Jump to content

aceoftherebellion

Members
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    472

  • Joined

  • Last visited

 Content Type 

Everything posted by aceoftherebellion

  1. aceoftherebellion
    I thought it was pretty funny in a whistling 'always look on the bright side of life' sort of way, but I've always been a firm proponent of gallows humor anyway. It helps with the coping. It does seem to satirize the situation pretty well, poor taste or not. It's certainly no less respectful to the man's memory than HG's antics have been, at any rate... Still, robotech diehards actually looking at the legal situation without fingers in ears and heads in sand? I never thought I'd see the day.
  2. aceoftherebellion
    I'm still wary after my CF 171 shattered at the main transformation point between the cockpit and the torso/chest area. Maybe it was manufacturing monkeys overtightening the screws and being overzealous with the metal pins, but I know I'm not the only one who's had that particular problem. The shoulder triangles are a minor nuisance that's relatively easy to work around, but to have the main load-bearing transform structure not only fail, but fail catastrophically has put me off on any future 171s until I know nobody else has that problem.
  3. aceoftherebellion
    Yeah, I understand the characters aren't nearly as popular over there as they are here, remember how long the M&M Sturmvogels shelfwarmed? I have a feeling something like this from a video game wouldn't stand a chance, no matter how many of us here wanted them.
  4. aceoftherebellion
    I know this is a generic answer, really it's any material you feel comfortable with, and you'll generally end up using a variety of materials anyway. It all depends on what you want to accomplish. For example, if I'm scratchbuilding a replacement part for an existing kit or figure, I'll generally use plastic plate. That is, sheets of plastic styrene, the same material model kits are made of. What I do there is approximate the shapes I need, usually by drawing up some sort of template, cut them out of the sheet plastic, and glue them into the basic shape, bulding out the rest of the form with putty. If I'm making an entire thing new from scratch, or entirely sculpting over a figure, I'll generally go for a polymer clay- either an oven bake material like super sculpy, or a two-part epoxy putty that has to be mixed to use. If you're more technically inclined, a lot of our artists have taken to plotting things with 3D imaging software and taking it over to the shapeways to produce prototypes that way. No matter what material you use, the biggest thing is going to be patience, and being willing to take the time to fine tune your work. (Which, in my experience, usually involves about a million years of sanding.) Best of luck!
  5. aceoftherebellion
    Alright, I've got a little more work done and I took a couple shots to show what the scale is looking like right now. The torso sculpt is almost finished now! And here's a comparison shot with a handy VF-1, balanced precariously on a wendy's cup, which gives at least an idea on relative size here.
  6. aceoftherebellion
    Isn't that just a Bandai figure in the background anyway? I can swear I've seen it before.
  7. aceoftherebellion
    I'm trying to be smart about sculpting it in smaller parts to make the casting a little bit easier, but yeah, that's definitely something I'm thinking about.
  8. aceoftherebellion
    After an extended visit from the GF's parents, I'm back to work on this suit, which means a small update! Started with the rear missile launchers now.
  9. aceoftherebellion
    I seem to recall an economic report that high-yen value is especially hard on japanese business since it has a negative impact on their supply chain thanks to importing and exporting, so that makes a lot of sense actually.
  10. aceoftherebellion
    If it's not too close to tampograph markings, my method is usually to scrape it off and then use a q-tip with simple rubbing alchohol (I use 90%) to mop up what's left of the adhesive. It's fairly harmless to the plastic, but it will life paint and tampo-markings like that, but it's the best solution I've been able to find.
  11. aceoftherebellion
    Seriously. It's kind of offputting, seeing these inflated pricetags, but I can't claim to know the workings behind things. The hubub with Yamato and the switchover couldn't have possibly helped things, though. I'm with you in wishing I had picked up a few more things when I had the chance (stupid sexy SDF-1 why do I not own you) but urgh.
  12. aceoftherebellion
    Still pretty rough, but here's some work on the torso, with a YF-19 in the background for an unhelpful scale comparison. Don't worry- I'm still refining the details.
  13. aceoftherebellion
    They'e meant to help lock the metal swing bars in place. Really, they seem to do nothing at all, as far as I can tell. I keep fiddling with mine, trying to see what preventative measures I can take to repair/reconstruct/prevent further damage, but it's all uphill. Black NUNs triangle starting to fail, although I've reinforced it with a whole bunch of glue. On the upside, it's survived my transforming it several several times now, all issues aside, so there's that. I hope somebody can fabricate some sort of replacement for these soon, though. They're awfully small parts, but I wonder if they can be recast in resin to be a little stronger... c|:
  14. aceoftherebellion
    I don't want to get ahead of myself, but I've been interning with a guy who does casting, so there's some chance of turning this into a production run if it goes well enough. I've got grand ambitious ideas, but it's a case of "We'll See"
  15. aceoftherebellion
    I've been working more with hand-sculpting lately, and I decided my next project would actually be macross related, which of course means I share it here. I've really only just started, but I'll be sharing WIP shots as I go. Since I love enemy mecha far more than is probably healthy, I decided hell with it and am going for the gold, starting out with the unamed Zentreadi battlesuit from the first episode of Plus. Still a lot of refining to go, and of course this is just the first part, but my plan is for it to eventually be a full scale 1/60-ish piece. Let me know what you guys think!
  16. aceoftherebellion
    From the way mine broke and looking at the issues other people have had, I'd say it's a factory issue. Bad plastic batch and shoddy CQ for this run. It hasn't seemed to effect other toys they've done much, so it might hopefully be an isolated incident. I wouldn't be surprised if somebody got lazy or decided to cut corners, and usually that's the sort of fiasco people get fired over sooo... crossing fingers and knock on wood that the next run doesn't have the same problems? On the bright side, I was able to fix mine so that I can still transform and proudly display it, so at least some of the 'bad ones' are salvageable-
  17. aceoftherebellion
    Got my hands on one of these this weekend. I was thrilled until I went to transform it and it fell apart as the grey block strait in the middle of the whole thing that... essentially holds the whole damn thing together more or less shattered. I was able to glue it back together and re-engineer the joint connecting it to the torso transformation's swing-arms, but wow. I'm reminded of gold plastic syndrome from transformers lore
  18. aceoftherebellion
    Two of them, one in each of the color variants Matchbox did. I still say they go amazingly well with the yamato/bandai/arcadia macross offerings
  19. aceoftherebellion
    Why I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about, ahem...
  20. aceoftherebellion
    Most of them were smaller, just slightly larger than the average matchbox car, but they also had a few larger toys based on the Scale Robo/Machine Robo DX/Big Machine Robo lines, which were about the same size/quality as the medium range transformers. People rip on them, but they're actually quite nice toys. The build quality and materials (diecast, rubber tires, etc) as transformers at least. But before I accidentally derail this thread with too much transformer/gobots, why don't I go ahead and add a shot of my current macross setup just to be fair. I don't think I've shared this image before, but apologies if I have and just forgot... ...and of course I would upload a thumbnail of my own picture... shhh you saw nothing.
  21. aceoftherebellion
    This is just amazing, man. I've done some random manga scanlation work but to do a whole novel, that's on a completely different level. Just reading the first part of it, I can already tell you did an amazing job not only translating but translating into readable text, which is even harder with full-novel translations. You, sir, are a gentleman and a hero, and I salute you as I read this. THANK YOU
  22. aceoftherebellion
    Thanks! I've actually got a couple more on the way, but I'm really happy with what I've been able to find. I also collect from the movie line and the recent stuff from Prime, but I have to say just the material quality alone on the G1 stuff, I'm apt to agree. Large chunks of diecast? Rubber tires? AWESOME. Not one, but two
  23. aceoftherebellion
    So does G1 jetfire count as macross here? I've been focusing more on building up my G1 collection lately, but the old Takatoku standby is definitely one of the centerpieces of this collection. Something about the VF-1, it's classy no matter what you put it with.
  24. aceoftherebellion
    I always glue, sand and paint any model I do 'seriously' anyway, so that's what I expected anyway. Frankly, I tend to find that bandai robots always benefit from glue anyway, even if they're meant to be designed so it's not strictly necessary. I will definitely keep that in mind for the shoulders, too. Especially during final assembly after everything's painted, I'm betting that's gonna be absolutely critical.
  25. aceoftherebellion
    Everything I see about this kit makes me think most of it's flaws are the result of being aimed at people who primarily/exclusively build Bandai's gundam models, which tend to have many of these same issues- especially transforming kits. (Almost every zeta gundam kit I've ever built screams to mind...) That crowd seems to be something of a minority here, so I'm not too surprised to see this kit going over poorly with so many Macross-heads. Personally, I'm still looking forward to getting my hands on one of these to see what I can do with it, but I'm betting it helps a lot to know what you're going in for.
×
×
  • Create New...