Mule

My experience with the AMT 1/48 X-Wing is not at all positive. The model just plain sucks. The detail is shoddy, the pilot didn't have the chest box and his hands were bigger than his head with the helmet on. I also have some issues with the shape of the underside of the fusalage under the cockpit area. The torpedo launchers were more like squared off indentions in the side. If you want a real fixer-uper, this kit is for you, but if you want an accurate model, go with the Fine Molds. If you're really lucky, you can try to get an old SMT X-Wing.

Truly unbelievable. I've always figured that's what Sony wanted to do, but hearing it put so bluntly by one of the executives is kind of a shock. I really don't see this dream turning out as well as this guy thinks. Stuff like this is why I respect Nintendo's phillosophy of "games only."

My wife and I built our own. It's an original design. I made a master hilt out of PVC pipe and styrene sheet. I then made a mold of it and cast it out of an impact resistant, semi-rigid plastic. The blades were made out of some really high impact clear plastic tubing. Put a 1/2in side-light optical fiber up the middle and lit it with high output LEDs. The result was a light up light saber that you could really fight with. Unfortunately, you can really hurt someone with it too. We were pretty happy with how they turned out.

Keeping Shmi and kid on an outlying planet kept Anakin off the Jedi radar. Qui-gon said as much in Ep. I when he said "If he were born in the Republic, he would have been identified early." Also, Darth Plaugus probably didn't plan on gettin' capped in his sleep by Sidious, who might not have known of this little experiment. Who knows what his plans could have been. Again this is all conjecture. Just a 'what-if' idea that could be way off the mark.

So does anyone else think it is possible that Darth Plaugus (sp?) manipulated midichlorians to create Anakin? It was an idea that my wife had, but it sounded plausible to me. Assuming that Darth Plaugus was Darth Sidious's master, the timing could have worked out.

Yes he did initially get suckered, but towards the end, he really started to like the power. I won't go into any more detail since this is a spoiler free thread.

For the most part, the only games I play anymore are Zelda and Metroid titles. I grew up loving those games, and I like how Nintendo has kept things fresh with them. I also like Nintendo's view on the game industry. If I do get a next gen console, the Revolution would be it.

He most likely did do the lightning thing before, but not on a subject as close as Mace was. In the scene, you could see that Sidious was getting hit in the face by lightning that was bouncing off Mace's body. Either that, or he was always an ugly bastard and was just able to hide that fact. I personally believe that he was damaged by the lightning though. As we saw in RotJ, Sidious was not immune to his own attacks. For my own gripe, I just don't buy the deal that Padme simply lost the will to live. My wife thinks that Sidious may have played a subtle role in her death just to make sure Anakin freaked out in the desired way. Not to far fetched considering how powerfull that dude was. Beyond that little gripe, I loved the movie.

Saw it last night (early morning). Here I sit at work tired and bleary-eyed, but really glad I went. I thought Anikin's decent to the dark side was well done. He seemed not all that sure of what he was doing, but did it anyway. The dialog was much better, especially the things Palpatine had to say. I could go on for a long time. Bottom line, this was a good movie.

Agreed. I gained so much more respect for the YF-21 after seeing the movie than I had after seeing the OVA. The fact that you can eject the arms and legs and still have a fully bad-ass fighter is just too cool. I know this happened in the OVA too, but it just wasn't very well illustrated. Infact, I only knew to look for it in the OVA after seeing the movie.

You might want to pick up a Hasegawa YF-19 or VF-19A model. Then you would have a good 3D representation of the plane as well as some really good line art in the instructions. I'm not saying that the thing will fly out of the box, but it is probably some of the best reference material you're going to find.

That's what I thought too. Any idea where the front page image came from? Excellent work Grayson. Can't wait to see how it turns out.

- A VF-4 recast that just started - A BanDai Glaug that is near done and has been for almost a year (jeez has it been that long?) - A VF-1S that I started over 2yrs ago. That model is what got me back into the hobby. - Several Warhammer 40K Space Marines. - LotR Balrog from Games Workshop - Currently working on a lightsaber scratch build. I'm hoping to build several of them and make them strong enough to acutally fight with, but we'll see what happens. I'm hoping to get it done before May 19 (Ep. III release). The real pain here is that I had to move into a smaller apartment. In doing so, I lost my work area. Most of my hobby stuff is in storage, including my spray booth and airbrush. The coffee table and kitchen table are all that I have right now Fortunately, this is a temporary problem.

Astounding... I just don't know what else to say

Really good work for a model that small. Actually, that's really good for a model of any size

I said "I don't know." Truthfully, I would probably get one, just depends on the price and the quality. If it costs $100 and the legs break off out of the box (see VF-11 version 1), I probably won't get one. After all, it was my search for a good YF-19 toy that led me to Macross World about four years ago.

That is up to you. A spray booth is the best way to go, but as long as you aren't messing with laquers or other really dangerous stuff, the open window w/ fan routine should work. Just be mindful of overspray. Check out this thread for suggestions about spray booths if you're interested.

Had to think about that a while (it's early , the gears are moving slowly). At what point is the original kit(s) so bashed that the model crosses over into the realm of scratch build? By looking at the last picture, I'd say he crossed that line IMO. It basically comes down to semantics. Regardless of what we call it, it is still looking really good.

ARGH!!! MW and Starship modeler are the only sites I check religiously every morning. I so hate script kiddies.

Not yet That's the problem.

BTW, I made a B/W paper monster about a year and a half ago. I didn't feel like wasting all the color toner, but I also wanted something a little different. Here's the thread with the pics and some tips: The Link

Which evil round parts are you talking about? If you're talking about the barrels, try rubbing the sheet over the corner of a table to give it some bend. Then, you may want to try using a wooden dowel for support while you glue the barrel closed. Also, don't try glueing all the tabs in the barrels at once. Take it one or two tabs at a time. Does that help, or are you asking about a different part?

Although Millard held a faily high rank, he was still a military man. The best he could do in that situation is subtly suggest he didn't like the policy. He couldn't flat out say to a subordinate that he disagreed with a policy and then tell that person that he should do something about it. It all has to be done subtly and in the end, he had to leave the choice to Isamu and Guld. Good point. If you look at the YF-21 design (especially in battroid mode) the similarity to the Q-Rau are striking.

I used 90lb card stock. Worked fine for the scale I built it. I printed mine as large as it could be on 8.5x11 in paper which came out to about HO scale (1/89ish). Some of the large areas needed to be reenforced by adding a second layer. If you want to make it larger, you might want to use a heavier stock.

Got any pictures of the problem?