Mr March

Terrible. You might as well just forget about it. It's clear this isn't any good Your work is so amazing that even the smallest updates are exciting news. This latest update continues to build upon your promising start. As always, I eagerly await more.

I took a chance and watched this next trailer. Thank gawd nothing was spoiled. Another excellent trailer that sells all kinds of character and atmospheric goodness. But I'm going to stop watching any more. The first teaser trailer already sold me. I know I'm going to watch this movie in theatres. Shut up and take my money indeed

Wow, I MUST do a custom line art of this scheme! Amazing work. So interesting to see the VF-25S Messiah scheme on a VF-1A (VF-001S?) Valkyrie. Kinda reminds me of the Macross The First VF-1J Valkyrie scheme.

The Valkyries have always been a little "Super Robot", a legacy effect in the transition from Super Robot to Real Robot anime. But I don't know if the YF-29 is all that "Super", it's just more overtly flashy in that high-powered anime kinda of way. Who knows if it's actual firepower is all that great compared to other Valkyries. The show as a story has to distinguish the YF-29 Durandal so the audience knows it's a step above the others and may exaggerate that for dramatic effect. Personally, I shy away from judging "firepower parity" when comparing Valkyries because we know too little about the actual destructive power of each weapon or why they are the chosen loadouts for a given design. It's also the case that Valkyries have changed roles over the in-universe decades when the Macross sequels told different kinds of stories. I don't think the VF-17 Nightmare is necessarily the most heavily armed Valkyrie just because it's gun count is greater than another Valkyrie. The Nightmare is designed a certain way for a specific type of combat role and that's why it's gun count is as such. What that is, we don't really know. Perhaps the gun count is for greater firepower, but maybe not. Perhaps the gun count is for combat versatility or to offset a weakness suffered by the VF-17 design that other Valkyries don't suffer (too heavy? too slow? not as maneuverable?). Think of things this way; the VF-1 Valkyrie was - at the time - considered the standard combat aerospace craft for the UN Spacy. The VF-1 Valkyrie weighed 13.25 tons when empty and it was armed with a 55mm Gun Pod. By the time of the Macross Plus era (2040), a 12.0 ton Valkyrie armed with a 40mm Gun Pod was considered a "heavy" Valkyrie and that craft was called the VF-17 Nightmare. On paper the VF-1 seems to be a heavier, more deadlier armed Valkyrie than the VF-17 Nightmare. But as I said, we don't know enough about why that is and there's every likelihood that the reverse is true despite the few specifications for these VFs that we do know. We also might not have the full picture. Was the VF-11B Thunderbolt under-armed because the designers knew a Super Pack and Armored Pack was being built for them anyway? The VF-17 Nightmare does not seem to have any Armored Pack (trivia states it's armor is equivalent to an Armored Pack) so maybe it needs all it's many guns to compensate for the lack of the extra weapons found in an Armored Type. I think it's better to follow a few simple rules when rationalizing the armaments of the Valkyries given the lack of information we have about them. We don't really know what combat role is chosen for each individual Valkyrie (beyond vague terms like main fighter or special operations or heavy battroid). The Macross stories don't help either, since the shows depict the same Valkyries used in all kinds of operational sorties with no real performance difference described between any of them. So I stick to this The Valkyries - like any technology - will improve over time The role of each Valkyrie will determine the armament The statistics seem to support these assumptions. The Valkyries become lighter and faster as time goes on and feature more advanced technologies and weapons absent in the Valkyries that came before. The loadout of a given Valkyrie will be determined by the role it will take and might not necessarily be more heavily armed than another different loadout for a different Valkyrie. One last note, the gun pod calibers might not necessarily follow a linear progression over time. Bigger isn't always better, so there could be reasons why the gun pods fluctuate in round size over time. Macross trivia has made mention of muzzle velocity many times over the many shows, starting with SDF Macross. The VF-1 Valkyrie's 55mm gun pod may seem more deadly on paper than the VF-11 Thunderbolt's 30mm Gun Pod. However, if the VF-11's 30mm gun is firing a heavier or faster round than the VF-1's 55mm gun, it would be a more devastating weapon.

Not necessarily a problem unique to superhero or Marvel films, but I share your criticism. I prefer me enough to get interested and then I will be. I think modern trailers are not really spoiling movies just for the sake of spoiling them, but to act as a type of primer for the film. So the 16-35 year-old customers can decide if its the type of film story that can hold their attention or if they will need to text through all 2 hours More seriously, I've had a thought for some time about spoiled trailers, thinking that perhaps they represent a shift from misrepresentation to honesty when advertising movies. I mean, for decades we've often complained that so many trailers showed us a movie that wasn't anything like the actual product we paid to see. Now, trailers show us EXACTLY what we will watch when we pay our money. Of course, the movie is already spoiled for us at this point, so why would we pay to see a movie we've already seen? Well, younger audiences have largely seen everything by now, as we have. But they never grew up in an age where there was still surprises in cinema. To most young audiences, movies don't mean new or surprise, they mean familiarity and spectacle. Movies are theme park rides, not interesting stories. So people looking for theme park rides want to know what they are getting, no ambiguity. Anyway, didn't mean to blather off topic. Your post just inspired a thought

The trailer is a bit uneven, but I can't deny that there is a special "something" there. If the tone of the performances and the musical choice set by the trailer is true, this would indicate a Marvel film diverging significantly from what they've done so far. It would certainly explain why they tapped James Gunn to do it, given his comedic sensibilities. Might be worth a watch.

Nice sword

Now we're getting somewhere. Nice detail.

Yeah, that's kinda cool. Reminds me of the first YF-21 prototype.

I was hoping you'd see this

Oh, these are pretty cool. I didn't know a 3-vane thrust vectored engine existed in real life. That's so strange, all these years of looking at aircraft books, photos, air shows and museums and this is the first time I've seen it. Very cool! I don't know if "reference" applies to the VF-4 Lightning III example, since I doubt very much Kawamori would have access to the Eurofighter Typhoon mere months after design had only begun so that he could be inspired to work on the VF-4. Perhaps there are older fighters with recessed missiles? The TIAS Macross Plus book makes mention that the YF-21 and YF-19 were also partly inspired by the YF-22 Raptor and the YF-23 Black Widow II. The YF-19 forward-swept wing was also partly inspired by the Grumman X-29.

Very impressive work. These look like a lot of time and effort. It's incredible that you've done so many. They are also interesting since I've never seen some of these before. Some of these are giving me ideas for custom colored line art

Just watched it. Nice promo. I'm looking forward to Season 3 on Blu-Ray to re-familiarize myself with the story prior to Season 4. Done that with every season so far and it's a great primer to the new episodes.

Hahaha, Princess Alto indeed. That was a great cosplay shot and as always, your artwork is great. Feels very much like an official Macross Frontier drawing. The theme, background and pose are all like the anime. Bravo!

I looked through all my books and unfortunately there are no more drawings for the Catseye. If you need a larger version of the picture from my website let me know and I can post it.

Whoops, wrong line art. Will correct

I've not ever seen FULL orthographic drawings for the ES-11D Catseye Reconnaissance Craft, but there are profile/front schematic drawings of line art from the original series. A flatbed scan of this line art can be found at my website at this link (once you follow the link below, navigate to the "Line Art" section bottom right): http://www.macross2.net/m3/sdfmacross/catseye.htm EDIT: Thought I had some more scans of Catseye line art, but it turns out that was the Star Goose. I'll look later tonight for more stuff, but can't see any scans in my current folder.

Jam!

Definitely will be missed. Like all troubled souls, I don't condone his exit, but I applaud the stay he had. RIP Philip.

That was rather amusing and kinda funny how well the two fit

My gawd, it's full of awesome

You can buy 1/48 Valkyries used off places like Amazon and ebay. Going rates aren't all that terrible, though some of the rare, more limited variants you've described in your post are probably really hard to find and are expensive. But ask around.

I see what you did there

Very nice artwork! A great dramatic pose too.

At the risk of delving too far off into a critique of the series, I'd argue that by far one of the only things that truly impressed me about Macross 7 was the mechanical design. Not all of it, but there is enough there to enjoy. I understand many critics of Macross 7 haven't been able to divorce the mechanical design from the absurdness of the series, but I have and find a lot to admire. The VF-19F/S Excalibur, the VF-17D/S Nightmare, the VF-11C Thunderbolt/Protect Armor, the ships and Macross 7 itself are all solid designs. The Varauta are fun villain mecha that were kinda original as Oni-inspired mecha for the Macross universe. Even the Sound Force garbage and silly Jamming Birds do have some aesthetic value as Macross mechanical designs, albeit they are not much use for anything else. I'd say give them another chance and use your imagination to picture them in stories outside Macross 7, which obviously would have existed in the broader Macross universe. There is much to enjoy. I will agree that Macross 7 as a series was plagued by an awful lot of filler episodes and uninteresting repetition. As the material was written the series would have been better served as a 13-episode OVA. However, I will say that if the show was written differently, it could have been a very epic 49 episode series that properly explored a lot of the Macross mythos in interesting and satisfying ways. The Zentran and Meltran should have been more present and explored, the Varauta/SA/Protodevlin could have been completely reimagined into a far more compelling antagonist, the Protoculture could have been a much larger presence written with a more engaging mystery, etc. The problem wasn't length of the Macross 7 series, just not enough interesting material as it was actually written and released. Now this is an opinion I can endorse. IMO, the emotional stakes in Macross 7 don't even register and the reason for that is the poorly mishandled tone clashing with the subject matter (parody/war). I've said it before, hundreds of ships and Valkyries are lost in Macross 7 but none of those lost lives are written to mean anything. In contrast, a Macross Frontier episode features one ship destroyed by the Vajra and it feels like a crushing loss to both characters and the audience. Genuine emotional engagement. Even name characters that perish like Physica or Kinryu are written so thinly and without any foresight there is nothing for the audience to anchor our empathy. This is a fair criticism. I'd say we're all well served to remember the reason for the heated debates of the old days. Much of the fervent hate for Macross 7 came about because of the love fans have for the original Macross series. In a vacuum, Macross 7 would have few haters because it'd be easy to simply dismiss; no stakes involved. But Macross 7 doesn't exist in a vacuum; it's a sequel to an animated war drama that captured the hearts and minds of a generation. Old school fans were emotionally invested and felt for the original series only to see Macross 7 treat the franchise like a joke. Reminding folks that the first Macross series was originally imagined as parody doesn't help ardent fans who became attached to the more grounded and dramatic SDF Macross that WAS released and adored. I don't agree with the way people hated on Macross 7 to the detriment of those that wanted to discuss it, but I won't dismiss the detractors when I know why they loved the original.