Greyryder

I'm working on a couple of Banprestos. The little valks don't recieve enough attention. Gonna turn them into fairly nice toys. Most of what I'm doing is in a post in the toy modding forum. Right now I'm working on making the right hand actually hold the gun. I might even mod the FAST packs with a strike style twin beam cannon. (or maybe two) Custom paint is a must, so I'm working on a gray/blue/silver scheme. The cannon fodder will of course remain in it's original colors.

The VF-1 is one of my all time favorite mech designs. I love the Gerwalk. When I was a kid I thought they thought they were supposed to be modified F-14s. My first love in fixed wing aircraft is the F-15 Eagle (but not the E model Strike Eagle) but the F-14 was always a close second. They're not only one of the coolest looking planes I've ever seen, but they're two of my favorite mechs. (batroid, nad gerwalk) I never had any of the toys when I was a kid, despite once having my hands on what I think was a toktaku 1/100 VF-1. I just couldn't convince the folks to spring for it. Now I've got two valks sitting here, both with pretty good articuation. None of the TF jets could ever compare. (except Jetfire, obviously) Most of them just looked robots with planes on their backs, in either form.

The problem is, I can't get into the joints to put anything on them. I can't get the leg sections apart. They're cemented together, pretty good. That screw in the lower leg doesn't really do anything.

No advice from the more experienced members? I guess I'll just give a progress report to anyone interested. Anyway, I found an easy way to modify the shoulders to not only better trap the ball joints, but also tighten them up a bit. I'm deffintaely doing the shoulder mod to my CF. I'll put up some diagrams as soon as I get some drawn. It doesn't take much more than a knife some some super glue, and some scrap sheet plastic. I've got the back plate hinge replaced, but now I'm not so sure of the point. It's necessary to get the head through, I might as well pull out the hinge, and glue the piece in place. I've also got the fast pack mount fastening much more securely, without having any parts wrap around the back. And the arm armor fastens securely. Heat shield stays in place now, too. I've also got the nose modified, and it holds the new "pelvis" securely. I can put it through all transformations with no problems. Just have to finish building up the area around where the head sits in fighter mode. I've started painting, and I'll get picturesup just as soon as I can figure out how to turn on macro mode on the digital camera. Does anybody know how I can tighten the leg joints up, especially the knee? I can, with a little patience, tighten up the hip ball joints, but I can't get into the lower hip and knee.

One of my earliest memories is seeing that movie at drive-in.

Ohh! I love that movie, I'll have to look into picking it up. Last time I watched it, I thought the tails on the F-14s looked like the skulls had been modified to look like Kirk Douglas. (like the crack had been replaced with a hair line)

1/24 line........bah! It's all about the 1/12 line Graham What? No quarter scale?

Hhmm. I had Sunstreaker, I'll have to pick up the Alternator version. (before the thermal stickers, no less) It'll give Smokscreen some company. Too bad he looks like little more than a repaint of Sidswipe with a couple of extra parts. The original was completely different from his brother. Diggin' the face, though. If the final version is red, I will repaint him.

Especially since that design is no longer used in Battletech, but remains a favorite of nearly everyone. (myself included) There's a redesigned version now, but most people (again, me too) still prefer the original. Hell, I even ripped the thing's stance for the airmech in my webcomic.

You are Sailormercury, the brains of the sailor scouts. This can't be right. My hair is longer than that.

What, no trailer?

Cool. Well then, I guess I'll have to put my limited skills to work on it. The sheet styrene, and brass rod and tube are easy enough to come by. Just gotta find a source for the little brass hinges I'm going to need.

Let me know how this sounds to you guys. I've never done any real toy modding, before. All advice is welcome. I'm looking to do a minor rebuild on a Banpresto (dont look at me in that tone of voice) Super Valk. I'd like to improve it's apearence a bit, and make it a little less likely to fall apart when it's being hadled. Aside from a repaint, and tightening up some of the joints, I've already decided to replace the shoulder boxes. They'll more securely trap the ball joints, and I'll probably screw the back plate on them so I can tighten the joints up if need be, later on. I already have a pretty good idea of how I want to do this. I might even be able to simply modify the existing shoulders, but I'd like to have a backup, incase my experiments fail. scavenging parts from my CF is not an option. I've already gotten the arm armor to stay on, and I'll tweak that a bit, before I'm finished. I'll also be improving the missle detail on the arm armor. I've modified the heat sheild so that it actually stays on. Still needs work, though. I'm also thinking of doing away with the swing arms. I already want to correct the underside of the nose section, and was thinking of making it swing open to place a "pelvis" that would run between the hips into it. The idea was to run brass rod, and tubing between the hip ball joints, and have it be trapped inside the nose cone, in batroid form. The legs would have to be removed from the Valk to reposition them during transformation, but that doesn't bother me. My thought was to use a small brass hinge (as hidden as possible) in front of where the head sits in fighter and gerwalk modes. I'd like to use a similar hinge on the upper back panel. Everything else I want to do is minor tweaks of the existing mechanism, and making removable landing gear that work with or without the FAST packs. Any tips or advice? Remember, telling me not to attempt such a foolhardy scheme will only encourage me.

I have a love/hate relationship with the Transformers. I loved the originals, because most of the vehicle modes were fairly acurate. They looked like toy cars. (or whatever a given TF turned into) A lot of the original bot modes weren't bad either, they just lacked articulation. Admittedly, the Decep jets didn't look too good from underneath, and a number of the robots had stubby arms. After a few years though, they started to go downhill. They got big hinges sticking out of the vehicles, and pretty much gave away that it was something other than a toy car/plane/whatever. The sudden proliferation of scifi vehicles didn't help, either. During all of this, the bot modes didn't improve. They still had very limited motion, and questionable proportions were still just as common. It seemed like every succsive line of TFs since the first gens have gotten progressively worse. At the very least, the bots modes seem to have gotten a bit better. They have better proportions, and much more articulation, now. I still don't like the way they look. I love the Alternators/Binal tech. They're the best of both worlds. Vehicles modes that look good enough to display, and well proportioned, well articulated robot modes. The choice between the Takara and Hasbro versions is just a nice extra. I will say that I'm a little dissapointed in the 20th any Prime/Masterpiece Convoy. In every picture I've seen, the vehicle mode looks a mess. Not any better than the first edition Power Master Prime above my monitor.

Click here. I believe it was done by an FX firm as something of a demo of what they can do.

First movie wasn't bad. The second could have used a better script, but at least it wasn't ice capades. This new one is supposed to be set pretty early on in Batman's carreer, A year one, or year two, type of thing. Gordon is still a beat cop in it. From everything I've heard they are activley trying to not screw this up. tom64ss, Dead End was great. It had the first live action Batman I've seen that actually looked like he really could beat up the criminals of Gotham.

Hehe. Same reputation on both sides of the ocean. Sounds as bad as me. I have a valid excuse for not doing mine, yet. They haven't been shipped to me. Seems I picked a bad week to order.

The pictures look great. Very nice work, both of you. Copyright is pretty much automatic, anymore. You make the work, it's copyright to you. All registering the copyright does, is give you legal records of when you officialy claimed completion of the work. Posting it to hte internet gives you a lot of witnesses as to when your work first appeared. There are also server logs as to when it was uploaded. Still, what was said earlier holds. You can't claim any form of copyright on the characters you've used, because they already belong to someone else. You didn't create them. I believe (believe as in "not sure") each drawing as a whole can still be copyrighted, even the characters protrayed in them don't belong to you.

Click here. I had the same idea. I plan to fix up a Banpresto (I'm a sucker for small scale miniatures), and repaint it. Grabed a few blanks from page.

Links?

Yeah, I knew you were working on a larger one, I just didn't know you were planning one even bigger than that.

Anybody else working on one of these? I'm just starting on the second arm of mine.

I'm thinking I prefer the original tracks. For one thing I always preferred those 70s style Vets to any that have come since. I still need to pick up Smokescreen. I'm tempted to get a Streak when he comes out, just to paint the sides blue, and put a big ol' Autobot symbol on his hood. I just wonder if they'll be making an Alternators Sunstreak.

looks like

I've seen other stickers like that. That top layer is not meant to come off. A lot of times what gets left behind isn't as vibrant, as it was with the top layer on. It invariably leaves it sticky, and easily damaged.