grebo guru

Huh. Interesting. (looks closer) Oh please, Kawamori! With that much stuff in the leg pallets, there really wouldn't be enough room for the engines. Yarg! Official lineart or not, I gotta declare bulls**t on this. Shame on Kawamori! Pooey! Thanks for dredging up the pic, though, valk1j. Goddamn but Nanashi's site musta been terrific. I wish it were still up... Or at least, if he'd make his images available to us all.

The VF-3000 Crusader. I've always been interested in it, ever since I saw the images of the "Advanced Valkyrie" in one of the old Studio Nue Entertainment Bibles. I was glad to see a cleaned-up image in the the Kawamori Design Works book, but I hate the new gunpod! The old one was much cooler looking, so I swapped it back in. Also, I'll be doing alternate heads, and here's one already. More to come. Grebo!

Here's another rough design for the Zentradi Battlesuit that showed up in the beginning of Macross Plus. The first picture I posted in this thread looks more Meltran, this one definitely looks more Zentran. (Though not quite as sweet-looking.) One of the things I've discovered while coloring Zentradi/Meltrandi mecha is that it's easy to accidentally make them look like Aura Battlers (from Dunbine). Greebs

Yes, but, you see, the thing is -- it's totally, awesomely, wickedly cool.

Nope. Sorry. You're wrong. The Macross Cannon is totally cool. Doesn't matter what you say. It's impressive and creative and wicked, wicked, wuh-hicked cool.

Aw shucks again, C.A.T.

Aw shucks, MM.

Schweet! I love it. Thanks!!!

They look great, MrMarch!! Well done. The only comment I have is that the ship-mode Macross looks to have a wee problem: I think the color layer and the lineart layer are misaligned. There's a slim white edge to the upper left angle inside the line art. Was this deliberate, as a highlight? I don't think it was, from the looks of it (and from the fact that it's not in the other pics). Other than that, you're doing a really excellent job. Those pictures are clean and clear and beautiful. MAHQ will greatly benefit from them!

Whoops, I almost forgot: I also counted the missile spewed by that Zentradi battlesuit in the opening. It fired 46 missiles. Greebly!

Okay, I decided to revisit the VF-5000. I wanted to get a better gunpod going, and I also wanted to get the A-D-J-S heads nailed down. So, attached are the VF-5000A, D, J, and S, all toting a more suitable gunpod. (Many will recognize it as an early design for the VF-1's gunpod.) Enjoy! Grebo

Well, I did it. I rewatched Macross Plus and counted all the missiles. It was pretty gruelling. Anyway, here are my results: (drum roll please) YF-21 The fastpacks hold a total of 48 micromissiles (8 per launch port), and the body holds 20 micromissiles (5 per launch port). YF-19 The fastpacks hold at least 8 micromissiles (at least 2 per launch port), and the leg pallets can hold 4 AAMs (2 per leg) or 12 micromissiles (6 per leg) or 2 AAMs and 6 micromissiles (1 AAM and 3 micromissiles per leg). (Considering that the YF-19 and YF-21 were designed to meet the same requirements, I owe the drastic differences in missile counts to warhead size. The YF-19 packs a smallish amount of high-damage missiles, while the YF-21 loads a much larger amount of less powerful missiles.) Yes, folks, there you have it. My home-cooked Best Guess!!! Below I “show my work.†Grebo =============================== YF-21 During the fight between Guld & Isamu on Earth, the YF-21 does the following: * First, it launches a volley of 10 micromissiles. It's totally unclear whether they come from the back launchers or the fastpacks. But! There are four missile ports in the body and six in the fastpacks (3 per leg-cover panel). Since 10 isn’t divisible by 4 or 6, I don’t think these missiles are all coming from either the body or the fastpacks. My best guesstimate is that each port is firing one missile. So that’s 4 missiles from the body and 6 from the fastpacks. * Soon after, the YF-21 launches a volley of 12 missiles. These are definitely from the fastpacks. However, the next shot (wherein the missiles attack Isamu and he shoots them down) shows 17 missiles attacking him and being destroyed. It’s kinda hard to tell the exact number of missiles; I’d say 18 is a more likely number than 17, as it’s entirely possible there was another missile flying around in there someplace AND 18 is divisible by 6 (the number of micromissile ports in the fastpacks). So, my best guesstimate here is for another 18 micromissiles from the fastpacks. * Guld's final missile barrage, during which he realizes his own dark past, is pretty hard to follow. However, to the best of my ability, I count that he fired 24 missiles from the fastpacks and either 14 or up to 24 missiles from the top/back launchers. (The latter , indeterminate number is based on a different, more distant stillframe. The smoke trails get all faint and mix together.) Given that there are four back/body ports, 16, 20, or 24 are most likely numbers for the body portion of the barrage. However, once we see the missiles home in on Isamu and explode, it gets tricky. The animation is reused here, a couple of times in fact, so depending on how one decides to count them, either 17, 18, 24, or even 59 missiles explode. Given the weird, subjective approach to time in this sequence, though, (plus the reuse of animation), I think I’ve gotta disqualify that 59 count. Now, based on the fact that Guld fired four “waves†of missiles from the fastpacks (1 missile per port equals one wave, so six missiles per wave) , and the missiles all appear to be launching in tandem, it’s probable that he fires four waves from the body as well. That would be 16 missiles. So 16 it is. This makes the best guesstimate for this sequence 16 more missiles from the body and 24 more from the fastpacks. ======================== YF-19 During the same fight, the YF-19 does the following: * First it fires two large-ish air-to-air missiles (not micromissiles); one from between each lower leg and fastpack. It’s not clear if the missiles come from inside the fastpacks or from the legs’ internal weapons pallets, and it’s also not clear if there’s room for another AAM in/on each leg. I figure that these missiles most likely came from inside the leg pallets; if they were fastpack armament, I should think the fastpacks would have been designed with a simpler, more secure way to fire them. Also, the Compendium says the YF-19 has “two [four] B-19A YF-19-exclusive internal weapons palletsâ€. This, I gather, would mean room for (potentially) two AAMs per leg. * Next, Isamu fires 6 micromissiles from the leg fastpacks (3 from each). However, when we see them homing in on the YF-21, the number of missiles has increased to 8. Given that the YF-19’s leg fastpacks have two missile ports each, volleys divisible by 4 make more sense, so I’m going with the 8-count here. Anyway, right after this the YF-19's leg fastpacks are lost (one is blown up by a shot from Guld, and during the explosion the other leg's fastpack comes off -- it's unclear whether it’s knocked off or deliberately jettisoned). If those leg packs held more micromissiles, we’ll never know. * After this, Isamu fires another 5 to 6 micromissiles at Guld, missing him and hitting a building. (The 6-count seems the more likely, as it’s divisible by 2.) This volley is tricky, though. The YF-19 has already lost its leg fastpacks, so the missiles couldn’t have come from there. The YF-19 does still have the shoulder fastpacks, but those aren’t supposed to hold any micromissiles. Therefore, they must come from the legs’ internal pallets… but above I noted that the leg pallets are (probably) loaded with AAMs in this scene. Since the YF-19 can load two B-19A pallets per leg, it’s possible that each leg could store one AAM in one pallet and 3 micromissiles (or more) in the other pallet, for a total of two AAMs and 6+ missiles total. But there’s another factor to consider: the projectiles in this shot are very small and appear very briefly, and when they hit the building the impacts don't look that much like missile explosions. In fact, in some stillframes the projectiles look kinda like gunpod shots -- and yet in other stillframes the projetiles sure do look like micromissiles. Argh! Annoyingly, there isn't any distinguishable sound effect associated with these shots and impacts; they're drowned out by the sound effects of the YF-21 dodging them and Guld's dialogue. Ultimately, I’m going with the supposition that they are indeed micromissiles; if they were not, they would look like gunshots in all frames. ======================= Okay! That's all the missiles that the YF-19 and YF-21 fire in all of Macross Plus -- excluding the Movie Edition, which I don't own yet. Anyway, these counts are of course entirely suspect. I mean, it’s totally possible that Guld had more missiles when he died (although if he did have more, one would think he’d have p used them). Similary, Isamu may well have had more missiles in his fastpacks when they were lost, but like I said, we’ll never know, so all I can do is go with what we’re given. And the YF-19’s leg pallets might also have had more missiles in them as well, but just as with Guld, if Isamu still had missiles left, he’d probably have used them against Sharon Apple or the Ghost or something…

My god, a giant transforming robot that's not mechanically feasible? Unheard of!! Seriously, Knight26, you obviously know a lot more about real-world mechanics and engineering than I. (Especially since I know virtually nothing about it -- I don't even really know the difference between a standard internal combustion engine and a gas turbine!) And I'll concede that my design is not based upon sound engineering principles. However, I am secure that a fully-transformable, fully-poseable, fully-accurate toy could be made of the Switch Blade; that, and making sure that nothing transforms TOO wackily, are always my main goals in designing a variable mech. I don't really expect nor desire mechanical feasibility in transforming mecha (or non-transforming mecha, for that matter), but of course your mileage may (and clearly does) vary. To elaborate on the "making sure that nothing transforms TOO wackily" point: As you said, Transformers make great use of taking existing bits and turning them into something else. I agree. They have that luxury because they are superscience-based; being living alien machines, the principles upon which they're based don't demand any kind of realism nor feasibility. With many TFs, for example, the cockpit/cabin does not actually have room for any people. (There's often a head or a pelvis or weaponry or something in there.) And yet, in the cartoons, these same TFs are shown to have complete cabin/cockpit spaces. In other words, parts of TF's magically collapse or "deflate" or get "shunted into a subspace pocket" or some other such wackiness. This is fine with me, since TFs have demonstrated all sorts of inexplicable superpowers. This is the kind of thing I avoid when designing my own transformable mecha. (Unless I'm designing a Transformer, of course!) I'm not gonna put a cockpit in, oh, a foot or something. (I love Dancougar, but the drivers in the feet must really hate life during a kick...) I'm gonna make sure there's room for a pilot in all modes, and that the pilot can actually get IN and OUT in all modes. There'll be places for handweapons and other external equipment to go in all modes. No parts are gonna come all the way off and then reattach somewhere else during transformation. Vehicle-mode thrusters aren't gonna be pointing backwards or upside-down or something in robot mode; nor are, say, the vehicle mode's main thruster nozzles gonna turn into the robot mode's FINGERS (*cough*TF Armada Thrust*cough*). Stuff like that. However, the intricacies of how the mech works on the inside... that I can't bring myself to worry about. At a certain point, suspension of disbelief HAS to kick in. Otherwise, the entire idea of a giant combat robot just falls to pieces. Oh, one more thing about designing mecha (transforming or not, robot or spaceship, whatever): it has to look cool. That is, in fact, the most important thing. Speaking of spaceships -- on the subject of the Rimfire starship, you asked about the radome and the rotating habitation section. Yes, I designed it so that one must enter from the middle of the spin and climb down to the floor. How else could it possibly be done? And as for the danger of the radome sterilizing the crew, I confess I had no idea this was a danger. (See? Told ya I know virtually nothing about real-world mechanics and engineering!) Let's just assume there's some kind of sci-fi shielding and/or electromagnetic screening that prevents this... Thanks for your comments!

So I've been rewatching Macross Plus; been countin' missiles. While doing so, something occurred to me. One of the themes in Macross Plus is the ascendancy of AI. Between the Ghost program superceding the Supernova project, and Sharon Apple becoming as powerful and as "alive" as she did, it seems like it's only a matter of time until the Macross world reaches a kind of AI crisis. With machines replacing fighter pilots and pop singers alike, it's rather easy to imagine humanity and AI facing off against each other. We've certainly seen this kind of storyline before, like in The Matrix and I, Robot and Terminator and in the backstory of Space Above And Beyond, not to mention in Rhea Gallforce and many, many other sci-fi yarns. The tough part is, I guess, finding a way to write the story so that the machines don't totally kick humanity's collective butt. That's usually how it shakes out. Now before youse all start clamoring about how both the Ghost and Sharon Apple were failures in Macross Plus... I know, I know. The Ghost and Sharon Apple were both failures in Macross Plus. Yes. But the incredible potential they showed makes it highly unlikely that any efforts to refine such technologies would abandoned. Guld and the YF-21 may have beaten the X-9, but he died in the process; the Ghost clearly demonstrated it was a match for, if not downright superior to, typical forces. And Sharon Apple went loony, yeah, but she had incredible powers: hypnotism, supreme computer hacking, and of course selling records and filling stadiums. I can't imagine that further attempts to refine and improve AI technology would NOT take place after Macross Plus -- and, as sci-fi and horror movies have taught us, the creations almost always turn against their creator at some point. Thoughts?

Okay, back to the Icarus. Now this is still a work in progress (I'm gonna need to refine the art for the SPII parts) but at least it communicates the basic idea.

Thanks very much! I'm actually surprised that of all my mecha designs, you singled out the Switch Blade. I actually think it's one of the best transformables I've ever designed and, if I do say so myself, I think it's a better helicopter/robot transformation format than virtually any other variable chopper I've ever seen. (Such as the Auroran, Gazette, Murphy, Springer, Bulkhead, Obsidian, etc etc etc.) This is NOT to say that I'm a great artist or mecha designer or anything, just that I think I stumbled upon a really good transformation with this design. And I certainly wouldn't assert that it's the best drawn variable chopper I've ever seen -- hardly! It's just that I think the transformation process and the shape of both forms is really good. I'm quite proud of the Switch Blade. It does have a lot of square, blocky elements, yes... I've been thinking of refinining this design for a long time now. Heh! How funny is it that this is being said on a Macross board... A lot of Kawamori-sensei's VFs would seem to have similar problems. But anyway! Let me review the design and see if I can address your comments: Okay, I see what you mean about the power source for the rotors. However, I can already see how to get around it -- the base of the rotor assembly would have a circular gear, and at 90 degrees to that would be two gears whose teeth intersect those of the rotor's base gear. These two perpendicular gears would be flush against the inside walls of the "backpack" (the module to which the rotors are connected and into which the telescoping tail collapses), leaving room for the collapsed tail to slide in. The two gears would be driven by a chain system or what-have you which leads into the torso core (beneath the cockpit/head). As for the arms/engines issue, I actually imagined the lower legs as being the engines on this design. The arms just fold up into that shape to get them outta the way, be more aerodynamic, and evoke the shape of modern helicopters. I s'pose the vents all over the place could all feed rushing air through a flexible system of ducts into the leg engines, or what-have-you. I'm no mechanic, and I really don't know all that much about how aircraft actually, oh, work. Oh, and Cruel Angel's Thesis wondered what drawings I did for Cyberpunk. Let's see here... some Cyberware for Chromebooks 2 and 3, the Full Borgs for Chromebook 2, some weapons for Chromebook 2, a couple guns for Blackhand's Streetweapons, one drawing in the Refbook (Listen Up You Primitive Screwheads), uhhhh... some of the equipment for Chromebook 2 (and 3? I don't remember)... hmmm. Yeah, I should actually check and see too! Thanks for the compliments and commentary, guys! Keep it coming!

Well, if you don't like the Super Nightmare, you'll hate these pictures! Buuuuut, here they are anyway.

Heh!!! Thanks very much for the compliment, Zinjo. I'm glad you like it. Well, keep in mind, Brisco, that I'm looking at all these VFs from the POV of a Macross RPG I'm gonna run. It'll be a little bit different than canon Macross, in that it will incorporate elements from both "Kawamori" continuity and Macross II continuity. Oh, it's OK, I know I'm clashing with the compendium. Again, for the purposes of my RPG, I'm unifying the lettering system for all VFs, based on that used in SDFM: A = general-issue (1 head gun), D = two-seater (0 or 2 guns), J = junior officer (2 guns), S = squadron leader (3 or 4 guns). Thank you. I really appreciate it. Oh, and while I'm here: Battroid-mode Super Nightmares!

Ahhh, I've been wanting to do this one for a while... A more orthodox configuration for the VF-17's gerwalk mode. It works in the VF-X games, so I just hadda do it. EDIT: May as well throw in the fighter mode while I'm at it! Annnd... hmmm... I guess I should do a version of the gerwalk mode holding the gunpod. EDIT 2: I noticed a couple of small errors on the Fighter-mode image, so I fixed it and reposted.

Yes, technically that'd be the VF-17D. A trainer would be colored differently and not be armed.

Yeah, I'm actually growing quite fond of the Nexx Special Valkyrie II... its a pleasant surprise. EDIT: In fact, I'm so fond of it that I colored it up. Attached: The VF-12C.

Hmmmm. I wonder. Can you (or someone) cite an acutal page number for me? Because I own the "This is Animation" book for MacII, and not only can I not find any mention of AAB and/or Automated Attack Bit, nor can I find any mention of these things at all. There's not even a picture. They are, however, illustrated on page 98 of Entertainment Bible #51, and there they are definitely called Squires. (And while I'm not fluent in Japanese, I'm able to read enough to be pretty sure about this. Kanji is a bit beyond me, but I'm really good with katakana and hiragana.) Oh wait, here we go. They're called "automated attack Bits" on page 70 of B-Club issue #79. Hmm. Well, there you go then. I wonder if either term is "more official". Grebo

Happy thanksgiving, everyone (well, in the USA, anyway). Today I finished off the VF-17J, the VF-17's gunpod, and the VF-17T (no Sound Force version). Enjoy!

And just for fun... EDIT: I did the whole squad, for even more fun. Whee!

Attached is an image of the VF-14 with its colors tuned to a more black-like scheme, and with its gunpods in a variety of deployments. Sketchley, thanks for your suggestions. I love insightful feedback like this. I'll look at the Fz-109's gun and see what I can do with it.