pengbuzz

Let's be honest here: CBS tried twice to make an un-Star Trek "Star Trek", and failed miserably both times. If they don't do it this time with ST:SNW, they may as well sell the rights to Paramount and fire the staff who were trying to make this mess happen. Admittedly, my sentiments echo much of what Seito Kaiba was saying, but he has a point, and I also think that ST:DSC and ST:P should serve as warnings to the sci-fi (as well as other) fiction communities as well of what not to do to make a new series in a well-known franchise. At this rate, they may as well do an animated series using the same computer program as South Park...

You could always cut the nose end off and glue it on upside down. Seriously though: yeah, the nose is just misshapen to all heck. I'd resculpt it or something. I ran into that as well on my project: I ended up using a couple of pieces of very light wood and just cutting them to the proportions I needed:

The Bandai ones are wider and a bit "squatter" than the Hasegawa ones, while the Hase versions tend to be thinner and more slender overall. Currently fitting some hase parts to a bandai and noting the variations.

I like that idea, Thom! I would love to find a newer kit (preferably an actual Airwolf kit) and put the internals into it. The figures were scratched up from sprue (and admittedly, this was before I learned that glasses would help my vision!); i would want to revisit them and detail them out a bit better. The exterior of the helicopter is crap because it was just a Bell 222 that I had to mod into Airwolf and do the add-on turbines and armor myself. Another reason for wanting an actual Airwolf kit: the white plastic on the Bell 222 is quite soft and easily bent/ broken. I recall the black plastic on the Airwolf kit (I had it some years previously to this project) was a bit more rigid, so it wouldn't be such a pain to work with. Only issue is that they are currently pretty hard to come by, and money is always an issue around here (groan). If I ever happen to come across one (unlikely) at a flea market or such, that would be nice.

While waiting to find repair parts for another project, i dug up an old one from 2012-2013: I found an AMT Bell-222 1/48 scale kit. While it wasn't the "Airwolf" version, it was the base model for it. So, after some outer mods, I did a complete interior using sprue and printouts of all the controls for the CIC (Dom's "office" aboard the lady). Then in a genius moment of stupidity...I glued it all shut. So, after finding this in my stuff, i did an experiment, and was able to open her up to show off the interior. Don't worry: I still have the outer panels! I cut them carefully along panel lines and am working on tabbing them so they can pop back into place. I'll just need to rework it slightly to make sure the fit is as seamless as possible. But after remembering the work I did, I think gluing it back would be just wrong! My paintwork isn't all that great in there, but this was nearly a decade ago! Classic pengbuzz work here; see what you think!

Thanks MT! This is just the Imai VF-1S I built a while ago (not the FAST pack modded one), with interchangeable noses. I still have the other one, but I had to borrow it's gun pod (the IMAI one met a tragic end when I dropped it and accidentally stepped on it! O.o). Speaking of which: sometime soon, I have to post pics of that one, as well as the custom-designed valk I built some years ago.

"Risk adverse"= "We're so scared of failing that we remove all possibility of success and fail by default".

Yeah; I may tone it back a bit more than this, as the idea is "used but not abused".

*Checks masking tape and cardboard stores to see how much a project like this would require...*

Dug out the VF-1S and did a little weathering and detailing on it: (Why the last one came out yellow is beyond me. I think Skull-1 peed on the camera while i wasn't looking! Bad Roy!) Anyways...nothing major here, just added some off-white/ blue-grey to a few flaps and leading edges, did some paint chips and scrapes on the surface, detailed the leg landing gear doors to match animation a bit better, and did some heat discoloration on the feet/thrusters, head laser tips and gun pod business-end. I also used some 0000 steel wool to rub down the clearcoat and give this a matte finish while smoothing some paint issues.

This is like holding animation in your hands.... it really distorts your perception of reality, it's that well done!

Huh...should name it the "VF-42 Mishmash" (due to variety of parts)

I picked Hikaru, but not for the reasons most would think. I would be Hikaru from the "got trapped somewhere in the ship" part of Macross: not sure where I am or what to do, wondering when the "other shoe" was going to drop, and like most folks forgot about me. My "ride" is busted up, and as soon as I get out of here, I'm sure that the "old lady" who was yelling at me earlier is gonna hang my hide on the wall... ...and I can't take a shower because Minmay used ALL THE HOT WATER!!!!

Ah, gotcha.

There's a re-release?!

The only thing I can see is the TV head looks a little rounder and the visor looks slightly narrower.

Well, there's this and it's "buy it now": https://www.ebay.com/itm/113479308735?&shqty=1&isGTR=1#shId The kit is grey, but that shouldn't hurt too much (I hope)!

Nobody wants to fund a brand-new RT anything because RT is just a mish-mash of 3 series, and the first one was the most worthwhile out of the three. It's a shame the animation for Macross couldn't be fully updated, but I don't think Tatsunoko is interested in that, as that would be revisiting the past (which Kawamori-san doesn't like to do), and they'd much rather focus on future projects. While RT got me into Macross (and I promptly abandoned RT when I found Macross to be superior), Southern Cross was just... let's just say that if Dana was the last girl on Earth and I were lonely for 500 years, I'd still jump off a cliff rather than talk to her for five minutes. And Mospeada.... that series is so depressing, I'm convinced that all the mechs run on Zoloft.

There are some things some folks just don't do well: apparently, Joel and the Batman franchise were like oil and water.

Or maybe the Zentraedi are trying to hack into the ship's systems to take them offline so the Cylons-- Er, sorry. Wrong franchise.

Found this on ebay for you: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Macross-1-72-VF-1S-Valkyrie-Gerwalk-Model-Kit-IMAI-Robotech-Japan-Roy-Fokker/184334615113?hash=item2aeb330249:g:uogAAOSwUixe7VNm

Exactly: stories need to show failures, goofs, and times when the characters' own actions bring about unintended consequences. Not to mention: if the enemies are just that incompetent, then "mass numbers" is only going to get them so far. You need at least some competency, or they'd never let those guys near a galley or mess, let alone a Mobile Suit. In that vein, our campaign was much the same way: all of us players at one time or another made some brutal mistakes. One example is that my character got another pilot that he was dating killed when a combat maneuver he pulled didn't work (I failed my piloting role with a natural "1" on the 20-sided die), and she saved him by putting herself between him and about 60+ missiles headed his way. The outcome of that was that it showed him up close the consequences of split-second decisions, and that in war, people die due to your decisions. He went on to command a special forces unit for the fleet (six fighters including himself) and investigate and bust the conspiracy on Earth. After getting your head handed to you enough, you either get good by eventually finding a way to overcome, or inevitably, get dead because your number finally came up. And if that never happens, if characters never learn and grow (Imagine if Hikaru never grew beyond his first appearance in Macross when he came to the SDF-1's launch?), then all it becomes is an animated video game (or a paper one if doing an RPG face-to-face). And even video games now have moved past that to some degree.

I cannot imagine they could legally do that for the North American distribution, due to HG having an agreement on that already. I think HG would have to somehow violate their licensing agreement in a major way for Tatsunoko to pull the licensing and give it to someone else.

Good grief! lol Personally, I'd rather see an awesome character in an "okay" mech than an omnipotent mech with a "bleh" character. We had one guy in our campaign who wanted to paint his VF-11 black and then paint stars on it! He called it "star camo". Yeah; he one advantage the 17 has is that its' stealth is a feature; it only dies when the mech is destroyed (according to stats IIRC); the 19 and 22 lose theirs after 50 percent MDC is lost. Hmm...never noticed that in Macross. A worse name would have been "Shouldn't have eaten that pastrami grinder last night!" (that would give me nightmares! ) Yeah... sigh. I consider for the Wraithverge to keep some semblance of "honest" in game and in our universe, to keep the payload reasonable and able to fit within the frame, hidden by the outer stealth layers. Yeah, like the Gilgamesh armor of Macross II (if that's what you mean); in fact, it now that I think of it, I developed it in part to counter those blades being used by that suit. Thanks; we do indeed, because we tend to see the flaws the most and not notice what's good about the work! And yeah: it really is hard to design them! I literally broke 8 swing armatures for the leg to body connector by simply transforming the thing!!! (not all at once though! lol )

Yup; in this case, we were on a definitive roll. In other words: everybody wants to rule the fleet? (cue Tears for Fears). I've seen some designs out there, but not to the extent you describe. Thanks, I appreciate that! And yes: I had to make several, such as the "swing bar" under the shoulder pod that connects the rest of the arm. A necessary "evil", but I still wish I could rework it to a more solid config. That's one thing that bothered me about the 17; the other fighters could do more, but the 17 seemed to me to be stuck in "long range attack". After using one in several instances where we ended up in dogfights (and regretting it), I wished for a better one that was stealth and couldn't find one. Understood; admittedly, it began to sound dumb to me after a few years, but by then I called it that for so long that it became synonymous with the mech in my mind. If it ever came to it though, I could probably shorten it to "Wraith" (pretty sure that name's not taken, at least last time I looked), which would also fit. Yes; I had to move it into the "backpack" in order to get it to fit after thinking about the legs and all the stuff in it. But should it end up an "outie" like it's larger cousin, that's not the end of the world. It is indeed; in the campaign, one NPC flew a VF-19 and the other flew a VF-22 (GM was/is a fan of M+), and the other players has 17's. I didn't want to make something that would look dumb next to the other two. Right; I didn't want to get ridiculous on that, as it's too easy to overpower a mech with built-in "Itano Circuses". Also, the legs were already carrying quite a bit, to the point I had to relocate the gunpod. On the back of WV's leg, the engine housing bulks up a bit as it heads towards the tail. That stores much of the short range missiles, with 1-2 in the side launch pod "at ready" (may need to rework that if missiles would be too large): The inner leg stores the gunpod magazines; a bit of a tight fit, but manageable. Had I carried out the 11/48 scale version I wanted to do, I would have made functional bays to put those in. Yeah; I liked those concepts and decided to run with them. Why fix what isn't broken, right? To be honest, I don't remember why I called them "arm bayonets", since they're conformal blades built into the arm housing (silver edge on the arm housing at wrist and elbow, you can just barely make it out due to age). Their original function was to provide a "last resort" melee weapon that didn't need ammo or power that could be used when all else was gone: The barrier: that was largely for "story effect" to explain why the mech didn't get destroyed in the explosion of a capital ship it was attacking. The barrier saved it, but was burned out in the process. Seto, I really appreciate you taking a look at this for me, and the kindness of your comments in doing so. One thing this project did serve to teach me was to not criticize mech designs too hastily, as the designers often have challenges they need to overcome, and concessions do have to be made (especially with transforming designs!). It's not easy designing something meant for combat, and what can look "cool" may not work or get someone into a jam the designer never anticipated! Thank you.