sketchley

7 hours ago, Chronocidal said:

I've considered doing something like this a few times.  I think where you run into issues is just leakage, since unless you tape everything down, the pattern might still get messy, and need a ton of cleanup.

I understand.  What I'm getting at is just a handful of squares in a relatively small area.

To mitigate leakage, perhaps using a thinned down paint?  This may require multiple passes to 'build up' the desired panel (aztec) design.  It will never be as good as a set of decals, but I'm approaching this from the angle of "what's easiest and cheapest to do, that won't put excessive strain on the hands."

7 hours ago, Chronocidal said:

Unfortunately... the Galaxy class saucer is also that screwball oval shape, which means that even if you can make a re-usable pattern, you still have to make a pile of unique patterns to cover the whole thing.  

Yes.  That's why I mentioned an eraser shield: small area, thin, and flexible.

The mental image I have is one of the ones with the square shape cutouts:

8 minutes ago, Thom said:

Peng you do great work, even with limited resources and problems. I'd say that you overcome quite a lot in spectacular fashion and I walays love to see your kits going together. And as to 'real' modelers, you build more than I do! If you are not a real modeler than I don't know what is.

As to the Big D, take time if you need to, and I'd say don't worry anymore about the aztecing. Maybe give some pre-shading or just go straight to the main color and finish her up. You can make her look good no matter what! Plus, you can always do a refurb later when ability/money/time allows.

Thom

Agreed.

Reading this, it got me thinking: is it possible to create some type of cardboard cutout with a rudimentary template for spray painting the aztecs?  Something that doesn't require a lot of cutting, but you can use like an eraser shield to wipe paint on the surface (or rubbing charcoal or whatever).  Something that is just wide enough to do a small wedge of the saucer each day.  The next day, flip it over (or move up or down a bit) and repeat to build up the aztec details.

That Lego YF-19 is... wow.

There is a lot of creative solutions in it.  I'm especially intrigued by how the folding wing mechanism was reproduced with a rod and clips, as well as the sliding mechanism in the back using "antenna" (or flagpole?) elements.

3 hours ago, Stampeed Valkyrie said:

I have been chasing a phantom issue with the coin acceptors,  the right one works 100% everytime,  and the left one now takes coins,  but does not register a credit.   Been at it with a meter and everything is testing out..  its wierd.

 

 

Is there a mechanical component involved?

Ie: the coin forces a lever to move, and that lever pushes down into something (a 'touchpad') that activates the electrical switch?  If so, what is the state of that touchpad and does it register when the lever touches it?

9 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

I can imagine other fleets being quite jealous of them in some ways.

If memory serves, something to that effect was brought up in the "Macross the Musical" stage production.  Among other things, that show's Super Long Range Emigrant Fleet's setting was experiencing demonstrations (and riots?) because that fleet was essentially poor.

1 hour ago, Big s said:

I thought it was just an example of what the missiles from those hatches on the inside, I didn’t realize it was supposed to be a single giant missile that’s probably close to the size of a battleship 

That's what the text on the artwork says: "missile".*

So yes, the toy was envisioned to have a spring-loaded missile, which is effectively the size of a battleship.

* Note that the artwork was only produced for the toy version.  Such a huge missile (or clip on wheel chassis) was never used—or intended to be used—in the TV series.

35 minutes ago, M'Kyuun said:

(why do you need intakes in space? Are they sucking in radiation and converting it to energy?)

There's probably an in-universe explanation, but design decision wise, Mr Lucas (or Lucasfilm) had a rule something along the lines of: if you can't understand what it is within 0.5 seconds, then the design will be rejected.

I'm not sure if that only applied to the prequels, but it does explain the design "logic" of an intake in space.

3 hours ago, Mog said:

Let me have some hope!  

Until Japan's companies start giving workers significant raises (not likely in the short term), the central bank is most likely going to continue resisting raising the interest rate; which is the prime reason why the value of the JPY has become so low*.  So, unless the global situation greatly changes in some key way, the JPY will continue staying comparatively low for the time being.

* to clarify, it is the reaction of overseas investors to that which is driving the value of the JPY down.

Max and Miria.

Even after they 'overcame' their differences and got married in SDFM, their rivalry is still going strong dozens of years later, as seen in M7.

1 hour ago, jvmacross said:

Do folks who do fan-art and fan-fiction ask the IP holders for permission?  Do folks that produce other things like limited kits or 3D renders for 3D printers ask the IP holders for permission?

The majority of the time the answer would be....rarely at best.

Again, not sure why AI doing the "violating of artists rights" is any different than when "human" artists do it?

I do not think AI threatens "real" artists in any way.  Will some artists lose their job due to AI....sure, and apparently some already have.  But, that happens all the time when new technology becomes available.  Artists shouldn't feel that they are more entitled to have their field more protected than say librarians,  production line workers or fast food employees...all whose fields have been affected by technology...internet, robotics, automation, etc.

Progress always brings about winners and losers....welcome to what some may consider the dark side of capitalism.

 

Fan art and other derivative work (i.e. 3D renders) is fundamentally different from an illegally acquired database of artwork used to train the AI.

Nevertheless, the finished works of both fall afoul of copyright law—both the moral rights and the economic rights of the copyright holders: https://www.cric.or.jp/english/clj/ocl.html

If I'm not mistaken, fan-art falls under derivative works, and one reason it is tolerated is that it generally doesn't compete in the market with the original works and doesn't damage the original creators' profits.

1 hour ago, jvmacross said:

If you mean that the "art" being generated is not that good or original...then yeah....but if you are fearing that original art from "human artists" will go away somehow, then I am not so sure about that....IMO, AI art is no different that fan-art, it's just being created by a machine...like AI generated art, fan-art is taking the original works of say Kawamori and using that as their inspiration for attempting to create something "original" that could exist in the universe that he originally created.....the big fear is that AI will do the same thing and somehow stop new and existing artists from creating new art...However, fan-artists have been copying the "styles" of artists, for example anime/manga artists, for years...and yet we keep getting new anime and manga styles all the time from new artists that develop all-new styles....

All AI will do is force artists to up their game or perhaps they can use it to inspire the quick evolution of their current art style.......think of how Mikimoto has evolved his "style" from the original SDFM....his current "style" which was introduced for Macross the First, is similar but significantly different from how he originally started drawing these same characters decades ago...will AI be able to do this or do this faster?  Will AI be able to "evolve" the style of art that it has copied to begin with and come up with something that looks sufficiently different from the source material?  I have not heard of it doing that yet.....of course, if AI becomes sentient....all bets are off! LOL

I do not want to derail this topic, so I'll keep it short:

The problem with AI art is the dubious means used to acquire the art database(s) the AI were trained on.  The vast majority was "scraped" from the internet, and violates copyright, on top of not having asked the individual artists for permission to be included in said database(s).

It should also be noted that some artists have been fired (or otherwise lost their job) because of the advent of AI generated art.  The issue was not whether the artist was good enough (i.e. at the top of their game), but the quantity produced for the cost.

Truly AI produced art per se is not disagreeable.  However, the current incarnation is violating artists' rights, causing detrimental harm to artists, and like an ingrown toenail—based only on what it is trained on, and not able to evolve beyond that.

So, while it would be nice to see more Masami (et al)-style Macross art, can we ask Masami-san (and the others) permission to do that?  Can we get permission from Macross's copyright holders to use their IP in this way?

16 hours ago, jvmacross said:

We need to load all this art by illustrator into AI and have it start spewing out new illustrations "in the style of" Takani....Suzuki....Masami...etc....

As an artist, believe you me when I say just say no to AI generated art.

14 minutes ago, Shawn said:

What the heck is this in the corner?
 

The Zentradi Heavy Attacker (aka Gorg Ganz Charts) from DYRL: http://sdfyodogawa.mywebcommunity.org/Stats/Statistics/ZentraadiAerospace/golggants.php

4 hours ago, Shawn said:

Found some more awesomeness

Arii 1/100 1997 Release. This actually says Tatsunoku on the box. Was this an official release?

It does say "Macross" (마크로스) and something along the lines of "As seen on SBS TV" on the box.

4 hours ago, Shawn said:

 

My Korean is not good enough to understand everything, but I see the words for "license contract" on there (the 2nd and 3rd words after Paco Enterprise Co.)

3 hours ago, Chronocidal said:

They haven't figured out that "1/100" being a "good" scale is entirely dependent on the size of the subject.  Valks are pretty tiny compared to Gundams, and you're not going to be able to even come close to the amount of detail in an HG Gundam kit at that scale, especially if you expect the thing to transform.

Maybe it was a marketing decision?  (I.e. the marketing team chose the scale, not the actual model designers.)  To make it easier to bundle together with their other 1/100 lines?  Or that the 1/72 scale turns off (domestic) buyers since they're not used to that scale, or that it eats up too much 'display space' when finished?

6 hours ago, Shawn said:

Anything on the Large Missile at the top? LOL

Aside from being the only item without either a scale (1/12, 1/100, etc.), it is also the only one by Arii (the others are all by Imai).  Perhaps it was released bundled with another kit?  (or simply not released?)

Correction, there's a ￥300 Arii kit (the GERWALK?) on the lower left.

37 minutes ago, RaisingCane said:

Did it crash deliberately then?

In short, yes.

It's fairly safe to say that the ship came down a lot harder than they intended—perhaps they intended to park it in orbit.  But such things happen when one is plotting a course based on rudimentary scans from 10 light years away (and possibly millennia-old information if the Inspection Forces had access to the Protculture survey of Earth).

10 minutes ago, RaisingCane said:

Was there ever any indication as to why the ASS-1 crashed in the first place?  Was it damaged in battle?  Was it abandoned and left on autopilot or did the UN find the bodies of the crew?

That was kind of covered in the first couple of episodes of the TV series: it was left behind as a booby trap by the Inspection Forces when they retreated from this part of the galaxy to slow down the pursuing Zentradi Forces.  It was most likely abandoned and put on autopilot.  However, Earthlings did find evidence of the crew, as they knew how large to make the VF-1 in Battroid to facilitate 'communication'.

That evidence hasn't been described, but it is most likely such things as airlocks, crew facilities (beds, tables, chairs), and spacesuit remnants.

9 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

No definitive number has ever been put on it. It's clearly a lot, given that it's mentioned that the ship's passage through the atmosphere knocked a kilometer off the top of Mount Everest, destroyed both Stockholm and Moscow, cut a wide swath of destruction across all of Europe, Iceland, and Greenland, caused volcanoes to erupt in Canada, and generally made a mess of the South Pacific.

The trajectory doesn't quite make sense (as visualized by Pengbuzz).  A lot of the landmarks that it passed over are thousands of km apart, and if the ASS-1 was producing such a shock wave, it means that something on the order of 1/3 to 1/2 of the Earth would be catastrophically damaged.

However, it makes a lot more sense if the trajectory was on a curved path, like how the ISS orbits: heading northwards from Canada over Greenland, with an apex near Iceland, then curving south—passing over Stockholm and Moscow, and then starting to curve back northwards around Mount Everest with the lower apex somewhere around Hong Kong, until finally pancaking on South Ataria Island.

Something like this, but farther north, and half as far south:

33 minutes ago, JB0 said:

It is shown to knock down a skyscraper on the way TO South Ataria, if my memory's not mistaken.

It probably only hypersonic-boomed one major population center, just because what are the odds. 

Apparently it knocked the top (third?) off of Mount Everest.  In other words, low enough (and fast enough) to cause considerable damage over a wide swath of the globe.

The route from there to the Ogasawara Islands (where South Ataria Island is) has it travelling almost directly over all of Bhutan, a lot of heavily populated provinces in China, and almost directly over Taipei (Taiwan) and Naha (Okinawa).  So, I wouldn't be surprised if tens to hundreds of thousands of people were injured or killed, with several million people affected by the devastation.

Note that that's only from Mount Everest.  Going in the opposite direction, there's New Delhi and even further Kuwait, Israel, and the most populated parts of Egypt!  However, I think anything west of Pakistan is probably pushing it.

3 hours ago, Bolt said:

I see. I understand the VF-4 has mostly been seen loaded with a gunpod from the modelers sector (I'm guilty too!) . And, though the VFMF is not official,  it's interesting to note that there are a few depictions of VF-4's carrying duel gunpods(one under each wing) , in an atmospheric setting. Also ,there's another depiction (operation Pitfall?) showing the same but outside planetary atmosphere and definitely in space. Those VF-4's also have fast packs loaded upon them.  I'm just curious to know what special operations, conditions or circumstances would require a duelee set up. 

The only situations that come to mind are the aforementioned needing more bullets for an extended engagement, as well as for balance when flying (left and right side have an equal amount of aerodynamic drag [in an atmosphere] or weight and center of gravity [in outerspace]).

There may also be a need for gun pods when facing opponents where physical bullets perform better then beam weapons do.  However, I'm not sure what that would be.  The only thing that comes readily to mind is the Anti-Optical Weapon coating on the VF-171EX.  It's possible that something similar existed earlier in the Macross timeline, but I haven't come across any mention of it outside of the VF-171EX!  That said, it loops back into the dual gun pods for more bullets...

2 hours ago, RaisingCane said:

Do the early emigration fleets receive any supplies from Earth or are they pretty much stuck with whatever they took with them?  Like, are there Megaroad fleets wandering around out there that still primarily use old but well-maintained VF-4s?

Circumstances vary.  However, the things that every fleet share are the capability to manufacture new things*, and access to the Galaxy Network—which enables the dissemination of the latest VF designs (and songs, etc.).  In addition to that, the Emigrant Fleets are essentially heading out into unexplored areas of space, so their progression is relatively slow compared to ships, fleets, or whatever that may come later on the same routes.  So, it's possible for vessels to 'catch-up' and provide supplies.**

That said, there's also the 'need' to replace existing VFs (E.g. the M25 Fleet didn't have a need to replace the VF-171 until hostilities began with the Vajra).  So, there's a strong possibility that some of those fleets didn't upgrade from their trusty VF-4s until those VFs reached the end of their design life.  I think by the 2060's, most of those fleets would be using more modern VFs for front-line duties, but would still have plenty of VF-4s kicking around in support roles, etc.

* the pace and quantity varies depending on what they brought with them (E.g. the facilities inside the Megaroad Emigrant ship itself = slow and few) or procured along the way (E.g. a Factory Satellite = fast and lots).

** the Macross Frontier Fleet is described as having taken 20 years to travel to where it is at the start of MF, but only requires 10 years to travel back to Earth—1 year, if someone uses the Super Fold Booster!

8 hours ago, TG Remix said:

I had a feeling it was fanmade. Though on that topic, even though I heard that the VA-14's name "Hunter" was fanmade, it did appear in the Japanese Wikipedia and other Japanese sites. So now I'm wondering where did that name come from?

I don't recall an official name for that, as well.

Elaborating on what SetoKaiba said—there may be something akin to what's happening with Russian made fighters going on.  For example, with the Su-27, the official name is "Sukhoi Su-27", however users are adopting the NATO reporting name "Flanker" as a kind of nickname for it (in no way official).

1 hour ago, Seto Kaiba said:

 

@sketchley would probably know better than me on that topic.

 

It's the first I've ever heard of that.

A search results in:

• MAHQ (no source ref.): https://www.mahq.net/mecha/macross/vf-x/fz-150.htm
• "The hangar" (no source ref.): http://cwolf_14.tripod.com/mecha/fz150.htm

• MACROSS用語 (no source ref.): http://infinity-g.o.oo7.jp/mcgl.html

• Pixiv dictionary (points to an image of an "Fz-150"): https://dic.pixiv.net/a/フェイオス・バルキリー

• said image on Pixiv (note: posted in 2020) : https://www.pixiv.net/en/artworks/84482365

Checking the Japanese Wikipedia, there are NO mention of a Fz-150 at all!

• Zentradi mecha (フェイオス・バルキリー (Feios Valkyrie), name sources indicated); https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/ゼントラーディ軍の兵器#フェイオス・バルキリー
• and just to confirm it's not a transliteration of the Quadoran-Roh series mecha (クァドラン・アルマ (Quadoran-Alma): https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/クァドラン・ロー

As near as I can tell, it's a fanfic designation created by the artist on Pixiv named shi**ypaintdraw.  Initially I was going to say that they are recolouring of an image from Mr March's sites, but the artist has completed lines that are incomplete on March's version (e.g. the calf lines on the interior of the lower leg).

6 minutes ago, TG Remix said:

Speaking of them, iirc they also used Varauta Army Valkyries as well due to them having the Protodevlin Factory Satellite. I can assume even if until at that moment Elgerzorene's, Panzerzorene's, and Saubergeran's would be a non issue in the grand scheme of the universe, I would assume they'd be illegal as all hell due to their Spiritia absorption beams.  

On the one hand, it wouldn't be that hard to remove (or 'merely' permanently disable) that equipment.  On the other hand, the absorption beams appear to have a limited capacity for storing Spiritia.  So, inherently the system is limited.  I'm quite sure that owners of those Valkyries who suddenly start purchasing a bunch of equipment that can be turned into Spiritia storage devices would raise all manner of red flags.

2 hours ago, Shawn said:

Depicts movement axles not in the anime setting...for goods like toys and models. Perfect!

Your wife is awesome! Please send my huge thanks!!!

Actually, she said it almost a decade ago.

Just wanted to put it out there that it's not only us English speakers, but also native Japanese speakers who have trouble with his scrawl!