RavenHawk
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Posts posted by RavenHawk
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15 hours ago, tekering said:
I was just thinking exactly the same thing.
I'm so disappointed that this project has derailed your 1:48 Southern Cross plans that I may actively boycott MAAS Toys (rather than simply ignoring them).
Don't boycott them for tackling a less-popular figure that some folks have been asking for for years. Boycott them for trying to sell people on a lazy design.
8 hours ago, sh9000 said:I'm not familiar with MEPToys. Has this person put anything out before? From the "shop" link, it only shows a Breetai listed as "coming soon". The sample looks pretty nice, but the transformation on the Logan looks very amateurish (that said, it may just be a very early "let's see how the parts need to most basically move" kind of thing).
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15 hours ago, tekering said:
They can't even keep their own names straight...
I stand corrected, and apologize for my (good-natured, really) correction.
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2 hours ago, teckno viking said:
Enforcers would be another perfect 1/12 option as only a wee bigger than the Sentinels for that 7ft look.
I think you meant the soldiers. Weren't the Enforcers big ones, same as the Inbit Garmo/Gamo?
I think that Sentinel is using the same basic figure design as 1000Toys does for all of their 1/12 stuff (if someone knows otherwise, please correct me). Considering the variants that have been put out, modifying that basic design to fit Blame!, Biomega, G.I. Joe, and assorted Kamen Rider-style characters, it doesn't seem like a stretch to use it for a few different color variants of the soldiers/Protect Inbit, too. It just depends if they believe there's a market to justify the new add-on pieces.
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11 minutes ago, teckno viking said:
Oh don't know about Matchbox being super available. Have a gaggle of Both and happy to sacrifice a few for 1/12 Scouts.
Didn't know about the Breetai though. Only recall the one a few years back custom made.
Give it a try and let us know how it works out.
In my personal experience, kit bashing makes sense if there is a specific part that you are looking to use on something different, or if there is a frame that you are going to remove parts from and replace with your own parts. In the case of the Matchbox Invid, it's pretty much all shell pieces that are screwed together. Since it looks like you're talking about replacing something like 3/4 of the shell pieces, I suspect it makes more sense just to do a new one from scratch.
Something like a Kotobukiya frame with custom parts attached to it might be a good starting point.
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1 hour ago, easnoddy said:
Just a personal annoyance, I always though the Toynami looks stubby in armo soldier. The ET doesn't really look very close to lineart, but i like the look. The Sentinel looks highly stylized.
I don't think we will get a good, accurate Legioss (or Spartas) until Bandai or a Bandai subsidiary tries it. Perhaps Arcadia could do it closer.I could see Arcadia doing it, but it seems unlikely to me that Bandai would tackle it without some reason for significant new and increased interest in the property.
I'd love to see Arcadia take a stab at it, and think even Kitz Concept could do something interesting, in a relatively small scale. Personally, from what little we've seen, I actually like the stylized Sentinel approach.
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4 minutes ago, Mog said:
Always always love the way the two look attached together...
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13 minutes ago, JB0 said:
What? But that's completely insane!
I mean, if that was all it took to be a toy designer, then I've got some old notebooks from when I was little...
BRB, applying to MAAS.
The annoying part is that some of these designers (not all, by any means, but some of the ones that I've seen interviews with) take themselves very seriously, and think that they design robots and know how it's REALLY done... but, in reality, they're very talented CAD artists, but don't know any engineering at all.
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On 1/19/2019 at 2:23 PM, Einherjar said:
For anyone taking this more seriously than they should, have you seen any Furmanisms in the comic book?
What kind of a sadist are you, expecting us to read these a second time to look for Furmanisms?
(and no, I didn't notice any the first time through, but I wasn't really looking; I was too caught up in how far his writing has fallen)
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On 1/18/2019 at 8:58 AM, Mechapilot77 said:
hmmm... i don't think they are even at the "ready to take to factory" stage yet, and i also seem to detect that many of these small companies "do the design" or hire someone to do it, but skip some of the technical aspects of the design engineering part of it and and expect "the factory" to "figure it out". if each component is fully spec'd the only issue can be noncompliance with spec. anyway, it seems they aren't at that point yet as i don't think they have a good design yet.
One of their designers (from a different MAAS toyline) said outright in an interview that he designs the look of the toy and how it should transform, and leaves it to the factory to figure out how joints should work, how parts should peg into place, and what tolerances to use. The quality of the figures and transformation completely depends on which factory they go with, and they switch between multiple different factories for different lines.
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6 minutes ago, tekering said:
Actually, they've directly responded to my complains on Facebook:
And my response:
Overall, the Facebook comments have been much more positive, and not nearly as critical as we've been here...
Full Disclaimer:
It's been a long day, so I may be reading the Facebook page with a bit of a negative lens.
Tekering, your post was polite and gracious, so my respect for that.
On to my reaction:
My read of their response pretty much lines up with what I said a couple days ago (I think... sorry if I'm misremembering).
Their response to you is typical of what I've seen in the past. Most people only praise them on Facebook (and don't get me wrong, I have two of their products and LOVE THEM), but any time someone has pointed something out that isn't right, they just respond saying that they've thought it through already and what they are doing is the right way to go. My criticism isn't that they don't respond to people, it's just that they listen but don't hear.
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3 minutes ago, Knight26 said:
It almost looks like they are building it based on this monstrosity.
That's the thing. When I was a kid, my neighbors had this toy. I remember folding the legs under it to try to simulate the hover tank mode.
It looks like they are literally just taking this version, and adding in a couple details, and that's it.
The benefits of modern toy engineering over mid 1980s toy engineering... just don't seem to be there in this design.
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2 minutes ago, easnoddy said:
SDF-1 has low flow.
In all fairness, I think this is actually a pretty decent cover.
I feel dirty admitting that.
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6 minutes ago, jenius said:
To be fair to them, no one knows the Southern Cross market because the last company that even attempted anything for it was Matchbox... and they made pretty bad toys during the heyday of the franchise so not really apples to apples. No one really will know until people actually put money toward Southern Cross products because chatter on the Internet is meaningless.
That's not to absolve them if you think they're doing a poor job drumming up interest or you think they're doing a poor job with their design-work. It will be tough to parse whether there simply isn't enough interest in general or 'there is no interest' due to their doing a poor job in either their marketing or design work.
Agreed.
With MAAS' history, it'll be a good year or so before a product comes out, so I think a few extra weeks on redesigning the initial concept (and let's remember, right now all they have is some CAD models and renderings generated from them) wouldn't hurt the timeline.
If you make a clunky mediocre toy, only hardcore fans will buy it.
If you make a sleek, aesthetically pleasing toy with some innovative design and transformation gimmicks, then you can draw in people who wouldn't necessarily be hunting for a SC toy, but might just really like your design.
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1 hour ago, Einherjar said:
Minmei sings and has character development. That's just a defibrillator on legs.
Minmei had character development?
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11 minutes ago, Chronocidal said:
It's really hilarious, every time they put out a few good panels of mecha action, the characters turn into wax dummies.
I'm pretty those panels are from a different issue, like 5 or more months back. The good new mecha panels are a different artist, I think.
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30 minutes ago, no3Ljm said:
That's a good find, RavenHawk. Nice purchase.
Btw, the Porsche 928S 'metal car' is a from a line called Machine Robo DX made by Tonka back in '83. And was used as part of GoBots.
Yup. That's how young I am. Hahaha!
Thanks. Yeah, I saw the picture in the posting, and thought "That looks like a Machine Robo DX", but it wasn't until I got it in hand and transformed it that I realized, "Hey, that's Herr Fiend!"
Either way, it was a fun little find, and it let me add a Matchbox Cyclone to my shelf without eating into the budget for the (hopefully soon) Yellow Sentinel.
Oh, and I think I'm pretty "young" too. I had more Gobots (well, knockoffs even less expensive than the real ones) as a kid, but no DXs (those were approaching Transformers prices back then).
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As I wait for new MOSPEADA (and Megazone) products, I've been slowly looking around at deals on old items to fill out the collection.
I'd just like to say "thank you" to the few folks who still post items on eBay without looking online to see what they are.
I just picked up this sweet "Matchbox motorcycle", and it even came with a "Bandai metal car".
Perfect condition? Not at all... but for a whopping $5.50 (plus $3.50 shipping), I'll take it.
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So... they're taking this thing in totally new directions, with increasingly less to do with what is commonly known as "Robotech?"
All things considered, that may not be a bad thing...
This reminds me a bit of when Furman took over the US Marvel run of Transformers, and started running the stories towards less of a direction of what was previously Transformers, and more as a springboard for his own original (or heavily modified) human characters. Anyone remember the Neo Knights? Furman was readying them to be their own series for when Transformers inevitably got canceled.
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4 minutes ago, 505thAirborne said:
Probably a lot of Anime magic going on here, but this is how it looks in the series.
Their tank mode definitely looks off compared to the lineart.
I know it's a boxy design, but theirs looks less... sleek, I guess. Too much legs just folded under it, not really collapsing into place... the gun/cannon looks too small and just sort of sitting on top, instead of partially nested in place, and the, uh, fold-out hover thingies (sorry) look too small too, or at least too small compared to the rest of the lower leg.
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4 minutes ago, enphily said:
My only real nitpick here is with their statements about how they listen to the fans. In my VERY LIMITED experience with some of the products that MAAS has put out, while they are very active on social media, they also are convinced that they know best. So, they do "listen" to fans who are very vocally praising them, but input which doesn't line up with what they have already decided upon or which is more critical than glowing seems to get ignored.
So, I guess they're a good fit for partnership with HG...
(again, limited experience with them, so it might not speak to the specific folks behind this particular project)
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5 minutes ago, sh9000 said:
Didn't realize it was going to last that long...
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Not to sound out-of-character positive on a series that has been generally very poor, but, based purely on the preview, it doesn't look like Furman is phoning the script in quite as badly as on previous issues (faint praise), and I'm fine with the inclusion on the Invid. This storyline, for me, is completely separate from anything before and, as a Robotech property, it makes sense to link the generations together more closely for the fans.
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1 minute ago, Mechapilot77 said:
"87.9% Positive feedback " though so....yeah you are protected via paypal and through ebay but i've learned that too good to be true prices on ebay are usually sellers "going rogue"...could be wrong though.
I buy a lot of stuff from Japan and China through eBay, and my experience with these types of posts (relatively low seller ratings, prices too good to be true) is that they either end up canceling the orders, or you just don't get what you ordered. You wait 2 months for the packet to arrive, then it doesn't, the seller doesn't respond to emails, eBay won't do anything because it's been too long, and you're stuck with PayPal. PayPal refunds you the money, but you've lost a couple months of time, the prices have gone up meanwhile, and, oh yeah, since it's been so long, you can no longer leave the seller a negative review (i.e. an 87.9% rating would actually be like 50% if people were able to leave reviews by the time they knew for sure there was an issue).
Personally, I only deal with sellers who have about 95% or who are very responsive to initial questions about the item. I've had a lot of good experiences, I've gotten some fantastic deals, but also been soured by some negative ones.
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22 hours ago, Bobby said:
Easter egg discovery - took the cover off the Megazone 23 artbook (discussed earlier in this thread) that came with the Megazone 23 Complete Box set and lo and behold hidden on the reverse side unfolds a huge 26.5"x 11" poster of a peculiar looking Garland. Perhaps most notable is the exposed front disc brakes and calipers (huge departure from the original line art). It has the silver front axle shoulders and forearm handles with no side view mirrors like the original Garland. But then has the back-calf flaps of the Proto-Garland (but in silver instead of bronze), and front brown knee-cap/shin armor (again like the original), but then overall shares some resemblance with the proportions of the E=X Garland!
I saw that too, but I don't think I really looked closely at it before. I just assumed it was one of those "Here are parts exposed and flaps open" kind of images they do to make things look more realistic (like the MOSPEADA image with all of the made up internals, or lots of scifi manuals do showing the insides of spaceships).
Since we have no new MZ23 stuff to report, I thought I'd post a bit about the PS3 game, which I recently picked up for a very fair price. I got the limited Japan-only "international edition."
Instead of just a PS3 game case, it comes in a box:
Inside, you have the standard game case:
But the fun is inside of this additional box inside:
First, we have a DVD:
It's region encoded, so I haven't been able to watch it yet.
(I thought I could play the game and watch the DVD on my son's PS3, but it turns out that his is broken and he had moved on to the PS4 already, so no backwards compatibility or region-free watching).
My understanding is that this is the version of MZ23 Part II that was created as an educational video to teach Japanese how to speak English. It uses the Harmony Gold Robotech voice actors for the dubbing. It also supposedly includes the ending from Part I that had new material created for the Robotech Movie, so it's sort of a Robotech-ized MS23, I suppose.
Finally, the box also contains a special book:
The book contains a lot of images of the 3d models used in the game:
As well as character designs:
Interestingly, it also contained some original Artmic artwork/design sketches which, offhand, I don't remember seeing in other books:
I've seen this out there for over $100, and I don't think it's worth that. However, if you're patient and wait for one of the decent deals (I paid around $30), then I think most people will be happy to add it to their collection.
Robocop is back
in Anime or Science Fiction
Posted
I thoroughly enjoyed the book, and I find the movie entertaining every time I watch it. The two are two completely separate and unrelated entities to me.