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tekering

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  1. tekering
    It probably sounds hypocritical, coming from me, but models aren't supposed to be played with. I treat Gunpla like toys, to be honest, and my Japanese colleagues criticize me for it; anything from the passive "You pose your Mobile Suits like Transformers" to the overt "That's not a toy, Ted!" As action figure collectors, we know that the most well-articulated figures are also the most fragile... and that goes tenfold for models, and a hundredfold for garage kits. It's fun to mess with resin kits in their bare plastic state, seeing how much playability we can squeeze out of them, but things change a great deal once the parts are properly painted. After weeks of work, I'm starting to get an impression of what the final results will look like: ...and at this stage, I'm terrified to change the poses. 😬 The Invid kits weren't so bad, but these 'Lloyds are all overlapping surfaces constantly interacting with each other, and there are few points where moving a limb won't result in parts rubbing together. I'm actually not likely to use much of the articulation I've engineered for these kits, now that I've put so much work into the surface textures. It's just not worth the risk! 😳
  2. tekering
    It means "Please wait for us to make a decision about this product, because we haven't decided whether to include the figure."
  3. tekering
    It's an awesome kit, one of my favorites; impeccably molded, and relatively easy to put together. I can't recommend it highly enough.
  4. tekering
    In North America, maybe... but it'll make a killing overseas. The Japanese box-office returns alone should guarantee a profit; animal pictures are huge here in Japan. Remember this film from 1986? It made TEN TIMES more money in Japan than it did in the States.
  5. tekering
    I think you may have confused "Optimus Prime" with "Optimus Primal." 😅
  6. tekering
    I love the production design in this series. The abandoned Kaminoan cloning facility was a fascinating setting.
  7. tekering
    As did I. Even more fun-fact: Roger Ebert tried to insert Halloween 3 into the main franchise with his film review, having mistaken an android corpse for Michael Myers' remains. 😅
  8. tekering
    $700 CDN? What a score!
  9. tekering
    Wrong continuity, pal. 😅 This Laurie Strode was never any relation to Michael Myers.
  10. tekering
    That'll be super-easy. Barely an inconvenience. Revoltech has got you covered, dude. Have you figured out how to articulate the head? 👀
  11. tekering
    The whole payment process is a real pain. A percentage of my monthly salary should just be sent to you automatically. That's the easiest part. Cap' produces parts with such exacting tolerances that sometimes you don't even need glue. It's fun, too, 'cause you can mix-and-match parts and mess around with poses without fear of damaging the paint. For me, though, the most enjoyable part of the process is adding custom markings, using waterslide decals and dry transfers. By adding a level of detail not possible in TV animation, the model starts to look more a like a box art illustration than a cartoon robot, and creates a much more profound sense of scale: To maintain the alien Zor aesthetic, I'm deliberately avoiding anything that looks like an alphabet, since all visual evidence from the anime suggests the Zor rely on pictographs, rather than written language. I want to match the techno-organic design sensibility, and use shapes that complement the existing geometry. My Japanese Gunpla masters have taught me how important it is to add your own distinctive touches to the piece, so that you're not merely reproducing someone else's design work. Expressing your own creative impulses through the model is how you win contests, and get your work featured in modeling magazines.
  12. tekering
    Why not indeed? They could get it scripted, cast, and prepped by the end of the year, shot and edited next year, and then... ...delay its release until 2026.
  13. tekering
    To be clear, you're describing a TOY, not a resin kit. Even mass-produced injection-molded model kits designed to be transformable rarely function as well as intended. With a garage kit, the most you can hope for is a design that allows you to choose what mode you want to build your kit to represent. Most paints don't adhere to resin any better than they adhere to die-cast metal, and (as most of us know) transformable toys with die-cast parts are notorious for paint chipping... so just imagine a transformer that was entirely made of die-cast, and you can imagine how problematic a transformable resin kit would be. In fact, when it comes to hand-drawn designs like the Spartas, I don't even think it would be worth the effort to design a transformable model. I expect it would be easier to produce a kit for each mode, with proportions and articulation appropriate for each design, and the resulting models would be simpler to build and paint as well... and undoubtedly would look more accurate than a transformable model that made the unavoidable design concessions required to realize a triple-changer. I imagine our erstwhile Captain could design a Spartas kit that shared a lot of basic parts between all three modes, but would have a lot of specific parts for each mode as well... and a 3-in-1 kit that didn't actually transform would likely be able to match the line art much better than all the boxy 3D-rendered attempts we've seen generated over the past few years.
  14. tekering
    Any of those are possible... provided a generous benefactor gets the ball rolling. I'd say the "girl trio" is the least-interesting part of the anime... I really like the concept of human colonists on a remote world, having to defend themselves against a superior alien* species trying to reclaim their homeworld. It was certainly unique for the time, and I genuinely love the episodes set aboard the Zor motherships, where our heroes explore their surroundings and learn about Zor technology, society, and culture. The production designs are interesting, and the mecha combat is very dynamic... at least, within the confines of the "real robot" genre. * Had the series not been rushed to its apocalyptic conclusion, we would've learned that the so-called aliens were merely time-displaced human colonists, thousands of years removed from their human brethren... another fascinating subversion of the genre that unfortunately never got the chance to play out in the narrative.
  15. tekering
    Mospeada fans be like: @Podtastic be like:
  16. tekering
    Wow, I guess Lloyd's proven more popular than expected...! We're gonna need it... They only ever appeared in groups of three, after all.
  17. tekering
    To be fair, that "weird pedo thing" had already been established with Lalah Sune in the original series...
  18. tekering
    The ship is called the Brünhild, and it's just over a kilometer in length... meaning a 1:8000 scale kit will be a stupidly small 125mm (less than five inches long).
  19. tekering
    Just out of curiosity, do you use the same argument to defend the gawdawful Jupiter Ascending?
  20. tekering
    You guys just can't wait for me to paint these Bioroids, can you? Actually, "Satan Claws" frequently turned his head... Even a full 90 degrees, a couple of times. Dude, you've satisfied a craving I've had for 35 years! It's a joy to be building Bioroids. That said, there are a few little things that bug me about the kit... As you can see, I've decided to remove the ball-joints from the toes, and sand them down thin like the anime (and the model sheets) depict them: Also, thanks to your feedback, I've tweaked the blue mix just a little.
  21. tekering
    Based on all available evidence, I'd say the answer is a resounding "no..." ...but hey, stranger things have happened. Nickelodeon's 2012 reinterpretation of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles mythos turned out to be better than any previous cartoon, comic book, or film version, and remained fairly consistent in quality for five whole years! Still, my expectations for Star Trek: Prodigy remain almost as low as they are for Picard's second season.
  22. tekering
    Only very slightly, if that... Too many greeblies in the way. Oh, that's weeks away. I'm still testing colors at this stage.
  23. tekering
    At 25 minutes apiece, I prefer the TV episodes to the two-and-half hour slog each of the films represents... and it's the same dated animation either way. One significant advantage is the 20th anniversary audio track, however. The cast re-recorded all the dialogue for the films, and a lot of the cheesy '70s music cues and sound effects were also changed.
  24. tekering
    I'm just amazed by the mobility you were able to coax from this design, Cap'... I'm having great fun just engineering poses.
  25. tekering
    https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/press-release/2007-10-15/organic-hobby-usa-ghost-in-the-shell-s.a.c-tachikoma-collection-set-2.5-pvc-figure
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