Doktor Gonzo

Sure! Here's detail on the leg innards (copied from the Hase 1/48 kit):

It started off based on the Hasegawa 1/72 fighter kit, but I've tweaked everything endlessly since then, so it's really mostly my own design at this point. This model was one of my first, and I've never stopped occasionally working with it -- I guess it's like that first car that some people keep in their garage and endlessly tinker with.

Got taken by the Macross bug, broke out my old model and started tweaking. The attached shows off my new bits -- a radar, ladder, and up-detailed verniers. More to come, perhaps, if the wife and kids let me do more playing with my computer tonight!

Do post some close-ups of whatever you come up with! Mine is a (more mechancially complex) take-off on the 1/60 v2 positioning, but I'm unsatisfied with it, as it seems flimsy and exposes too-large gaps into the chest cavity...

::Poke:: Dan, any updates?

I hear you. I'm tempted every so often to restart from scratch, both to partake of all the available versions out there (when I started this, all I had available to me were screencaps, the Hase 1/72 blueprints, and the Yamato 1/60 v1) AND to approach it as a fairly accomplished modeler rather than a novice (this thing was the first full character model I ever made, used it to teach myself modeling, and the quality of the original parts' meshes definitely shows it.) But if I were going to undertake another hobby project this size, I guess I'd rather do something wholly original than engage in the futile endeavor of trying to out-model guys like you That said, I've been tempted into revisiting parts of this thing at intervals as new interpretations became available. I thought about making the nose more trapezoidal in cross-section, but I'm not all that unhappy with the way it looks now (it would probably best be characterized as egg-shaped, with the narrow top of the egg flattened forward of the canopy.) I redid the fronts of the lower legs to give the bottom panels a bowed-in hourglass shape, rather than rectangular. I beefed up the forearms at some point as new interpretations showed me how. Most radically, I redid the nose shape and the positioning of the forward fuselage in battloid mode once I saw the Yamato 1/60 v2, since their solutions blew away prior interpretations and gave by far the cleanest, most heroic silhouette. I think this piecemeal "magpie eye" approach to the vf1 has given me a model that's very pleasing to ME, as it incorporates my favorite interpretations of various parts. The downside is that the whole perhaps appears a bit disjoint, like the collection of pieces from many different vf-1s that it in fact is! Bottom line I guess is that I'm watching avidly to see how you approach these issues and what your ultimate solutions are.

If it's any consolation, my undergrad degree was in comp sci, not anything cg-related. Anything and everything I've learned since came from books, certificate courses, and on-the-job learning.

Tipatat, thanks for the kind words! I don't have a dedicated image gallery anywhere but I found some old renders here and here. That said, though, it wasn't my attention to threadjack Dan's WIP thread, but rather to toss up my own interpretation as a point of comparison in the proportions discussion he inititated. Back in the stone age when I started this, I only had access to scans of the Hasegawa 1/72 blueprints, and I guess that's sort of still the model's DNA. But that left me with a gangling, thin-limbed, awkward battloid that I loathed and immediately began proportions-tweaking to revise. it also left me with the downwards-canting engine nacelles, which I never liked and soon abandoned, but I never beefed up the height of the nacelles the way the recent Yamato and Hase offerings did -- looks like I should, eh? The 1/72 profile also left me with backpack problems via the shape and positioning of the tailfins. I resolved those by cheating mightily - nothing changes shape or size, but the backpack is on an armature with additional joints to get it into a reasonable position against the back in battloid mode.

Dan, For what it's worth, here's the orthos of my old model. I'm sure your solutions to the proportion issues will blow mine away (it's been a few years and I can see many things I'd've done differently!) but might make for an interesting discussion point nonetheless

Looking forward to this, Rod.... any updates?

Sorry, not sure what you mean... scan? And were you asking Datterboy? Me? Or both of us?

I like it!!!

Thanks Seto! Posing, admittedly, has never been one of my strong suits.

Hmmm.... nosecone envy? J/k -- but the joint is pretty standard and lineart accurate (check out http://www.collectiondx.com/gallery2/gallery/d/457358-1/vf-1-transformation5.gif vs http://www.macrossworld.com/mwf/index.php?app=core&module=attach&section=attach&attach_rel_module=post&attach_id=78005), and also the straight-on render at http://homepages.nyu.edu/~pfb206/bat-toy.jpg).... I think it looks a little strange due to the very wide-angle lens I rendered the image with, in order to get maximum foreshortening and the kind of leggy, dynamic presentation you see at the end of the Macross opening credits.

Bring it!

I hate cross-posting, but I love comments. Oh, the quandary...

My turn to toss something up, I guess. Some wallpaper?

Hi Dan, Since Starscream (whose work I'm looking forward to checking out) has magnanimously granted permission for a certain amount of thread drift between his posts, mind if I ask you what you've been working on since splitting from Treyarch?

What, you're holding out for the Fast Pack Gift Set?

Just for laughs -- took an old orthographic render that shows proportions and detail, stuck it in appropriate packaging...

::drool:: LOVE the texturing/surfacing!

Too bad you haven't got time, but I LIKE the colored Nousjadel! And sure, feel free to use the B&W lineart.

Just Toon with tweaked settings on the ink outline. Would be fun to see if one of our 2D artists could color this in Photoshop...

Here's a 3D redo of a well-known sequence sketch. ....hey, it's something to do with a textureless model...