PointBlankSniper

I think that fear is a stretch too far. People have already put the super parts on their's just fine. They found the issue from comparing it to the back side and noticing that it has the correct front face on the wrong side. Busting out the wrong molds that should have been stored with their accompanying production run, while also already producing the correct parts is very whack. So far everyone has matched pairs, too. So it seems much less scary an issue than it initially looked. All it comes down to is whether there is a high chance of damage for the reassembly operation.

Well, it's not me up against the wall since I'm not the one trying to reconcile it. I've stated more than once that I don't agree with them doing things that way. I'm just pointing out their rationale, what they've done with it, and just the fact that they do have such a rationale on their cards to play.

Maybe it's assumed you can pop them out and swap the two sides around by yourself. Don't have mine yet, so don't know how shoulder assembly works. Unless they doubled up on the same sided parts like the YF-21's shoulders again, so that no amount of ease of disassembly matters... EDIT: Seems like Heppoko made another tweet about fixing it in 10 minutes. So here's to hoping the issue is limited to them actually just mixing up rationed out L/R pieces for final assembly, and not a situation where they could have used two of the same for either side

Well, I just watched the morita guy's deep dive into VF-17 design lore, literally the day before this toy was announced. Unless that channel is all fanfic and lies, or I'm tripping out, the lore is supposedly contrary to what you and others are saying. IIRC, the lore goes that, the nose/cockpit was changed on the 171 to favor avionics because they no longer needed conventional passive stealth geometry after VF-19 and 22 introduced active fold stealth. Then the EX changed it some more to accomodate EX gear tech that LAI backported from the VF-25. The elbow guns weren't needed because the gunpod became external. The gunpod became external because because its storage compartment got cannibalized by retrofitting it with the larger and more powerful VF-19's engines inside the same old legs. But it was fine to move the gunpod outside because once again, stealth geometry was no longer needed. None of this suggests going from a 3 storey gargantuan stealth bomber to a modest 1 storey playground replica of it. Especially not with the engine swap going in the opposite direction. That's why I don't understand why they are considered vastly different sized aircrafts with no parts commonality around here.

I know what you are tolking about. I even acknowledged that it saves them work from coming up with transformation articulation. But my original comment was very much replying to this comment that was specifically about toy production and not about design work. So I'm just pointing out that the 19Kai can't be made with "minor alterations". Unless you guys consider building a majority of new plastic injection molds to be a minority of the work in manufacturing the toy, then I have nothing left to debate on the 19.

The 19P and kai have different shoulders from the19F and S though, so shouldn't it make more sense to just scratch build the shoulders entirely? Is there a reason to have this planned before it becomes obvious that bandai definitely won't do the 19F or S? Because the way things are going, it looks like highly plausible that they will come around to making those.

The thing is, I don't think these toys have much of a skeleton to speak of. A lot of mechanism and structure is already molded into the underside of the outer shells. They do have some separate pieces of internal braces, tracks, ratchets etc, but even those must be tabbed in or glued to the outer shell, so they mostly have to be new parts to conform to the new shell. And those really only make up a minor fraction of the total parts, compared to the externally visible parts, including exposed undersides, insides, and extensions etc. Even identical looking parts to the old ones need to be new parts accomodate the changes caused by the other new parts. Otherwise, the parts are just hollow appendages. Take for example, the VF-19's chest. The lack of chest cannons means that whole shell needs to be a new piece just to fill the hole, despite having identical details to the YF. All the associated swinging and sliding mechanism would then be deleted for the new chest because they serve no purpose. Then theres the head change, and the way the head needs to conceal without the old shields fancy features, you basically have nothing left of the old torso, other than the spine thrusters and the pilot egress hatch. Sure they save on a lot of guess work with transformation, but they need to mostly make new parts nonetheless, especially when everything from hips down/backward of intakes were intended to look different regardless of proportions. As for art style between M+ and M7, I see the latter as generally much more melted lol. If you were to challenge the size and scaling across series, what would it mean for the VF-22 that appears in both M7 and Delta, which features 171? Or going the other way and comparing those to the 21 and various 19s, all the way to the 19 Advanced, which fought alongside 171s. Should the 17 show up there and tower over its former co-stars that have their size and scaling made clear against the later CG valks?

I don't get the level of hate for the fins. I don't like that they are such thin speakers and are off color from the body, but the fins themselves look like they could be decent vertical stabilizers. If destructive modding and painting is on the table, I think filing down and filling the speakers with putty to make them proper stabilizer fins would look better and more unique from the kai.

I missed a line in the quote I was responding to, but half of what I said was responding to "Minor alterations to the 19 to make a fire valk." Fundamentally in lore, they are the same, but in terms of toy production, other than following most of the same contortions to transform, they are almost unrelated. The 19s really don't even share the same battroid proportions either. Wasn't it you, or maybe it was someone else, that told me on the other thread that the 19kai has that nasty gap in the leg because it has to retract for battroid and extend for fighter, where the YF doesn't have such proportion issues? Their legs are of completely different design, so bandai couldn't even recycle those parts even if they wanted to. Meanwhile it's in lore that 171 stuffs a larger engine in the same old 17 leg. So like I said, Bandai has their lore excuse to prove that it's a matter of artistic depiction. But I've alreardy said they shouldn't have done that and should have followed the original fat proportions as depicted. I don't disagree that it looks wrong from every depiction ever, so I'm not sure what part of the topic I'm missing. To put it differently, if 171 was drawn in M7 style, it would be just as chonky as 17. But if YF-19 was drawn in M7 style, it would still have different legs, shoulders, nose cone, canopy, lower chest turrets, shield, head, etc from the VF-19kai. One gives them justification to cheat the toy design while the other doesn't. Not that they should have cheated at all

I think it's the other way around. Only the thruster spines are actually common between the two 19s. Maybe the forearms, canards, roll pins, and some die cast bits that aren't too visible, but I can't even be sure. Everything else most definitely looks different and needs to be a new mold. The 171 is technically mostly just the 17, but in CG style... In lore, aside from the appendages bandai already did change, they put the gunpod outside the 171 and used the space to fit larger engines in the old legs. So bandai has lore justification for recycling 171 leg proportions on this. Of course, that doesn't mean they shouldn't have just gone with old animation proportionis over the 171 CG, and skimped out on the gunpod storage gimmick. Now it's a partsformer where the gun gets tossed out.

Definitely a repainted 171. Heppoko Samurai missed the wings though. Those have to be new too, because the 171 has a different shape towards the inside. Black paint somehow makes the legs even skinnier lol. The gunpod definitely isn't stowing in the leg or changing ammo type. Doesn't look like they have plans for super pack, since there's no way to mount the back pack, even if they figure out how to hack the leg parts on with existing armor pack connections. Honestly, though, the revival's triangles are rock solid. I've already said in that thread, but those things seem unbreakable now. I accidentally used them as a load bearing perch for my hand to wrangle other parts, and also crushed by swinging shoulder parts around in the wrong order and angles. They just returned to form like nothing happened. Can't guarantee that with the new colored plastic, but I'd like to think bandai at least permanently learned that one lesson if nothing else Disappointing that bandai didn't even try to make the finer gimmicks that are different from the 171 work in any way, other than the elbow guns.

Gray on gray looks great. The shades and patterns you used actually make it look more serious than the 31A. The wing now looks much cleaner and simpler than the dog teeth delta wing in contrast. I can only think of some minor refinements to try. I think just the hard black on top of the head just stands out a little too much, in a way where you can't tell if it's a painted surface or a giant gap. I'm thinking the calf's brown gray or the feet's dark gray might work there. And maybe unify the canopy's mascara to the same shade if you change it. The stabilizers could be a place to try some simple shapes and division of grays. The outline thing doesn't quite match what you have going on with the overall plane, especially with the underside of those stabilizers being plain. I think that small and irregular tapered trapeziod with a thin line on the chest is a styling you can try on the stabilizer and maybe spread around to other parts if you want to experiment with more patterning. Kind of like sparse tribal markings in small areas. Maybe the legs could use some. Maybe as like for like juxtaposition, steal the 31A's chaos logo to replace the star, just to see how it looks lol

Coloring the ankle gaurds definitely makes the whole thing feel less flamboyant. Something about the gills looks kind of like a sports jersey. Maybe I wasn't cooking with that one, or requires a very nuanced design to look like angry shark gills.

NGL I don't get the wing hate, especially since valks already tuck them away. Not that I'm big on prominently winged mecha, especially not giant immobile wings. But If it flies, I don't see a problem with some deployable flight control surfaces. If it's supposed to be armed, I'd like that it has the options to use the pylons. To lose flight control and weapons for the sake of being a perfectly humanoid robot seem like strange design priorities to me. With that said, I actually like the vtol thing on the bottom left the most, and that thing definitely has dangling wings and engines on the back lol.

I guess the 24 is kinda closest. Now that I think about it, even a Valk that has a pair of vertical and horizontal stabilizers doesn't seem to exist... I guess the Sv-51 is almost kinda there. But I don't want to count it because it's got it's got X wing stabilizers, split wingtips, canards, and the whole thing has weiner proportions. Some of the later valks have those mini stabilizers to form an X and I don't want to count those either lol.

All that space magic must come with some low noise engines and sound proofing lol Macross really could do with something that has the wing shape of an F-18 and some wing tip hardpoints though.

I was under the impression you were already going for a more military theme since you said it was based on the corsair. I've seen that image from the files, just didn't remember much of it. What I was talking about is more like the middle one down the left, and the tan one on the top right. Their slab of black running down the middle looks like a sword, just that it looks like it's pointed backwards because they have the black stripe accross the nose as a crossguard. They probably look better that way because of the Kairos wing. What I had in mind was pointed forward, and flanked by similarly girthy crossgard stripes, that aren't necessarily connected, and more forward swept or parallel to be trident like to flow with the Seigfried's wing direction, without highlighting the full span of them. Doesn't actually have to look like a sword, or be black, or be in the same colors. It's more that I was just trying to describe the direction of the pattern.

Yeah, they'd do that. It's their entire busness model. Last week they announced rehashing the HG Gquuuuux with added glowy rings from the final episode lol. First release buyers are screwed lol

I have some ideas, but idk if they work or make sense at all I think lines in the following bracket shape might give the illusion of a contained width profile.〔 〕 Especially lines tapering inward toward the front makes things look sharp in general. Shark gills might look more aggressive if they took a sharper angle like those brackets. They might look better ahead of the canards, and get to show up in battroid mode too. The red yellow on the canards might be one color combo too many. I think it makes the canards look too much like they are slapped on after the fact. I'm thinking they might look good the navy white combo you already have. Maybe the Stabilizers could follow for extra coherence, idk tbh Maybe less white on the bottom/battroid front, to look less the transformer trope of robot hanging under a plane lol The ankle guards, I get that they look good in white, but I also always thought it was strange that some valks had distinct and vibrant engine collar things on lol. Maybe being in the same color as one of the surrounding parts makes the engines or even the whole plane look more discreet and serious. I'm not sure if I'm just seeing things, but the feet/exhaust already look kind of blue. Just wondering if it would look better in a slightly more distinct dark blue/gray hue As for the main/heavy stripe, I think there's lots of room to try all sorts of things on the top of the fuselage and wings. Don't worry about looking good and slap together a bunch of w/e designs since you ar just testing A thought I just had unrelated to everything I just wrote lol, is one broad stripe down the middle, possibly with some geometry to the edges, and then something accompanying it in another color toward the wings without reaching all the way, perhaps only outside past the engines or even right over them. Sort of like a giant abstract sword with narrow crossguards.

I was just saying in one of the other threads, gundam fans are still meming about the missing MG Age kits to this day, and those aren't the only things that have gone missing after announcements or prototypes going on display.

This one is definitely Capn Murica's Valk

I think the main reason is that it has such a broad, level, and featureless top side. It's literally just a flat and wide deck, and doesn't help that every pattern painted on it focuses on it's leading edges, which highlights its lateral width. That and the way the engines are always highlighted in black, as if some hot rod engine mod protruding out of a hood cutout. If it had more longitudinal patterns, body matching engine colors, and maybe some depthwise and vent like paintjobs like the shark gills on the YF-29 or vents on VF-0's airbrake, it would probably look more aggressive

I'm being a broken record here, but I think Bandai has made their point through the lack of accessories with the YF-19's Revival and sprinkled that extra bit of salt on the wound with the inclusion of FP but only fold booster struts on the YF-21. They probably hate the idea of items in anyone's collection having accesories parity lol Maybe if they buckle their own trend to fleece people with Basara's sound booster, it will open the floodgates to more moaning have and Bandai go back and make right with these last few releases. But that's just me snorting a lot of hopium.

Am I tripping or that head sculpt looks more detailed than the DX?

Bandai being less dumb for once, feeling out Arad popularity before mold fatigue