TMBounty_Hunter

Time for test shots at Shizuoka Hobby Show

At least credit the builder for their work

So BW own the shows, characters, designs, etc, but do they own the songs? Do they partner with Flying Dog to distribute the songs or does Flying Dog own the songs? Is this deal gonna unblock Fukuyama Fire on spotify outside Japan and lead to more Macross being added there?

Honestly that just seems like an exercise in self flagellation

Man, I really wish those resin figures were 1/20 and not 1/24. At least then we'd have an easier time completing the casts together with minimum factory From the same tweet, the re-releases in June we have Isamu's cameo in Frontier and in July VT-1 and VE-1

Photoshop CS4 cuz that's what I had for the longest time and Adobe and kinda shits these days with their practices Hmm I don't know how that came across but I meant the opposite. I've found manual work to be pretty much the only way to fix distortions. Automations seem to just amplify them resulting in more work than starting manually from scratch. Maybe this has to do with resolution. It's very easy to use the printing pattern of the image to align things manually at 600dpi but maybe to machines that's just noise.

You know, stitching scans together manually really isn't that hard or time consuming. I've spent my teen years doing that with a lot of my kit boxes as well as magazines. Newtype being too wide for a standard scanner was infuriating. But after a bit of practice whether it's x4 scans for large box, or x8 scans for a REALLY large box like a PG, it's really not too bad. Now I just have an A3 scanned and life is twice as good. Maybe I'm just prejudiced against automation because every time I've tried it the results needed more fixing than just starting manually from scratch. That plus when working manually I know that the mistakes would be my own and it motives me to avoid them since once you put it on the internet it's there forever and every time someone reposts the image that mistake will scream back at you. Plus you never know how those built up photoshop skills might be useful for other things. Here's 3 samples of large boxes that all needed x4 scans on my old HP scanner that maxed out at 600dpi. About 10-25min of manual work each, filtered and 25% resolution for easy upload. This PG Eva box was x8 scans and maybe an hour of work but most of that was dust and scratch removal because this box was far from new when I got it. Again 600dpi, filtered and 33% res to keep size down. The most important part is getting good raw scans without distortion and with plenty of overlap because regardless if you're going it manually or using a software black box GIGO law is absolute. When scanning Hasegawa boxes too long for a standard scanner I highly recommend a stack of the old format Hobby Japan magazines, they are the absolutely perfect size to put inside the box to flatten it against the scanner glass and minimize distortion from one edge being elevated off the edge of the bed.

HLJ currently has their spring sale going and the Valk, Super Valk and Weapon Set are all 30% off! https://www.hlj.com/1-20-scale-plamax-mf-45-minimum-factory-vf-1-fighter-valkyrie-max01206 https://www.hlj.com/1-20-scale-plamax-mf-37-minimum-factory-vf-1-super-strike-fighter-valkyrie-max01094 https://www.hlj.com/1-20-scale-plamax-mf-38-minimum-factory-vf-1-valkyrie-armament-set-max01097

All we want is for Hasegawa to give us the D :P

Awww heck, I guess this is a reminder for me to get back to working on my attempted YF-24 that's been gathering dust for months

May announcements, we have a 1/48 VF-1 in Low Vis colors http://www.hasegawa-model.co.jp/product/65871/ Lots of re-releases: VF-1S Strike Battroid http://www.hasegawa-model.co.jp/product/14-2/ SDF Attacker Movie Ver http://www.hasegawa-model.co.jp/product/mc06/ Display Stands http://www.hasegawa-model.co.jp/product/12-2/ VF-1 J/A Gerwalk http://www.hasegawa-model.co.jp/product/25/ 1/48 VF-1 S/A Super/Strike Valk http://www.hasegawa-model.co.jp/product/mc03/ VF-1 A/J/S http://www.hasegawa-model.co.jp/product/19-2/

What magazine is that from? EDIT: After some googling it seems that's an old build from the October 2017 issue of Hobby Japan and later compiled into the Macross Modeling VF-31 Siegfried vs Sv-262 Draken III mook.

Completely missed the April announcements back on Feb 5th, but I guess that's because Macross gets just 3 re-pops and nothing new 1/72 VF-1 Super/Strike Valk http://www.hasegawa-model.co.jp/product/17-2/ 1/72 VF-0 Battroid http://www.hasegawa-model.co.jp/product/20-2/ 1/48 VF-1S/A DYRL http://www.hasegawa-model.co.jp/product/65792/

Is there actually a way to watch this event after it happened? Youtube says it's been made private :\

Still no concrete date, no price, have some fresh CG renders

Presumably we'll get some update during Wonderfest Winter 2021, which was supposed to be a physical event on Feb 7th but due to COVID has been changed to an online event.

No new Macross for March and only a single repop, the Eggplane plus Minmay resin figure http://www.hasegawa-model.co.jp/product/65863/

Klan Waterslides seem to be part of a bonus set sold separately that also includes extra face parts? https://hobby.dengeki.com/news/1133110/

seems like just two fishes, a gun and effects parts? http://www.aoshima-bk.co.jp/special/acks/vfg31d-sp/

In my opinion Hasegawa and Bandai have complete polar opposite priorities when it comes to making model kits. The absolute, top priority for Bandai is gimmicks, and this isn't me just trying to use a word that some consider a pejorative when defending Bandai products. That's the actual word Bandai uses (ギミック) in lots of their promotional martials when pointing out features like transformation, pose-ability, multi-color or multi-layer injections, or their proprietary KPS plastic that allows them to eliminate polycaps at the cost of breaking down and cracking from some weathering products, etc. The gimmicks is what will dictate everything from parts breakdown to proportion and design accuracy. That last part really isn't a priority what-so-ever. Bandai has long and storied history of redesigning and reinterpreting subjects simply for the sake of redesigning them. Will adding the transformation or any other gimmick make the kit no longer accurate to the lineart? Bandai don't care. Gimmicks will always take top priority. The next high priority on Bandai's list is ease of construction. Sure this could count as a gimmick but it's worth exploring in detail. Bandai has been the king of snap kits for 30-ish years at this point and the whole time they've been pushing further and further in that direction. Some of the products they have now don't even require tools, the instruction show you can just rip the parts off the runner! Bandai's target audience isn't modelers, it's everyone on the planet. They know that 95% of the kits they sell will only ever be snapped and never see a lick of paint and that's entirely intentional by product design and marketing. They've steadfastly pursued reducing the effort the builder needs to put in to make the subject look like what's on the box. From proper color molding, glueless construction, hiding seamlines and other "quality of life" improvements Bandai has made it so that even if your hands are growing out of your ass you can still snap one of their kits together without a problem. Bandai's last high priority is mold utility. They know they'll be using these molds for 40+ years because they still use molds from 40+ years ago today. Thus the parts layout (and to a certain extent level of detail) is dictated by not just preserving mold life, but also making it easy to lock away certain portions of it to be able to use the mold for variant kits. They've always had "locks" on their molds that can redirect plastic to either not mold certain pieces or mold them in a different color but that has increased exponentially now that they have the P-Bandai store where designs with less "mass market appeal" can be thrown up with maybe adding one or two new molds and locking out some unneeded parts on the base kit's molds. Pretty much the only exception to the above in recent Bandai history is their Star Wars ships. This is the only time Bandai has demonstrated reverence to the source material and the true capability of their molding quality, with detail pretty much a whole order of magnitude sharper than anything present in their Gundam kits. And their Macross kits are sadly far more like their Gundam kits than their Star Wars kits. The only saving grace for their Frontier and Delta kits is those designs had a physically consistent transformation gimmick from the very start so not as much fudging took place. Meanwhile, when you look at Hasegawa they're just trying and make an accurate, sharply detailed model kit faithfully representing the subject. Sure you have to glue and paint and eliminate seams and maybe rescribe some detail but they trust that the people who buy their kits either have or are willing to learn those skills. While they might still be reusing some ancient molds and they may be iffy by today's standards but they sure were fantastic at the time they came out. MechTech mentioned the old Emily kit, and I think it's worth mentioning their new one that they put out in 2017, 50 years after their original kit. My god, the fine detail, both interior and exterior, the 11 crew figures. It's just amazing all around and has resulted in some astonishing builds that make you thing it's either real or at least a gigantic studio-scale hero model for some movie and not just a 1/72 scale kit available to an everyday consumer. And that kind of care and detail and trust in the abilities of the modeler is what Hasegawa puts into their Macross kits. Sure it's more work, but the work is the fun part, right? After that it's off to the shelf to gather dust!

LOL no, I'm nothing close to a data scientist. That's just Google Sheets and time that should have probably been spent actually building the models I have instead of ruminating on all the models that exist.

Yeah, that's what I mean. Basically something that only needs 1bit color depth to print instead of the greyscale needed for sketches.

Aww, I guess the days of clean lineart are gone, unless they choose to output 3D models are projections. Thanks for the info and book review!

One interesting thing that came up during this is that 65786 VF-1A "Rollout 001" is missing from all the usual online store back catalogs. Not Out of Stock or Discontinues, just completely missing. Was it an event exclusive kit? The typical red label that's on limited kits doesn't just say LIMITED EDITION on it but intead Feb.2009 マクロス進宙式記念. So was this an event kit instead of a regular release? Now that I think about it that list is also missing the 65160 Kawamori Expo YF-19 but should event kits really count toward this?

Does clean lineart of designs from Frontier and onward actually exist? Or did they go straight form design sketches to 3DCG models? I've been trying to find some clean drawings of the YF-29 but the cleanest things I found is 3DCG renders of Bandai's 1/100 models.