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I think outside of Kawamori, one of my favourite mechanical design people has to be Ikuto Yamashita. His work on the Yukikaze OVAs is excellent, nails the otherworldly alien insect look of these (in-universe) AI generated fighters while still maintaining ancestral design elements to current day aircraft for that touch of groundedness. Also, he did the EVAs from Evangelion, incredibly iconic in their own right.

Awesome! I was looking for a "simple" answerd but you wrote the entire Wikipedia page! Thanks man!

To an extent, I feel like that's a product of the design's evolution and what was The Style At The Time. I'm going to tell a bit of a story here, but stick with me... there IS a method to my madness I promise. Back in the 1970s when Shoji Kawamori was still a student attending middle and high school in Yokohama, tailless delta wing designs were very popular as a futuristic fighter design in contemporary science fiction. 1974's Space Battleship Yamato made extensive use of them with iconic designs like the Cosmo Zero and Black Tiger throughout the 70s. The Battlestar Galactica pilot that hit Japanese theaters in 1978 had the Colonial Viper. And of course Mobile Suit Gundam had designs like the FF-X7 Core Fighter and a great many background designs like the Flymanta, Flyarrow, and Dopp. That seems to have informed some of his earliest design works in the period that led up to the creation of Super Dimension Fortress Macross after he joined Studio Nue. If you look to the earliest of the designs credited as having evolved into the VF-1 Valkyrie - the "Flight Suit" flying powered suit - the design draws obvious inspiration from the Martin Marietta X-24 "Flying Flatiron". A tailless delta lifting body design that was used to evaluate reentry and unpowered landing approaches that would be used in the space shuttle. (One of the sister designs from the lifting body program, Northrop's M2-F2, appears to have been the inspiration for Miyatake's "Superbird" that evolved into the QF-3000E Ghost.) The design for the Flight Suit later evolved into the larger "Breast Fighter" and began to take on some of the aspects of the VF-1's final design like the cannons mounted on the head, but was still more fantastical and super robot-y. That version replaced the Flight Suit's vertical stabilisers with canted winglets at the wingtip similar to the Core Fighter's, but lacked both a vertical and horizontal stabilizer. That version also gained some outward-canted fins on the lower legs similar to the VF-1's. That design would then be polished a bit further, keeping a lot of the Breast Fighter's transformation but adopting a silhouette based on the F-14. The canted winglets simply moved backwards onto the legs to become the tail to facilitate the adoption of the F-14's VG wing, and then inboard onto the beavertail when the "backpack" became a part of the design. There was already plenty of precedent for "ruddervators" via designs like the Fouga CM.170 Magister and CM.175 Zephyr, so using that as a substitute for a horizontal stabilizer that would otherwise make the transformation messier was probably a desirable solution. The transitional design between the Breast Fighter and the early F-14-based VF-1 drafts looks like it might have become an early version of the F203 Dragon II and MiM-31 Karyovin. Sky Angels (1984) directly acknowledges (from an in-universe perspective) that the reason the VF-1 Valkyrie lacks a horizontal stabilizer is because the engineers who designed it had not been able to find a good way to securely store it when the Valkyrie transformed. It goes on to explain that the aerodynamic issues caused by its removal are compensated for by the large vertical stabilizers, ventral fins, thrust-vectoring nozzles, and wingtip roll-control thrusters. Variable Fighter Master File: VF-0 Phoenix (2012) explains the lack of horizontal stabilizers as a design concession to improve stealth performance. It weaves an interesting narrative around the Grumman Super Tomcat-21 proposal, claiming that both the Grumman Super Tomcat-21 and McDonnell Douglas A-12 Avenger II programs were dummy projects which were used to camouflage appropriations for a top secret US Navy stealth fighter program codenamed "Shadow Cat" that was launched in the wake of the US Air Force's unveiling of the F-117 to other branches of the service and was cancelled in the 1990s before it could get past the mockup stage. The idea was revived in 2001 as part of the restart of the F-14's production for the UN Forces because it shared 75% of its parts with the existing F-14 and a completed Shadow Cat was rolled out as the F-14++ Advanced Tomcat, which would be used as a starting point for developing a practical VF prototype due to its structural similarities to Stonewell Bellcom's E303 design proposal.

I first saw "Star Fleet" on Showtime cable, and was immediately taken by it. Years later I learned Brian May did the theme

Yeah, we have the HBOMax/Hulu/D+ bundle and D+ gets the least amount of attention since the end of the Andor series.

I approached it sort of like I was painting one of my Warhammer 40k joytoy figures. I mainly used some citadel and vallejo paints, For the blue surface areas, I lightly stippled Macragge Blue and Calgar Blue with a large round drybrush. Airbrushed some Tyran Blue shade paint which is a darker blue with random movements to help give a bit of a mottling effect. Used some Eshin Grey on the intakes to dirty them up a bit. Panel lining was done with Tamiya black panel line accent color. A very highly thinned flat black was airbrushed on for some post shading along panel lines and to give more depth to recessed areas. Selectively applied edge highlights were done by dipping a brush into some Fenrisian Grey, brushing some off on a texture palette and running the side of the bristles of the brush along the edges or with the tip of a 0 size brush in places where that method is not viable. The thruster vanes were painted using Vallejo's metal color line using gunmetal grey and steel and edge highlighted with silver. To seal everything in, I airbrushed Vallejo's Satin and Ultra-matte polyurethane varnishes. Doing the satin first and then selectively with the matte in certain areas. Unfortunately I didn't think to take any in-progress pics.

I had a very limited knowledge of it having seen pics or models of the purplish-bluish mecha over the years. Irecognized some insectile qualities in that mecha alone, but prompted by your suggestion, I checked out a review/synopsis on YT. First, I wasn't aware that Tomino san was behind it, or that it was one of the first isekai anime. Beyond that, concerning the mecha design, most definitely insectile. Pretty cool.

They look inspired by the Prequel Trilogy.....I will pass on these for sure... Captain Phasma... Praetorian Guard... Knights of Ren....

Looks amazing!

Mechanical Marie ended. I knew this would happen in the end. I thought it was a decent show.

Care to share any details on how you did this to the YF-21? Looks amazing! Any in-progress behind the scenes shots?

Was definitely a great intro. I loved 70’s and 80’s intros, they were always cool and had great music

I wonder if there is a reason for Kawamori to not include horizontal stabilizers on the VF-1; if there is a pure mechanical or aesthetic reason to not include those into the design.

I always wanted one, but the prices have been ridiculous over the years. Maybe they'll do a reissue someday and I can jump on it!

Just... wow!

@Urashiman Ah, I got confused between that and the box with the VF-!D. @SteveTheFish A more mature Min-Mei, still performing live on Megaroud 01 on the far side of the galaxy! @pengbuzz I can do with some Thunderfighter reissues! I have two currently, one a 'new' kit and the other a prebuilt that could use to be torn down and redone.

Same here; really Liked Gil Gerard. He just seemed to fit the role so well, and the first season was really well done (the second... not so much). I still remember when I first saw the opening: On that note: if they're reissuing the Black Hole models, then they need to reissue the Buck Rogers ones as well!

Hallmark Battlestar Galactica Cylon Raider.

Basically they’ve become extra pretty Taken sequels

Nice work on her, and that lil Buck Roger’s ship is cool. Really down about the lead actor passing away

Yes, as far as I'm aware "Star Fleet" is somewhat more obscure in the US. As it happens, I was browsing a local HMV (yes, we still have those) the other day and much to my surprise they actually had "The Star Fleet Project" CD (Mays cover mini-album of the series music)! I guess it must have been re-issued fairly recently! If you like insectoid designs, and you're not already familiar with it, you may want to check out "Aura Battler Dunbine"... 😄

So I invested a small part of my family fortune for a 3D viewing last night. In terms of CGI craftmanship, the franchise is still cutting edge, and 3D is the proper way to enjoy these films. The art department was also firing on all cylinders fleshing out the new creatures & environments, and the first 20 minutes or so of establishing narration were my favorite part of the movie. The "plot" pretty much spirals down to iterations of "Surrender Jake Sully - we got your wife/daughter/other daughter/adopted son/Jake Sully", still the resulting action sequences were mostly well entertaining. The character interactions got on my nerves pretty quickly, with the notable exception of the queen of the fire people. Oona Chaplin's character pretty much steals the scene in each of her sequences, and she fills the gap of a competent villain that was so obvious in the second movie. The Reco Quaritch, in comparision, is mostly borderline comical this time.

I finally finished that small, 3D-printed Minmay figure my friend gave me a few years ago. The UN Spacy logo is from a set of Macross decals I bought on eBay years back, some of which I'd used on my 1:100 Imai Armored Valk I finished earlier this year. The pattern on her dress is from leftover decals from a Haku Rinpha resin kit from Hasegawa Eggplane Girls series. She is VERY small, so zooming in with my camera like this is exposing the flaws I cannot see with my naked eyes. Her eyes turned out better than I thought they would. The new Minmay resin kit that Hasegawa will release this month is almost the same as this figure.

Excellent work! It looks awesome!