without his knowledge or consent AND without compensating him for it.  The story he told was that Titan initially denied having appropriated his 3D model and only reluctantly admitted having stolen it and agreed to pay him for it after the threat of a legal action.

If your version is factually correct, then your friend wasn't just operating in dodgy and probably-illegal territory commercializing a derivative work based on copyrighted material that he did not own or have permission to use for commercial purposes, he capped it with a days-long binge of actionable defamation all over Facebook.  Titan could easily sue him over that in any court in the western world and expect to win handily, and Big West could easily sue him for commercializing a ripoff of the VF-0 design as well with every expectation of winning as he credited his "inspiration" right on his website.

Your acquaintance (friend?) is not a smart man, to say the least.

Acquaintance, mostly through various 3D modeling groups.  

I've not seen what he's been telling people, but yes, the story he told me (short form) was that an artist bought it for what he assumed was a personal project that turned out to be the Titan Comics.  I can look and see if I have the PMs where we discussed it.

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1 minute ago, Knight26 said:

I can look and see if I have the PMs where we discussed it.

Eh... it's not like it's a going concern anymore.

Titan Comics stopped using his 3D model for their comic in response to the backlash against the design's aesthetic and the unnecessary replacement of the classic Kawamori VF-1 design and opted to trace from photographs of VF-1 Valkyrie toys instead.

Why Titan bothered to change the designs in the first place is unclear, since there was literally no reason to do so.  It didn't work out so good for them, in the end.

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I found the PM thread from back in 2017 when the comic first launched.  He has an "interesting" view on the marketing of  derivative work based on copyrighted material.  He is Canadian and just says that the US does it wrong, oh well.

AS for them no longer using his design, I thought the last few issues still did in the interior artwork.

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1 minute ago, Knight26 said:

He has an "interesting" view on the marketing of  derivative work based on copyrighted material.  He is Canadian and just says that the US does it wrong, oh well.

Canada's laws regarding copyright and derivative works are basically the same as the US's... because they're both based on the 1886 Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, which more or less set the standard for 177 countries on that score.

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Ask and ye shall receive.  It is uglier then I remember and quite sloppy too with some seriously exaggerated proportions.

 

See the source image

Edited by Knight26
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1 hour ago, Knight26 said:

Ask and ye shall receive.  It is uglier then I remember and quite sloppy too with some seriously exaggerated proportions.

KILL IT WITH FIRE!

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it looks like it fell out of a pre-rendered cutscene from a late 90's video game.

2 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

KILL IT WITH FIRE!

It could always be worse:

Full138263_c4bc836ea5962219796798ad07d4c

Edited by anime52k8
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4 hours ago, Knight26 said:

 

 

See the source image

 

3 hours ago, Bolt said:

 

15389E9C-E9D1-45B2-B725-1F33AEBB34DE.thumb.png.f8df7e5d02f3e6c9d76e89c37d3cc9f7.png

Looks like a flying billboard for prophylactics....

1 hour ago, anime52k8 said:

it looks like it fell out of a pre-rendered cutscene from a late 90's video game.

It could always be worse:

Full138263_c4bc836ea5962219796798ad07d4c

Looks like it needs said prophylactics...

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5 hours ago, Knight26 said:

Ask and ye shall receive.  It is uglier then I remember and quite sloppy too with some seriously exaggerated proportions.

I mean, it is passable. 

1 hour ago, anime52k8 said:

it looks like it fell out of a pre-rendered cutscene from a late 90's video game.

It could always be worse:

It’s like someone decided to make SD work in a non-deformed setting. 

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1 hour ago, azrael said:

I mean, it is passable. 

Well, in the sense that a D- is a passing grade...

Edited by Seto Kaiba
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Eh... It looks like a fairly standard Gundam "detail-up" conversion kit. Lots of nonsense details thrown all over the place without a thought given to function, or even the semblance of function. I wouldn't say it's bad, per se, just kind of... messy.

That huge glass cockpit, though. If that isn't a big ol' "Kick Me" sign, I don't know what is. Those extra long exhaust nozzles/feet, too...

But I mean, it's a game effort.

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If you google Robotech VGF-14 you'll find more renders of the design. I kinda see what he was going for there, trying to come up with something derivative of the VF-1 but noticeably different, but I think the problem is that he tried to make a VF-1 that didn't look like a VF-1, or an F-14 that didn't look like an F-14.

IMO if someone wanted to come up with designs that would avoid any Macross legals, they could have just given up the F-14 base design entirely and used some other contemporary fighter plane. The F-15 might be a little too close to Starscream (or the VF-1 for that matter) to work, but the F-16 and F-18 could have been used as an inspiration instead. The F-16XL would almost work as the first in a line of VFs that eventually included the Alpha fighter, even.

Or, since they'd already changed most of the character names, why not just retcon everything to look like it was pulled from a Mospeada design, since that seems to have less strings attached? The story has already changed so much they could just replace "Zentaedi" with... idunno, "Gorbsplats" or whatever, and you'd be really hard pressed to see any Macross left in there.

Idunno, I guess it's all irrelevant. The comic isn't even mediocre, someone at Titan is really just phoning it in. Or maybe they all are? I don't think I've seen anything else they've published. I checked this out because morbid curiosity, thinking it would at least be fun, but instead it's... well, it's not.

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1 hour ago, jeniusornome said:

Or, since they'd already changed most of the character names, why not just retcon everything to look like it was pulled from a Mospeada design, since that seems to have less strings attached? The story has already changed so much they could just replace "Zentaedi" with... idunno, "Gorbsplats" or whatever, and you'd be really hard pressed to see any Macross left in there. 

That is what I'd do. Even if keeping the zentradi, I'd make my "veritech" look more like an ancestor of the Alpha than a descendant of the Tomcat.

...

I'm wondering if that one with the, ummm, bulging cockpit might have been trying to do that from the wrong direction. The front end bears a passing resemblance to the Logan from Southern Cross/Masters Saga.

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8 minutes ago, JB0 said:

I'm wondering if that one with the, ummm, bulging cockpit might have been trying to do that from the wrong direction. The front end bears a passing resemblance to the Loga

Haha. Good point. 

 

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