J.T. Silversmith

This is what TFW2005 said about the group responsible for Nightbirds car mode. "The official render of the alt-mode belonging to Nightbird from Transformers: Rise Of The Beasts is unveiled by Pandem Rocketbunny who worked on the customization of the Nissan Skyline R33 GT-R. Pandem Rocketbunny is a vehicle customization company established in Japan. The company is most famous for its Pandem Aerokits. Founder and CEO Kei Miura was directly involved with the design of Nightbird." So that is who you should blame Peter, it is clearly his fault. Yeah, i think a lot of the cars are overdone and too "MichaelBay", and that makes me nervous. I hope it is just because they are all going offroading, but it does not instill confidence.

It looks to me like it is a 1x2 flat tile. It is clipped onto the bottom of the gunpod with a claw piece much the same way as the hand is holding it. You are seeing the bottom of the tile, so it looks like an open box. The claw sits between the cone and a rectangular brick.

Some of the holes for the hands and feet to connect to were off center, I remember specifically Nosecone has a hole in the bottom of each foot, rather than the single hole that Strafe, Lightspeed and Afterburner had in their feet. In the photo above, you can see the two holes on the little orange block in Computron's ankle. The bottom where the foot piece connects is the same, two holes side by side, so the foot piece can't connect centered. No Idea why he is that way, and the other three are different.

I have been working on my own custom Lego Valkyrie that I call the VA4-Peregrine. I have been considering putting it up on the lego Cuusoo site. One benefit of an original design is that you don't need to worry about licensing. I have a gallery on deviant art if anyone is interested. http://jtsilversmith.deviantart.com/gallery/45823764

I built a Lego version of an original design I called the VA-4 Peregrine. It is a VTOL Attacker designed and tested at the New Edwards Test Center on Eden. I intended it to be a contemporary of the VF-11 and the VA-3. I have a gallery on Deviant Art that has lots of pictures if you are interested. http://jtsilversmith.deviantart.com/gallery/45823764 Tell me what you think.

I think it is this picture that makes me believe in a Hotrod + Rodimus Prime toy. You can very clearly see there are long exhaust pipes on the back of his leg and a full tire with a tread inside his lower leg. A pure Rodimus has zero need for that. The only reason would be to make it more like the Hotrod toy, that you wouldn't do if it is just Rodimus. The gun has two seperate handles, and it looks like it can split in half to make two smaller guns. There is also a picture that shows a long window, that runs the entire length of his upper body. The window in the RV mode is the same length as the RV hood, and that is only half the length of his chest. There is no way that long a window could be for the RV mode, so it must be for Hotrod!

I tweaked the levels of the photos a bit, but I didn't really change the color at all, mostly I cleaned out the green, but in the Arcee picture there are still bits of red fuzziness that should probably be grey, but other than that the colors should be accurate. Did any one else notice the two different paintjobs on Optimus's truck mode? The picture from the slideshow is a plain red truck, the one on the sign announcing the panel times has stripes and blue panels on the sleeper. I wonder which one is more correct. Also the cow horns on Cliffjumper's hood made me laugh, and I really liked Ratchets combination of eyebrows and traditional head crest. These look fun.

All right, that is quite awesome, even if most of those ships are a little to old for me to really love them. That was a riot.

len_d69, that is a nice paintjob on voyager Prime, that mold is fun. Still I have to say I do like the new leader one better. With a bit of touch ups, a wash and some drybrushing it just looks soooo nice.

I thought you guys would appreciate this, I bought the Treadbolt repaint of Classics Jetfire, and decided to turn him into someone much cooler. Let me introduce you to Saber and his minicon companion Yukio. They are a couple of Autobot Flyboys. When Saber uses his booster unit, he is known as StarSaber, the greatest swordsman in the galaxy, and Yukio becomes his sword. When times are desperate he can activate his "Victory" mode... or Combime with Ginrai (Classic Optimus Prime) to become the most powerful warrior in the universe Victory Saber! Wow, that sounds so much cheesier than I was hoping it would. Oh well, it is a really fun custom, Enjoy.

If I wanted to look at that I would just get out my Goldbug There is a reason the only ones who play with him are my 4 and 6 year old sons. All kidding aside, that is kind of fun.

This was a very inspired mod, I did to help Activators Bumblebee look better. In the first picture you can see how the toy originally transformed. His arms are WAAAAY to long, with his fingers nearly reaching his ankles. Needless to say I decided to try and do something about it. I cut the black piece of plastic that makes the upper arm right above the upper circular part of his elbow. Once you do that the screw and peg act like an additional joint, allowing the upper arm to bend 90 degrees downward. In the second picture you can see the arm bent. Like this, you can now rotate the old shoulder so that the old upper arm points forward, and then use the new joint we created as a shoulder joint. This effectively moves the shoulder up and forward, greatly reducing the length of the arm, and moving the tires above the shoulder instead of below. I think this looks much better myself, so I thought I would pass it on.

I finally got a hold of Samurai Prowl, I like how they remolded almost every part, it really shows a lot of thought went into the figure. Just from looking at the pictures I knew there were a few things that I knew I would have to do once I got him. Painting the hands, thigh pads and "ninja stars" were a given, as well as adding the grey accents, and toughing up all of the gold. Once I had it in my hands, I found there were a few things that bugged me enough that I had to do something about them. I did not like how much they had to scale down his head to make the helmet fit, On the back of his left knee there was a small tab of plastic that was keeping his knee from bending all the way that I had to trim off, and I thought the top edge of the windscreen stuck up to far in robot mode. After looking as some screen caps, realized that it is too big in motorcycle mode as well. So I decided to trim it down a bit. I think it looks much better now, and interestingly it is still too big in motorcycle mode. In the cartoon it is cut in a low curving line just like the window on the sidecar, but that would look wrong in robot mode. When I saw 5 servos of Doom I really liked the look of Yokitron's helmet, and decided to see if I could modify the toy to look more like the cartoon. With some careful planning I realized that it would be possible to make a fair representation of the new helmet with some careful trimming and a few scraps of plastic. While I was at it I thought I would try and see it it would be possible to make the helmet fit the older bigger head. Thankfully there IS enough room, and by widening the inside of the helmet, and the opening for his chin, I was able to get it to work! I then swapped the non opening Ninja stars with the working ones from the old one. Now I have one excellent prowl, and one with a gimpy head and cheap ninja stars I can give to my kids. [attac hment=65648:P1010009.JPG]

I just got Inferno as well, he is quite nice. I do like the arm cannon, it still feels like the old missile hand blaster thing, but he still has a hand as well. I think it is a nice upgrade. Also, for amyone who enjoys Transformers Animated, the third season started today, and it was EPIC. Tons of action, tons of new characters, lots of interesting answers, loads of references to previous shows. It was great fun. If the rest of the season can compare to this, season 3 will be ledgendary.

I went looking on Brickshelf, and found a few very helpful, in progres, and close up shots of one of those Vipers here. http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=304038

Valkyrie Addict, that is great! I love your Avatar by the way. Anyway, for Halloween I went as myself this year. This is me with my two boys, Commander Rex, and Iron Man. If you are interested I have some more pictures up of my jacket in the Cosplay thread here.Macrossworld Cosplay Thread

Yeah, thanks David. I was going to post one picture over there and then refer to this one, I just have not finished yet.

I wasn't quite sure what the best place to post this was, but I think I will put something here. For Halloween I made an SMS uniform, and I though I would talk about it a bit, and share some pictures. When I think of "Cosplay" I think of someone making a costume that is trying to look like a walking cartoon, a perfect three-dimensional representation of a two dimensional drawing. I have seen pictures of some other SMS jackets, and they looked like someone trying to be a cartoon, and most of the time I don't think it really "works". For this I wanted to do something different. I wanted to make a "real" jacket that if someone decided to draw a picture of it, it might look like what you see in the anime. I also had some real world concerns that effected what I was doing. I am not all that great at sewing, so I decided to use an existing jacket and modify it rather that making something from scratch. I also wanted a jacket I could wear as often as possible. Since I live in the mojave desert in California, it would need to as light as it could be, and look good. I decided what I wanted was a light windbreaker, like the pilots in Top Gun were wearing, only with macross style. I bought an "Athletics Works" brand jacket from Walmart that I thought looked similar to the SMS one, and a yard of berry red fabric. I ripped out the batting used for insulation to make it lighter. Then I added an inch of fabric along the front zipper, and two inches along the bottom. The pointed panels under each arm were the hardest to figure out, and took a lot of test fitting to make sure they were wide enough when I was wearing the jacket, and that the front edges were parallel to the front stripes. I could not find a red zipper anywhere in town to replace the black one, and I don’t think I have the skill to do it on my own anyway. I know the jackets waist is supposed to be much higher, 3 or 4 inches at least, but again, that kind of modification is beyond my skill level. I am a digital artist, and I had already made clean Vector line drawings of the SMS logo and the shoulder patches for my Avatar, so I took them and went to a local shop that does digital sewing machine embroidery, and had them make the two red Macross 25 fleet patches for the shoulders, and went to a Trophy Shop that makes laser engraved name badges, and had them make an SMS badge for me. I decided to have them make the SMS logo in a metallic brushed gold rather than yellow because I thought it looked much classier, and more “real” than yellow. Unfortunately none of the pictures really do it justice, it looks much better in person. I am quite happy with the final results, I think it looks very nice, and very “real”. Perhaps it is a little too real, I was at a church Halloween party and nobody realized I WAS wearing a costume. For those who might be curious I paid $15 for the jacket, $5 for the fabric, $10 for the patches, $18 for the SMS badge, $10 for the belt and $15 for the green cargo pants, for a grand total of $73! Not too bad.

Hey d3v, TheLoneWolf, I think I know what ship you are referring to, though I do not really know much about it. In the Palladium RPG "Macross II Sourcebook One" It is listed as the Marduk Annihilator or simply as "New Type Power Armor". The book says it is a prototype mecha designed specifically for the invasion of Earth. They claim it is piloted by a human sized Marduk officer, is 14.3M tall, Flies Mach 8.5 in space ( yeah right), Mach 2.5 in atmosphere, And Mach 2 in Battroid mode. Its armament is supposedly 2 lasers in the chest, two lasers in the hips, missile launchers in the knees, a plasma cannon in the nose if the jet, and the large missile launcher in the right arm that launches "laser firing missiles". However, this is just like all of the other Robotech RPG books, and any or all of it could be completely wrong! The real problem is I have yet to find anything about it from a more reliable source. Even with an idea of what I am looking for, I have not been able to find any references to it anywhere on the web. The thing is an enigma, I can't even find the real line art for it, just the drawings Wayne Breaux traced from the original art for the Robotech RPG book. To try and distill down to what I think is accurate, I would bet is it really only referred to as a "new type" of mardook mecha, and I would bet there was very little said about it in any official sources. I think the pictures are fairly accurate, Just traced and shaded, so some of the information on weapons is correct. I do think the knee missiles and hip mounted energy weapons are correct, though if they are lasers, particle cannons or whatnot I don't know. The "chest cannons" look a lot like maneuvering thusters to me, but they could be anything. I am sure there is some sort of weapon in the Nosecone/backpack thing, and there does seem to be laser barrels in the missiles for the right arm. A weapon that fires Fin Funnel like missiles to counter the UN Spacy's auto attacker bits would make some sense in the context of Macross II, and is too odd (in a macross series) to be just made up. This is all just speculation on my part. Anyway here are the pictures I've got.

I have been using one as my avatar here, but I have been waiting for an excuse to post the larger version of the one I did. Looks like this is my chance.

I'm with you there Shaka-Z, water would be a great propellant, fairly heavy for lots of thrust, easy to transport and store, easy to clean up if spilled, not to corrosive or volatile, good for the environment, and really easy to get a supply of, and cheap to boot. If you really can use almost anything for propellant things can't get much better than this.

I have to admit I was one of the people who misunderstood the wording in the Macross Compendium, and I thought the engine output of the '19 was limited in outer space and not in an atmosphere. That made sense to me because a vacuum is a very good insulator, and thermal regulation is one of the major concerns in real world spacecraft design. In the space shuttle the inside of the cargo bay doors are radiators and as soon as it is in orbit the doors are opened to help keep the ship cool. In an atmosphere air molecules come into contact with a hot object, and pick up some of the heat. the hot air moves away by convection currents and more cold air replaces it. the cycle continues, and the object cools off. In a vacuum there is no medium to help carry away the heat, so it can only use infrared heat radiation to dissipate heat, and that is very slow. So I thought the '19 was not as fast in space, but that is not the case it is limited in an atmosphere. Since outer space is so terrible for cooling purposes, the mechanism for keeping the engines cool must be completely internal. To me the most likely means of keeping the engine cool in a vacuum is to use the propellant itself. So if the '19 is faster in space than in an atmosphere, it means that the propellant used to produce thrust in a vacuum is more efficient at cooling the reactors than the air is in atmospheric flight. I think that would make sense if the propellant is a liquid, it will be able to transfer a lot more heat than a gas. so simply put, the '19's engines are so hot that there is no way to keep them cool at full power using only air as a coolant, but in space the propellant used can keep the engines from overheating. We know the '19's engines can work as a jet and a rocket, so it is logical to ask, as some people are asking, why have a dual system if the engine is more powerful in rocket mode? Simple, it uses internal propellant in rocket mode, and uses the atmosphere as a propellant and coolant in jet mode. Therefore you have unlimited range in an atmosphere, and a limited duration of propulsion in outer space. Given how radiation conscious they seem to be on Frontier, I think is is safe to assume the exhaust from a valk is not radioactive, so either the there is a heat exchanger or the OTM thermonuclear fusion reactor output is "clean". I would also assume that the exhaust temperature of the engine is relatively low, based on the lack of collateral damage to streets and pedestrians by VFs in gerwalk mode.

Those last two pictures really make him look a lot like Prowl. Well now I know where this guy fits in my personal Transformers universe, (the comic book version of )Prowl Finally became the leader of the Autobots, and got rebuilt, taking on the name "GTR Prime". This guy looks really cool, and it looks like he has flip out blasters in the back of the seat, fun. I also love that his name is the same as my oldest son's initials "GTR". Now I have to figure out how to get a hold of one of these, darn it, need more money!

Check out the Transformers Animated toy "Oil Slick", this might be just what you are looking for. Here is a link to a Seibertron.com picture gallery of Oil Slick being ridden by Torch. Check it out. To keep things from getting to far off topic, all this last week My 5 and 3 year old sons have been watching Tron two or three times a day, and playing with my old light cycle, and now they announce Tron 2. They sold me before I even saw the trailer.

I've been beginning to wonder if Sheryl's earring really were her mother's. It seems much more likely that Grace gave it to her as a part of the "Fairy 9" project and told her that it was from her mother to insure that Sheryl always kept the earrings with her.