Chronocidal
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STAR WARS Merchandise Episode - 2
Chronocidal replied to Black Valkyrie's topic in Anime or Science Fiction
Late reply, but I'm actually not referring to the Falcon. I'm more thinking of the original designs they made for the movie. Mentioned it before, but clearly someone on the staff had been trapped in their cubicle so long, they must have gone nuts, glued handlebars to their cubicle wall, and tried to ride it around the office. And, apparently that was the best idea anyone could come up with for a vehicle design. There's obviously some practicality to it, but good grief people.. have they completely forgotten that the idea of making merchandise is to design things that people might possibly want to buy? -
STAR WARS Merchandise Episode - 2
Chronocidal replied to Black Valkyrie's topic in Anime or Science Fiction
You're asking a question that I'm fairly certain no one at Disney actually gave two seconds worth of thought to. I've given up trying to understand anything about their (lack of) design philosophy for the new movies. From what I recall, the designs from Solo that wound up as toys were astoundingly bad. -
Ok, see, I had never actually heard that explanation, and I thought they were the same exact ship. I filed it under the same heading as why the Enterprise suddenly had a bunch of new hull details in the first movie. I know Polar Lights makes a large scale K'Tinga to match their big Enterprise kits, but I really don't have the room to display those... I might have to just find a closet to stash that elephant in before those kits disappear.
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I'll be curious to see this view of if. The spacing on the engines here is clearly a lot wider than the pics we've seen.
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Your most recent Macross or toy purchase! General thread.
Chronocidal replied to Gakken85's topic in Hall Of The Super Topics
Next 1/100 Fighter Collection release is up: -
Don't believe there's any question about it at all. The only way those legs are going to be able to fit in there is if the entire belly opens up. Exactly how they open is up for grabs, but folding outward seems the most likely option, since they look connected to the big plates alongside the exhaust ducts.
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If there's anything worse than "design by committee," it's "design by fan committee." I don't know how much weight to throw onto the rumor that they're doing a "choose your own plot" system based on fan reaction to leaks, but it wouldn't surprise me. Personally I think it would be hilarious if they had to delay the release at the last minute. I don't want to exactly hope for it, but I would love to see how they would attempt to spin that level of disaster.
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Oooh, bout time we got a good K'Tinga, though I'm vague on how that differs from the D7? Really though, I wish Polar Lights would put out a movie-styled counterpart to their TOS Klingon cruiser. The TOS version is fine, but I would love one with some kind of surface detail. If this one is roughly similar in size, I might have to pick it up to display alongside the refit kit.
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I'm guessing Shapeways, or a similar service, based on the texture. They make some very nice prints, but sanding the material they use is exhausting.
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I just got my kit from HLJ as well, so time to start slapping it together. I think my only real gripe about the fighter mode is that the wings need some sort of latch to lock into the legs... which, now that I think about it, might not be hard to add. I did the same sort of mod to a couple of my 1/72 VF-25 kits, so it might work well here too.
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This right here is actually my highest interest item. I'm not going to begrudge anyone wanting destroids or other enemy mechs, because those will be awesome as well, but releasing stand-alone super/strike parts to use on all those VF-1s we have is obscenely overdue.
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STAR WARS Merchandise Episode - 2
Chronocidal replied to Black Valkyrie's topic in Anime or Science Fiction
I feel like this character would have been a whole lot more interesting if they hadn't revealed anything about her before the movie. Part of what made Leia's bounty hunter disguise in ROTJ interesting was that you went in not knowing what was going on. -
Don't forget, you also had D-Day landing craft (IN SPACE!), the "quad jumper" (a cockpit glued to four engines), Rey's jet engine bike (I swear, they stole that concept from an episode of Talespin), Han's flying corridor chase soundstage, and Leia's Flying Taco Truck. Each of the prequels managed to pull off a fairly distinct look though, and they did it in a way that actually fit something that looked like wartime tech progression. The Jedi starfighters went from a delta design to something very Tie-like, and other ships looked like direct design ancestors of OT-era craft. They didn't always look less advanced, but you could imagine a design progression, closer to stylistic differences between various year models with cars. Far as vehicle toys go though, no we didn't get many traditional figure-scaled ones, but in TLJ's case, I think that was a combination of practical reasons (the bombers would have been huge), and aesthetic reasons (did anyone actually want that stupid pod craft Rose and Finn stole?). On the other hand though, don't forget, they covered all those bases with Lego sets ten ways from tuesday. Not that any of those sold either, but they did exist.
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Is this one of those events where they reveal more later, or is this just all we're getting at this one?
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Actually, I don't think the proton torpedoes falling was ever meant to be gravity, at least not at the trajectory they were flying. Remember, the Y-Wings were originally bombers, and in other sources they're absolutely what you would use to drop a bomb onto a ground target, as well as launching heavy projectiles. The X-Wings were a last-resort backup when the bombers were all destroyed, and while I figure maybe the torpedoes could be programmed to fly a pre-determined flightpath to a target, I think the only way Luke managed to make that shot was literally via the Force.
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Yeah, sorry about that, I didn't have the image loaded to check, and got the orientation backwards. I think in all cases though, the knees are pointing inwards.
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You're right about it being fantasy, so I get you. I think if we had strong enough thrusters with low enough fuel consumption it would be entirely possible to do, but I doubt it would ever reach a level of practicality where it mattered, because the methods we've been using so far will always be more fuel efficient. As a side note, I love how wacky this board's spellchecker is.. you'd think after this many discussions of space-related stuff, it would know enough not to flag the word "thruster."
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Yeah, the big thing for me is that 3D Studio Max isn't meant as a solid modeler, so it operates at the polygon level. Cutting panel lines is actually a destructive operation, because you have to insert new polygons, and while I can draw the cutting curves and apply a width easy enough, it's not simple to just subtract a shaped channel from the base surface, say if I wanted rounded or square or triangular channels. This gets really painful if I decide I want to scale up the model, because it means re-cutting all of the details in a smaller size so the panel lines don't get blown up too big. I'll have to check this out this coming week.. I've got a few components with the lines cut already, but I've saved the base blank model, and if they're this easy to re-cut, it should be a quick operation. I just need to learn how to translate the design into a solid format. The parts are already all fully-enclosed surfaces, but I now from past experience that CAD software doesn't tend to get along well with polygon models.
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I'm under the impression that the plates will just be hanging for gerwalk anyway, maybe the full set. Even if they don't keep the lower third of the belly plates connected to the legs, I think they will still have to open to store the legs. Also, speaking of the Omega PantsTM, I did notice one thing this transformation does that Yamato's didn't. Looking closely at the transformation sketches, Yamato turned the feet the wrong way when they folded them up between the engines. The art shows the toes pointing upwards, with the heels down, leaving nothing poking out under the center panel. I don't know if Bandai did this exactly, but the longer back end looks like it could leave room for that. I'm not sure what benefit it would have either way though. Far as the beefy engines go, I do think they should be wider spaced, but there are some sketches that make them look that big. I think I'm mostly not a fan of the .. I don't really know what to call it... "greeblification" maybe, of the upper engine surface? I liked it when they were smooth, but Bandai for some reason decided to invent a bunch of little raised details to cover that area with. Would rather they made the rear vents bigger, since those absolutely look way too thin. I think I can adjust to the thicker engines really. Would still like the tails mounted further to the rear, but that's not likely. I'm actually surprised they squared off the tail tips so flat though, all of the art shows them clipped at an angle, and since they're absolutely not involved in any part of the transformation, I don't see why they can't be perfectly shaped.
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I actually assumed the big TV hands were probably a teaser for the eventual GBP-1 armor set. They could still pack them in with the TV-style super packs.
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What I'm saying is, rethink how you're applying thrust. The reason spacecraft fly how they do is because it's practical, and works with the technology we have. That doesn't mean that there aren't entirely impossible and impractical alternatives. When you have a box capable of emitting a force with zero mass transfer (basically ignoring Newton's third entirely), all kinds of impossible things suddenly become very plausible. This is one of them. If you assume infinite ability to generate thrust, apart from any traditional concept of fuel, there's no reason you can't fly like an airplane in space. You just have to cover the ship in fantasy thrusters, and they duplicate the forces experienced by an aircraft in atmospheric flight. Far as flight in actual atmospheric flight goes though, I always assumed that if you have deflector shields capable of repelling solid objects, they would clearly have the capability of repelling atmospheres. No excuse for Ties (and assorted books actually make a point that they behave terribly in atmosphere), but anything with shields could theoretically just behave like a perfectly streamlined aerodynamic bubble. As a side note though, from a "fighter pilot" perspective, the new movies have the same problem that ST:TNG had in its first season: the dialogue is terrible. (I'm mostly thinking of TFA here, I haven't seen TLJ enough times to remember if this was an issue). The pilots all talk like they've never been in a cockpit before in their life. The prequels had a bit of this too, but only in TPM I think, since after that the battles were mostly involving clones, and the dialogue was heavily militaristic. Mimicking the WWII movies is what gave all the OT movies some weight. The cockpit dialogue was short, precise, and distinct. Everything in the new movies comes off with the same cringe factor as Geordi in the first few episodes of TNG going "Course laid in, four hundred thirty three by twenty seven." You don't relay coordinates that way, you speak the digits. You don't say "nope" over the comm, you say "negative." These aren't direct quotes, and none of the movies were perfect, but the dialogue in the OT just felt so much less.. amateur. I absolutely know I'm nit picking here, but I hope I'm not the only person who noticed this. It just sounds wrong.
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Think the shape isn't that far off, but the canopy needs a rework. Narrowing the canopy toward the front would help the nose shape a lot, I think it's not tapered enough vertically. Really can't say I'm feeling the gigantic engines yet, but maybe in time.
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People will complain, it's just what we do here. Literally though, it's mostly that Bandai is just loosely interpreting the design in ways Yamato didn't on their version. Are the changes worth it? Maybe, that will be up to individual opinion on whether they want a better fighter or battroid. In my case, I think they toyed with the dimensions of the fighter a little too much, and like the style of the Yamato one a bit better, but can't deny the legs are a lot closer to the art on this one. I absolutely think their limp posing is not doing it any favors though.
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So.. frankly? There's no reason this can't happen, at least with the caveat that we're going with super-efficient thrusters, and other physics-defying tech. It's really not that hard, you just need thrusters doing all the work that the atmosphere normally would. It's impractical, because that would require an utterly massive amount of fuel. But if you're already using fantasy engines to do it...
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Maybe Bandai stashed the shoulders further back in fighter mode, but if it's anything like the Yamato arm transformation, the arms actually have to get longer, with the lower arms extending to cover the hands.. and even then, the arms still don't look like they reach far enough back in fighter mode. Going to look forward to learning more, it's fun seeing different approaches to the design.
