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tekering

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  1. tekering
    I was just happy to see an onscreen vehicle I already have a toy of, rather than an onscreen vehicle I know we'll never see a toy of... 😔 Star Wars: Resistance was nothing but a 40-episode toy commercial for cool Star Wars vehicles that will never see the light of day. 😢
  2. tekering
    That's wonderfully clean paint work, and a real unique piece to be proud of. The squat line-art proportions don't really correspond to the VF-1 Valkyrie body, but you did the best with the available model parts. I love the primary color you chose for the body. What does Tamiya call that color?
  3. tekering
    The fourth episode was a distinct improvement; still a whole lot of inane stupidity on display, but at least it's the bad guys being dumb and not the good guys this time. 😑
  4. tekering
    Thanks for all the kind words, gentlemen. I appreciate the encouragement. 😊 This week, I've focused on the conning tower sensor package and communication relay equipment -- you know, those two iconic circles inset on the starboard side of the bridge, and the antennae on top -- very little of which was represented on the vintage toy. Like, they didn't even try. 🙄 So, I drilled, cut, and filed out most of the area where the detail was missing, and mounted a styrene plate behind it. Wave has a set with multiple sizes of verniers intended for this kind of customizing, and I figured a couple of the tiny ones would suit my needs well enough: They're the right size, but too thick to suggest the massive scale I'm after. I used my dental files to drill out the center of each, giving a greater sense of depth and considerably thinning down the sidewalls. After painting, they started to look as I'd envisioned. I then used parts from Tamiya's "Waterline Series" of 1:700 battleships to kitbash the communications array on top of the conning tower: The large antennae behind the conning tower (which were properly represented on the original toy, until they inevitably broke off) were reproduced using two different gauges of paper clips. With tiny holes drilled into the plastic to securely mount the metal parts, I can be assured these antennae will never break off! That's the basic aesthetic I'm working towards, which is why I've decided to eschew photo-etched parts, hyper-detailing or realistic weathering for this project. I'm trying to maintain the look of a mass-produced toy, rather than a model kit. The most difficult part of this process, for me, is deciding where to draw the line.
  5. tekering
    ...and therein lies the punishment! 😑
  6. tekering
    Your lighting makes her look appropriately red! 😮
  7. tekering
    Given how gappy the waist and knee joints look in your pics, I'd say they need replacing as well... That sounds like an imminently practical solution. 👍 I haven't even received mine yet! You guys are lucky you don't live on the other side of the planet. 😑
  8. tekering
    Tell me if this sounds familiar: The original film series was the sci-fi merchandising giant of the seventies, with both live-action and animated TV series spin-offs. Decades later, a prequel trilogy of films was released. The TV series is set years before the original film (but acts as a sequel to the prequel films), featuring a principle actor from the movies interacting with a host of new characters. The story meanders from one rural village of oppressed farmers to another, as our hero and his allies are hunted by the authorities (represented by one recurring ineffectual bad guy). No, I'm not talking about Star Wars: Obi-Wan Kenobi...
  9. tekering
    This Vader has a much larger head proportionally, as Hayden Christensen (183cm) is much shorter than Dave Prowse (198cm) was. The "Star Wars: Obi-Wan Kenobi Darth Vader" (🙄) figure accurately reflects that difference in physique. Why the hell they thought it was necessary to put Hayden Christensen (183cm) back in the suit, rather than, say, Spencer Wilding (199cm) -- you know, the guy who played Vader in Rogue One -- is indicative of the creative direction of the Obi-Wan Kenobi series as a whole. 😒
  10. tekering
    I used to think of Obi-Wan Kenobi as an intelligent, even wise Jedi. This series depicts him as an idiot. 🤨 Remember the "Jedi mind-trick?" Poor Ben doesn't seem to. 😒
  11. tekering
    After a two-year hiatus, I'm finally back at it! From here on out, I'm going to post weekly updates to this build until it's finally completed. Despite the narrative significance of the Macross bridge, Takatoku made absolutely no attempt to reproduce it on the toy. All we got was a solid red inset in the conning tower, where the bridge should've been visible (had there at least been a clear plastic piece)... So the first thing I did was to hollow out the "head." I've got plenty of dental files for detailed work like this: Nevertheless, it's very difficult to be accurate at this scale. As you can see, the opening is very small -- less than a centimeter, in fact -- and I needed a special macro focus lens just to photograph it properly. Now, scratchbuilding a bridge at this scale would be impossible, of course (and I don't have access to a liquid-resin 3D printer), so kitbashing is the only viable solution here. ILM elevated kitbashing to an art form making Star Wars, creating incredibly detailed studio miniatures by adding little bits and pieces from unrelated model kits, so that will be both my inspiration and (thanks to Bandai) my source of parts: Bandai's insanely small "Vehicle Model" line of Star Wars kits includes a highly-detailed Star Destroyer I can cannibalize parts from, approximating the multi-level "face" of the SDF-1. Once the seam lines in the conning tower are removed and the "head" is painted, I can add a transparent plastic cover.
  12. tekering
    There is a brief flashback in the film that suggests this interpretation, when they're typing a script (!) and Dale offers a line of dialogue using his chipmunk voice... ...but then there's a moment during a heated argument when they slip into high-pitched squeaks, which paradoxically suggests the traditional chipmunk sound is their "real" voices. Either way, it's certainly never addressed in the film. It was never supposed to. This is a meta-film, establishing the original series as a work of fiction. It could be considered a sequel to Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, but it certainly isn't intended as a sequel to Chip 'n' Dale's Rescue Rangers (despite the misleading title). If this bizarre non-sequitur concerns Bobby Driscoll, you're factually incorrect. As accounted in Barbara Berch-Jamison's The Dangerous Years, "a severe case of acne accompanying the onset of puberty" required Driscoll to use heavy makeup for his performances on dozens of TV shows, which is cited as the reason why his contract with Disney wasn't extended an additional two years. Nonetheless, he continued to appear regularly on TV and radio until his drug arrest in 1956, and his conviction for heroin use is what ruined his career. His drug addiction (and a failed marriage) subsequently bankrupted him, and caused the heart failure that killed him.
  13. tekering
    Tony "Iron Man" Stark, but no Steve "Captain America" Rogers? Natasha "Black Widow" Romanoff, but no Clint "Hawkeye" Barton? Sam "Falcon" Wilson, but no Bucky "Winter Soldier" Barnes? Doctor Strange, but no Wanda "Scarlett Witch" Maximoff (or Wong, even)? Gamora, but no Nebula, Drax or Mantis? I get why there's no Hulk, Groot, or Rocket Raccoon, of course, but I'm surprised how many human characters have been omitted... especially considering they bothered to include Loki. 🤨
  14. tekering
    That figure based on the poster illustration is the dumbest Thing I've ever seen. 🙄
  15. tekering
    Well, at least Hunter is in the pipeline: Frankly, though, I think Hasbro should introduce a new sub-line for CGI-style figures, like the long-running Clone Wars line (or even the short-lived Resistance line). They could cover Rebels, Bad Batch, or even outstanding Clone Wars characters, as well as figures from the upcoming Tales of the Jedi series... and not have to super-articulate photo-realistic style figures to justify their inclusion in the (increasingly inappropriately-named) "Vintage Collection" line.
  16. tekering
    And yet, Ahsoka doesn't learn Vader's identity until years later...
  17. tekering
    The biggest of which was, of course, that old Hollywood chestnut: announcing a release date before they even had a script ready to shoot. If the audience doesn't know where the story is headed, you've got their interest; if the cast and crew don't know where the story is headed, you've got a disaster. Reaching your destination without a road map may be problematic, but when you don't even know your destination, you're going to be meandering around doing nothing much of the time... which is precisely why The Motion Picture feels like exactly that. 😒 What shocks me is how little Paramount has learned over the past four decades. Incredibly enough, they've made an even worse blunder going into Abrams' fourth Star Trek film, having already announced a release date (December 22, 2023) before they've even signed the cast, much less completed a script! 🤭 Pine, Quinto et.al. can demand whatever the hell they want now, and will probably be insufferable pricks on set, too... and the idiot studio execs have only themselves to blame. 🙄
  18. tekering
    This strikes me as a latter-day sequel to Revenge of the Sith... with all the storytelling quality that implies. 😒 The actors are doing a better job this time, at least, but this still ranks a lot closer to Book of Boba Fett than The Mandalorian. Watching Obi-Wan chase a little girl around in Blade Runner got old REAL quick. 😑
  19. tekering
    I can't agree with that. The model is beautifully lit, and proportionally very accurate to the original studio miniature. I love how, all these years later, it puts the whole V'Ger flyby sequence into perspective. Perhaps you were just disappointed by the creative decision to reveal the ship in its entirety, but concept art illustrates that was the original intent: It simply wasn't possible to complete the original 60-foot miniature in the limited time they had to finish the film. That I must agree with. 😔 What's worse, you can clearly see stars pass through his face during the shot. 🤨 That's doubtful. I'm sure the WoK release will be the same 35th anniversary "Director's Cut" Fathom released in 2017.
  20. tekering
    That's totally absurd. 🙄 Even by the standards of pulp-fiction space fantasy, this fleet concentration is pants-on-head stupid, as nonsensical as anything from Rise of Skywalker. 🤨
  21. tekering
    That may have been to the film's advantage, particularly concerning the inconsistent quality of effects work... This half-assed shot from The Director's Edition (above) actually looks worse than the 1979 original optical (below): You'll see the original matte painting matched the perspective of the live-action elements much better than the CGI shuttles in the new shot do. Look closely, and you'll also notice the ghostly after-image of extras not properly composited into the new shot: Most of the new shots looks better than this, but some are distractingly bad. Note how the actors have been digitally blurred to help matte them into the CGI background, since they painted out the original set wall behind them... except for that inexplicable beam that remains behind Kirk. 🤨 I assume you guys are taking about diopter shots like this one, where the anamorphic lens was split with two different focal planes: Robert Wise and cinematographer Richard Kline were known for embracing this technique (particularly in The Andromeda Strain), and Quentin Tarantino has employed diopter shots in Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, and more recently The Hateful Eight. While most filmmakers try to hide the lines between focal planes, the Enterprise bridge set in particular made it very difficult to do so... resulting in somewhat distracting shots like this one.
  22. tekering
    Yeah, that's X14, "Leah." She's just a little too large and ungainly to scale well with most of my "Legends" figures -- think MFT size, rather than Magic Square/Iron Factory size -- so I instead display her with other awkwardly-scaled figures that don't necessarily fit with their lines, either:
  23. tekering
    Looks like someone hasn't been keeping up. 😅
  24. tekering
    My Scourge is a repainted MakeToys "Battle Tanker."
  25. tekering
    I absolutely love the pilot compartments in the shells... although it's a shame the turtle pilots are facing backwards. 😑
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