dialNforNinja

Thanks! Though like I always say, no one is born knowing how to draw, or write, or sing - it's only a question of whether you keep sucking long enough to succeed. Doodle all the time, and notice the shapes and perspective of the things around you, keep at least one thing from every few days so you can look at your old crap and see how much crappier it was than what you do a month or a year later, so the gradual increase in skill is enough to see the result. The tough one is looking at people and seeing

and seeing their skeleton, especially on members of the opposite sex where you'd rather stop the "x-rays" a few layers further out

The VF-1 really was a chunky monkey compared to most RL fighter jets, wunnit? But then so was the F-14 that inspired it I suppose, and part of the reason is that it's quite short in comparison - it has that beefy look to it like a sawed of shotgun. Automatic extra cool points for a fully variable model with no part swapping.

For the colored version, the first, bigger diamond on either side of the nose should probably be red senor eyes, but both screen caps I made have them all black.

I do plan to draw the gunpod and (since they're in the text) missle bays, but the missiles will be on the inside opposite the guns, and landing gear like the M+ image and every other variable fighter on the front of the legs.

No, the racks shown would make the legs 1/3 arm space, 2/3 missiles, and use fairy dust for propulsion. Unless the engines are supposed to be as slim as a gunpod and sit on the inside face of the leg... basically, those missiles end up in the same bin as the VF-11 internal bays... which is actually appropriate I suppose. I've long felt that landing gear is not strictly neccessary on a transforming biped, but then how could you have those cool aircraft carrier style launches?

Battroid rear view with corrected wings:

and, until Mr. March does his magic for all of us...

Will try to go past Staples tomorrow for more pens so I can finish the armor and turret drone.

Edit because I erased a line I meant to keep on the line art

don't tink inde ze box here! Look at the VF-9,the YF-21, even this design with its radically different transformation from previous varible devices, they're just the kind of wild and crazy guys who'd try this. Even the VF-27 has some novel twists on its YF-24 base airframe.

family of designs except the M3 version that doesn't count for this project.

RE VF-11 heavy armor, it's a pretty close lift of that, actually, except for the hip parts that would jam the wings, and the shoulder lasers moved to the forearms. Big thrusters go on the backs of the legs, and a shield and cannon on the arms, so it can drop the turret drone from G to go B and be on parity with the VF-11FA except it trades six grenades for a cannon. As for being an armored gerwalk, this is General Galaxy, und ve

RE leg lauchers, look at them and compare to the size of the intake. Now look at a view that shows the whole leg, and rember that the back 1/3 of the legs is hollow for the arms to transform into. Those missile racks can not exist. And yeah, though never shown firing and I assume them to have a sliding, flush cover for aerodynamics, it's a safe bet the shoulder hexagons are missile tubes. The ones on the central body are the hinges, however. I don't know why, but they're dead black in all the VF-14

One of the game adaptations had that in its write up of the design's service history, possibly the steelfalcon one since those were the only ones I studied extensively. (By the time I discovered others I'd become entirely disenchanted with the Palladium sytem in favor of Mekton or even BESM.)

As for flying in atmo while armored... um, don't. This ain't the Tornado pack, with the leg boosters (not shwn here) there's plenty of thrust to operate G in gravity at the low speeds it allows, but high speed F, no.

No sliding, they're on hinges. That's why the slot in the box launchers has extra room at the back, after the arms fold down they pivot opposite the shoulders' motion to move into place, and engage clamps on the inside to lock firmly into place. You can see the hinge in B&G mode. And, um, you have to take the arms off your VF-4 to use those boosters...

Nah, nib pens are a pain in the patoot, and I hate the kind you dip almost as much charcoal, which is right at the top the list. I don't even like technical pens, and get results about as good from the thin-ink kind of disposable ballpoint for a tenth the price... If I'm really being fancy or waterproofing matters for some reason I break out the Ultra Fine Point permanent markers, but the $2 disposables give a nice even line weight as long as you have a steady hand and put a couple of scrap sheets under it

Along with takung up the full non-arm-cutout depth of the leg, a further problem with the FZ-109F leg missle racks is that that's the best place to put the landing gear. You could have it spider legs long from the center/back piece on either side of where the cockpit sits in B, but one of the 14's key points is that it's durable and easy to maintain, which long fragile landing gear is not. Maybe gear there, guns on the outside, and missiles on the inside? They could launch forward (down in F) like the VF19

top/back units larger than the reverse. As for the shoulder tubes, the box launchers have those cutouts to keep from blocking them. The hip parts keep the added thruters from fouling the engines and are limited to a long narrow shape by the available space.

All of this discussion is exactly what I wanted with posting the roughs, though.

Multipost due to the psp browser's input field being text message sized

The radome I was already waffling on and shortening the chest parts by a row of missiles will let the lasers at least get horizontal, sliding it further forward onto the belly in F frees them further but causes issues with the legs in G- my original VFs have such tight armor designs because they're made with them from the start like the VF-25, not later additions like this. I'm more inclined to put a solid canopy over the entire cockpit, use a B/Varauta/VF-27 style fully virtual environment, and make those

I did say as how the armor was rather rough, the result of figuring out what it looks like while drawing it rather than concentrating on getting it smooth - also, my .8mm pen ran out of ink, my .5 is at that stage where the lines get thin and light before running out, so I have to buy more before continuing. If anyone's curious, they're a Pilot P-500 Extra Fine and Uni-ball Vision Elite, nothing fancy but cheap and effective for getting two line weights, a wrinkle I'd forgotten on the FZ-109 Kai. Oops.

No, dammit, there are NO missile racks in the legs, at least not the way the FZ-109F shows them. There are ENGINES in the legs taking up that space. As for super parts, I like designing them, and have five views roughed out, so while (as I knew all along) they're entirely non-canon, and as rough as the original B-Club sketches for that matter, you get super parts: the VF-14 Half-Armored.

Yes, that last one is a completely new view, crappy as it is.

Why only half? Because it ejected (or didn't install) the ones that block transformation, namely a heavy ballistic shield (left arm) and plasma/particle/film scratch projector (right arm), large thrusters and auxiliary fuel tanks (legs), and a dual rail cannon turret (dorsal) from the gerwalk mode. The turret has stubby legs ending in wheels of its own allowing it to move around on the ground like an Octos using a drone brain or under remote control, or with a few minutes can have the other parts attached and become a somewhat pokey and piggish but serviceable drone flier for zero G. Due to the expense of the turret in particular, if possible reattaching it later or at least programming it to attempt to return under its own power is always recommended procedure.

Back to questions of gunpods (and I do appreciate your weighing in on canon, Sketchley, it's important to know exactly what is and is not so it can be properly tagged) there's absolutely no way the gunpods the VF-14 is actually shown holding will fit in the legs, not even if it was a beam pod that splits into two pistols lengthwise like some AZ-130s have. I already know there's no more art to be had, so the question becomes, should the leg gunpods be straight imports of the Varauta one (really the other way around IC) degribbled a bit to look more UNS than those, or what?

Don't dis the Macross II gunpods, they actually look pretty good. They're too long and not the right style for this project, though.

Another general question to solicit opinions on - should the VF-14 have carbine style gunpods in its side leg bays like its Varauta descendants, or missile racks? The two B rear sketches and the animated scene they were probably from the storyboard for have a gunpod too large to fit any such bay, but the fighters are shown launching without any external stores despite their only known weapons being the aft lasers and shoulder racks that can't possibly hold more than two or three per tube.

I've pondered that as well, but nothing serious - it transforms similarly but even more simply than the VA-3 Invader, which was also thought to be a 2-modes-only design at first, so it's at least not impossible.

Hey March, what do you say to a full armor/variable half-armored version? (or anyone else, but he's the one with a web site) It would be based on the VF-1 Armored Gerwalk from the same page of MDW with the VF-4SD, with bits of VF-0, -11, and -25 Armored thrown in. Because of course in those trouser legs of time where the VF-14 beat the VF-11 into general procurement, they'd need a maximum firepower variant as well...

Also, I have decided to keep the wing transformation the way it is on the front view battroid, making the rear view the one that was wrong, allowing the wings to be put in that configuration to free the arm mobility up in gerwalk. This has absolutely nothing at all to do with my thoughts of a full-armor gerwalk, of course

... I just realised that I've got the wings upside down on the front Battroid view. Grrr. Fix later.

Here it is, the moment you've all been holding your breath for! Redrawn verisons of the original F and B mode art, an F with added dorsal fin to match the one shown in Macross Plus Movie Edition, and an all-new, top 3/4 view Gerwalk. Let's have a big cheer for my new favorite variable fighter!

Mr. March, take it away! (Please do include the uncolored line art as well, though, when you put it up)

Edit: same problem with the Dusky Shark as I had before. D'oh.

I just figured out where those armpit thrusters that would block transformation of the arms in the location shown in B/G could come from - mount them on a hinge at the bottom of the little semicircular piece between the torso and the big shoulder pads, and they could rotate 180 degrees to lie flush with the underside of fighter mode. Give them a swing arm or second axis of rotation and they could be in operating position to help F maneuverability or STOL performance.

I take it all back; having seen the redrawn and new line art (in Fan Works if you haven't, though not all posted until I can scan and clean them later today) the VF-14M 7 PLUS wins forever and ever amen. Only its descendent FZ-109A and less direct parent VF-4 come close. As to paint schemes, you can have it in any color you like as long as you like black.

Okay, done. B, F, and another G from above. It's almost obscene how awesome they look, but I won't be able to scan them until morning. I hope you all can make it a few more hours without your VF-14M "Seven Plus" Vampire fix.

Now with more magical feets! Note that I did not change the filenames, so you'll need to do so for your local copies if you intend to keep both. March, I'd prefer these as the "main" version when you get around to webbing it.

(edit: WTF? those don't look right... Let's try that again.)

(edit2: Still no good... I am baffled. Will try juggling them about first.)

(In the words of Frank Zappa from "Jam In Joe's Garage," ONE! MORE! TIME!)

(Theeere we go. Apparently there was something wonky with the .png transparency setting, but they aren't supposed to be transparent anyway so I flattened the images and resaved and now they're looking right.)

Old art has been blued, and will probably be redrawn for tomorrow.