Mr March

I'm not really tired of the love triangle sub-plot in the Macross productions that I love. I find it entertaining and a welcome addition to a genre so often ruled by ridiculous relationships between characters that would never occur. The SDF Macross love triangle was very entertaining to watch and extremely rewarding. The Macross Plus triangle fit the fatalistic turn you just knew was coming and perfectly fit the characters. I suppose the love triangle may feel overused since it also appears in many of the Macross productions I don't like, but I think that's really incidental. Macross Zero, Macross 7 and Macross II were failures on so many other levels, the love triangle is really low on any list of potential complaints IMO. I agree with DeathHammer and his analysis of the real fault of the weaker Macross productions. Each successive Macross film/series/OVA has moved farther and farther from the real robot genre and it's only hurt the franchise. The never ending obsession with spiritism, mysticism, and other phenomena grows more ridiculous with every outing, in an attempt to out do the spiritual profundity of the last Macross story. If there is any hope that the Macross franchise will regain success, they've got to go back to the basics and return to the genre that the franchise redefined in the first place. There's still a market for the real robot genre, some might say now more than ever. With shows like NGE and similar successors ruling the market, there's a real need to create a production that once again merges elements of real-tech legitimacy with science fiction and base character actions on aspects of the humanities rather than the supernatural.

Wow, this thread has gone...crazy!

Cool, cool. Thanks Skullsixx and kensei. It's good that everything is on the right track. Hopefully more will come soon.

Well, the VF-1A profile as I've done it IS the Mecha Domain format. I have the old Mecha Domain on my hard drive, the whole site. Only difference is the colors. When I do the profiles for the UNSQDB, they'll use better colors and won't be in such a narrow frame format like the MAHQ.

Is "trippy" good? If there's something not right, I'd prefer to fix it now.

Your statement isn't clear. Are you saying you like this format for the VF-1A, you like the current MAHQ format (frames), or you like the old Mecha Domain format (single page, no frames)?

Thanks for the great replies so far. I hope the details are accurate and in order. That's one of the reasons for posting the work. So a lot of fans who might not have the books can enjoy some PROPERLY sized lineart they may not have seen. I'm really glad you like it. It means I'm reaching the target audience Glad you like it. Each VF variant will have it's own webpage (A, D, J, and S) and accompaning lineart specific to that Valkyrie. Also, each variant from DYRL? will have it's own page as well, with lineart of the DYRL-style controls, cockpit, battroid cockpit, and HUDs. Lastly, each enhancement version (Strike, Super, Armored) will have it's own page, with accompaning lineart as well. Macross deseves nothing less If things go really well, I might color some of those rare VFs glimpsed in SDF Macross, like the infamous "Dark Blue" fighters glimpsed early in the series.

Using just Internet Explorer, I’ve created a basic profile based on the MAHQ colors and text schemes. My goal was to include as much of the important data on the mecha of Macross as possible, but trim it down so the entry is more readable and not as lengthy. With much help from briscojr84 and grebo guru , I’ve obtained about 100+ plus high resolution scans from the various Macross fan books like Macross Perfect Memory, the Gold Book, and Shoji Kawamori’s Macross Design Works. I cleaned and categorized the scans then went about coloring the line art myself, along with some rudimentary shading, in Photoshop CS. Here's the link for a new VF-1A profile: http://www.un-spacy-qmtdb.com/ChadsMacrossEmail/vf-1a.htm The text I wrote myself and is a combination of official Macross trivia, official technical details, and some embellishment/extrapolation based on what happens in the anime. Since there are no written profiles for Macross in any of the official books I own (beyond statistics and the odd sentence or two) and information is VERY scarce online, I had to stretch what was available to fill a complete, multi-paragraph essay. Needless to say, it’s as official as I could make it and written to be readable. It’s not perfect, but it avoids most of the common misinformation and sticks to canon as much as possible. Given the alternative (which is to have no profile at all), I hope it's acceptable. I may do more, depending upon whether the people at MAHQ like it or not. I'm going to stick to SDF Macross, DYRL?, Plus, and Zero. I figure there are enough fans here that if someone wants to do MII and M7, you can go ahead. I've got more work than I can handle just doing the other four. So, provide some feedback. If you've got ideas, let me hear em. If you've got complaints, it's best to work out the problems with the profile now. The lack of resources means I may get some colors wrong or some information may be incorrect. Take a look and post whatever.

Not every MW member acts like a know-it-all grebo. Don't let the few bad apples here ruin the bunch.

I think it's okay to do this sort of thing. It's like those silly monster mecha that fans of the various mecha anime do, swapping heads, limbs and other parts from various mecha and putting them together into something new. A sort of lineart "kitbashing" if you will. Gundam fans call it "Frankengundam," an obvious portmanteau of Mary Shelly's famous literary character. IMO, there's such a lack of quality pictures online for the standard mecha of Macross, I'm not really interested in the swapped mecha as much as the canon stuff. And personally, I don't really get much out of seeing these hybrid creations other than some passing amusement. But I like the custom color schemes and I like hi-res pictures

Nice YF-19 with the Gunpod. That's cool to see. Gotta say I'm very happy with the YF-19. To be honest, by the time Macross Plus came around I was really craving a mecha that actually looked more robotic. Don't get me wrong, I love classic mecha like the VF-1 and some of the less flashy Gundams like the Alex from Gundam 0080. But they looked a little too humanoid and blocky. I was more then ready for a mecha design that wasn't a collection of boxes, however asthetically pleasing the old generation of mecha from the "real robot" genre might have been. When the YF-19 and YF-21 came out, they both had just the right mix of humanoid features to be a working biped, but the torso, arms, and joints were all beautifully futrisitc in design. The two mecha were also much more rounded, thinner and matched the much sleeker aerodynamics of the fighter mode. I couldn't get enough of them. Nowadays, these design elements have all been copied and endlessly repeated in numerous animes from Gundam to Neon Genesis Evangelion to Full Metal Panic. But at the time they were revolutionary for the real robot genre and I praise the innovation. One more reason I adored Kawamori's work.

GAWD! It's like N*Sync, Backstreet Boys, and all those other annoying boy bands done anime style. I'm sorry, but how anyone can stand that show is a mystery to me.

LOL Well, Kawamori does the drawings, I just have them scanned and color them

Nice. All good replies so far grebo guru and wldr, The cruiser mode for the SDF-1 (movie version) was the first piece I colored and the leading white edge is an attempt at surface light reflection. While the highlight edge seems to work well on some sections of the ship (like the forward/main guns), it seems to suffer on other sections (midship and the gold tail thrusters). I decided to abandon it for further colored pictures, so the Attack Mode SDF-1 and the VF-1S Battroid don't feature a light edge. I don't think my skills are quite up to par to make successful use of the technique, so I'll probably avoid it on future works. Thanks for the comments everyone. So far, it sounds like the work is generally good enough to do more. More comments are welcome. It's good to discuss any flaws or improvements now, before I go to a dozen more

I bow to your patience and research grebo. You're amazing. I'll make sure to note these numbers for my updated Macross Plus profiles and credit your efforts. Well done!

Are we really looking for an answer here, or just rhetorically complaining? Being a short term Gundam fan that's seen roughly a dozen Gundam shows and films, I'm not clear on the whole UC vs. AC/alternate-universes thing among Gundam fans myself. I suppose part of the animosity has to do with the perceived drop in quality and/or shift in target audience/tastes over the years the Gundam franchise has been running. As an anime connoisseur that watched the three Mobile Suit Gundam movies and the entire 49 episode Gundam Wing series roughly at the same time for the first time, I failed to see much of a difference in quality over the other. I will grant that on a whole, UC Gundam is largely more serious and features much more realistic storytelling than stuff like Gundam Wing, G Gundam, and the like. If you're just into Gundam for the mecha designs, I will grant that Gundam Wing has some good ones, but typically they are much too flashy and overly designed for my own personal tastes. The Heavy Arms from Endless Waltz is by far the best Gundam Wing design IMO. The UC Gundam designs are much more interesting, especially the mecha of 08th MS Team, Gundam 0083, and Gundam 0080. Personally, Gundam 0080 is the only Gundam I think is any good and it's the only Gundam series I own on DVD. The story and characters are easily the strongest of any Gundam I've ever seen, yet sadly the franchise seems to ignore this story and instead prefers to produce more adolescent action plots.

Dead on. Cheers to Mercurial

Thanks to briscojr84 and some additional help from grebo guru, I've obtained hi-res lineart of a ton of Macross mecha and ships. A big thanks to both you guys, you do MW proud. My goal is to clean all the scans, organize them into appropriate categories and submit them to the MAHQ for use. In addition, I'm working on re-written mecha profiles that will hopefully be accepted at the MAHQ. It's also my hope that reformatted sets of these profiles will also appear on briscojr84's updated website, a dedicated Macross mecha site. The plan for his website is to have an anime section for strictly "official" statistics on the Macross mecha and a seperate section for RPG mecha profiles. We all know how important it is to keep them seperate. Lastly, I'm also attempting some coloring and rudimentary shading of the lineart myself, using Photoshop CS. So, here are three examples I've colored and re-sized myself. Please feel free to provide feedback (uh oh). One final note, the black and white scanned lineart will be available to anyone who requests it. Eventually, I want to post all the black and white lineart on briscojr84's website so that it's available to any and all Macross fans. You can then feel free to color it or make wallpapers or do anything with it that you like.

Just an example, no need to go into the details that are not really all that relevant. Human machine wars have been overdone in fiction, but I also wouldn't mind seeing such a conflict written with some more realism involved. For one, the machines rarely, if ever, use biological weapons. This would seem like an obvious method of attack for a non-organic race bent on human extinction. Granted, some fiction does make passing mention to it (Grevious' plague planets in Star Wars, the Animatrix, etc) or finds a way around it (Terminator has the machines using humans to work factories, hence you can't kill em all off if you need em to work). But I've yet to see a story that does biological weapons with abandon. Also, one thing a lot of man-verus-machine fiction doesn't take into account is resources necessary for a robot race. Humans are relatively cheap creatures. At their most basic level, humans require very little to keep them going for long periods of time and maintenance is almost a non-factor. Food is about the only requirement and that's cheap and easy to find. Robots on the other hand, oh sure you can churn them out fast and build them all to suit, but they'd be horribly expensive and most importantly, resource intensive. You could train, feed, and arm a thousand human soldiers on the same amount of resources it would take to design, build, and maintain just a few self-aware, combat-capable robots. And each robot would require more power and maintenance than all the military materiel in an entire human army, then the robots need to power and maintain their war machines on top of that. It would be terribly inefficient. I suppose limitless power sources and resources solves some of these problems (like the Star Wars case), but a lot of fiction doesn't have that. And the Matrix explanation of using humans for power is ridiculous. Humans are energy consumers, not producers (though the writers try to side-step the issue with the "form-of-fusion" quote).

Someone hasn't been reading their sci-fi classics like they should. Created by writer Isaac Asimov: 1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. 2. A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. 3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

It's so much speculation to even suggest where the AI technology of Macross Plus could lead, if it would lead anywhere at all. Like I stated in another thread that touched on this issue, it's likely that in the Macross universe, the fundamental problems of artificial intelligence are never solved. Hence the technology remains and forever will be a unstable, non-functioning technology. It's also a big leap to even suggest that either Sharon Apple or the Ghost X-9 fighter were even self-aware, conscious beings at all. The bio-neural chip was dangerous because it created a self-preservation behaviour that lead to pathelogical paranoia and violent self-defense against any other creature, regardless of intent. This is hardly proof of a truely self-aware consciousness. Sharon Apple beleived she was alive and self aware, but was she really? Marj beleived the bio-neural chip lead to true AI as well, but does it? Considering the mental states of these two, the actual abilities of the bio-neural chip as even creating anything approaching true conscious is seriously in doubt. As for the Ghost X-9 and its abilities, machines can surpass the capability of humans right now; it doesn't mean they're alive. The computer you're using right now to type on this message board exceeds human ability in many areas. Deep Blue defeated Kasparov in 1997, but the thing is as self aware as a stump. Then we can go into real-life AI and do comparisons. It's actually possible right now for sophisticated programs to simulate the various aspects of intelligence so well, it takes repeated familiarity from any human user before they can start to see patterns in the software. As time goes on, this will only improve until it may be days or even longer before a human can tell that the AI is just a simulation. Granted, this is all just a lot of healthy speculation, however cynical. But when I look at Macross Plus with a critical eye, we don't actually get very much information about AI in the Macross universe at all. What there is suggests nothing as profound as a truely self-aware artificial consciousness. Sharon Apple, for all her self-proclaimed notions of individuality, may not have been self aware. But then, these discussions always make me laugh at humans in general. Ultimately, how are human beings to know for certain whether we are truely self-aware or not? What happens if one day we unravel the blueprint of our mind, like we are currently doing with DNA? When we do, we might learn all the answers about how we think...and some of those answers might not be so nice If you were able to realize that you're just a puppet, a biological machine ultimately ruled by a set pattern...would you really want to know? *cues Twilight Zone music*

Sounds like a winner! Something to offend everyone

This is good info. If I liked Macross II, I'd be all over this information for use in a Valkyrie profile

I'm going to try coloring some Macross lineart and naturally, a noticable lack of reference is available online. So I thought I'd ask for help from the MW community of artists. Basically, I'm looking for the most accurate color information I can find for most of the Macross mecha (including vehicles) and space ships. I want to get that cell animated look just right Any reference pictures (besides the ones already posted here in Macross World in the screen capture section of the website) would be most helpful. If you use colors for custom work and you have an RGB code that you've found works just right, let me know. Throw some ideas my way. THanks

The panelling colors may need refinement, but I think the size is perfect. It looks good, only the orientation needs correction. I like it!