Chronocidal

Converting files, maybe... building CAD/CAM designs for molds to reproduce parts that were designed to be 3D-printed could quite another thing. You can make a lot of complex shapes in a single piece with a 3D printer, but they might need to be broken down into entirely different assemblies before you could successfully make injection molds for them. Ideally, you could build the 3D printed parts with this in mind, but it also depends on how fancy of an injection molding process would be required. The complex multi-directional molds that Bandai uses on its kits can make some incredibly detailed parts, but I don't know how many injection molding factories can do that kind of work.

Really, it's worth clearcoating the entire 262 upon opening. The gold just flakes off once you start transforming it.

I've actually pulled one of mine out to mess with the past day, and it's going easier than I remember.. which probably means I'm doing something wrong. I do find it easier to transform if I just ignore gerwalk though, and go straight between fighter and battroid. I took a look at that arm swingbar, and after flipping it around the wrong way on purpose, I can't actually find a way to get it stuck. I'm wondering if skex's just happened to snap down tightly against the backplate, and needs to be popped up and away from it?

So, I can't quite claim to even have a horse in the race here, since I don't collect or build resin kits... but in the case that I ever came into possession of one? The first thing I would want to do? Build a digital replica of the kit to preserve the design in some format. I think once things like this reach a certain age, they pass from the realm of a collectible, and more into something that should be preserved for reference. I know things of this nature get touchy, due to all the situations involving recasting. But at the same time, I think there comes a point where a particular resin kit may be so rare that it's more beneficial for the modeling community as a whole to never touch the original kit, and either keep it preserved as a reference for what came before, or use it as the starting point for a newly designed kit. I think for a lot of us, even if we did build the kit, and appreciate it on display for many years, that's no guarantee that anyone it is passed down to would be able to appreciate it the same way. When that happens, the kit might end up any number of ways, everything from being sold off to a collector, to being passed on to a five-year-old to play with. There kind of is no in-between... if you want to enjoy your kit, then you should build it, and if you want to preserve it, you should keep it in a sealed box that will protect it, and maybe sell it to a collector someday. I'd say it's like buying two of a comic book or toy to keep one in mint condition, but when things get this rare, that's not always an option. The only alternative where you can have your cake and eat it too is if you take the time to make yourself a copy of the design, through whatever methods you have available. Whether that means hand-carving a new master, recasting the original, or digitally measuring, scanning, and re-engineering the kit to be 3D-printed, it's ultimately up to you whether you keep the design to yourself, or share it. I think under very specific circumstances, there are times when recasting should be seen as a viable way to preserve a rare kit design so that it doesn't disappear entirely. That being said... technology is crazy today, and models and toys are both getting better by the minute With so many companies cranking out better and better products so quickly, I feel like those old rare kits are becoming less and less desirable to build, and lend themselves better to remaining as unbuilt collectibles. They were good for their time, but many have been surpassed by models that are easier to build, more detailed, and much cheaper to acquire. Personally, I'd much rather have a toy than a transforming resin model, because I'm a fidgety maniac with all things mechanical, and I'd rather have something that will hold up to repeated transformations.

I did, but I'm honestly not sure their manufacturing processes would produce something usable. The part I designed is a solid bracket that replaces the metal swing bar in the Arcadia wing, and I had it laser cut out of 2 mm stainless steel sheet. It has to be manufactured to the precision necessary to fit and rotate smoothly around the same pegs that the original swing bar used, and have enough strength to support the wing. Which direction do you want to tighten the joint in? I remember one peg being exposed on the back edge of the intake/underside of the thigh, but that only shifts the wings in a flapping motion. I'd assume you want to tighten the other direction, that lets the wing gloves swing back to front in battroid, and I don't remember seeing any exposed parts to that pivot.

Have you tried rotating the little clip lock back and forth, to see if it's caught on the frame? It looks like the lighter blue piece is wedged between the walls of the back frame. I don't want you to stress the frame, but I wonder if attempting to lift the edge with the light blue clip over the walls of the backplate might get it loose.

I do hope they realize they've painted up a VF-1J in the S markings for the prototype there. Also hope the gunpod isn't permanently mounted, really prefer the option to have a completely clean aircraft. Otherwise looks good, and I might grab one or two, but I really don't need more VF-1s in any scale at this point.

I'll check on that, and see if I can't get the plastic versions available, if I can't get the metal ones going. Worst case, I can always upload the pattern, and you could cut the parts out of plastic sheet. It's not an easy pattern to cut, but my first couple of copies were handmade, and held up better than I expected. The plastic loops are just hard to shape, and seem like they'd be fairly fragile. I could even just mail you one of my spare sets, honestly, but I would like to get them available again. Anyway, back to your regularly scheduled drool-fest.

You just reminded me about the replacement brackets I made on Sculpteo, but it looks like the metal ones aren't available for some reason. I might have to see about fixing that, or see if they have another material that'll work.

So I just realized how different the canard shape is from the early version. Is that to fit better into place in battroid mode? Also, you know the next step, right? Retractable landing gear!

Tell them you want to be served in the order you ordered. Honestly, I'd be plenty happy accepting them one at a time. They already charged plenty for shipping them individually.

I wouldn't say the ideas are mutually exclusive though. Music itself can be considered a language all its own, able to convey emotions and ideas without even necessarily needing lyrics in any particular language. The bulk of available Protoculture information all points to the idea that the primary form of communication for them may have been musical. If words and language are a good carrier for simple data, putting them to music adds an entirely different dimension to the communication. The analogy my brain wants to make is to the way electro-magnetic radiation carries both electrical and magnetic signals on different axes of an electro-magnetic waveform. If you take the concept of fold waves and spiritia as a whole, it's like the whole thing rolls up sound, emotion, and language into one big carrier wave for information of multiple types, affecting recipients on both a conscious and subconscious level. That thought's probably a whole lot more sciencey than necessary, but it basically points to the idea that the Protoculture's standard means of communication were of a different nature, and on an entirely different level than spoken word. You're right though, having R. Lee Ermy belting out a love song doesn't quite jive, but it's also a great example of how varied music is as a communication medium, and illustrates my point even better. There's no explicit evidence that the lyrics found in the Protoculture city and the snippet of music in the Zentraedi databanks were meant to go together. In fact... See, I can't honestly believe that this may have been intentional, but think about the effect that song had on the Zentraedi and Meltrandi. What if they were hearing love song lyrics broadcast along the carrier wave meant to give battlefield commands? You'd be confused too. You can mashup all kinds of songs to give you horrible messes of dissonant moods and lyrics. For instance, the lyrics for "Amazing Grace" fit the music for both "House of the Rising Sun" and the theme song from Gilligans Island. One set of words, but the music adds an entirely different dimension to how they're received. Like I said, I can't imagine it was actually intentional, but the song in DYRL may have been the Protoculture equivalent of a Niel Cicierega mashup. Deculture, indeed.

Can't blame you there, I love the proportions of the Arcadia in all modes, and it really does look like the anime. The Bandai version looks more like what you'd get if you adapted a Hasegawa fighter mode kit into a transforming toy: a lot slimmer and sleeker in fighter mode, but battroid mode just doesn't have the same presence. If I could mash YF-19 versions together, I think I'd want Arcadia's overall design with Bandai's intakes, hips, shoulder joints, color, ankles, and some of the tampo... along with the original Yamato's wing joints. Edit: Oh, and while we're mashing things up, take the markings from the Hasegawa kit. They're the only ones to date with the right sizing and position for the black colored panel on the spine.

Honestly.. for all intents and purposes, Mikumo may as well be a sex-bot AI transplanted into a physical clone body. Nothing about her existence is right in the slightest, but maybe that's the point. Her backstory would honstly make a good horror genre series, but that entire concept is drowned in the backwash of "we need a fanservicey idol-singer to be the figurehead for our plot group!" From a story perspective, one of the most annoying things to me about that is that they do write her as a particular type of character, but the cues we get to her motivations and personality are at complete odds with anything we know about the character's origins. It doesn't make the slightest sense for a mental three-year-old to act the way she does. The assumption I'm tempted to make is that whoever cloned her managed to make a complete physical and personality duplicate of an ancient member of the Protoculture, while simultaneously managing to tailor her psyche to forget anything about her past. On the creepazoid scale, making a 1-for-1 copy of a completely mature living being and then giving them laser-guided amnesia is probably less heinous than a lot of the other assumed atrocities you could apply to Mikumo's character. But then the really fun question to ask.. where did her override command come from? Clearly that was supposed to be some sort of screwy ancient knowledge that Roid acquired, but that would imply that the override command was something the Protoculture had implanted in the original Star Singer. Not to excuse the humans in this mess, but knowing how the Protoculture loved their genetic engineering, I'm not sure it's much of a stretch to assume that Mikumo might be a modern copy of a mass-produced, ready-made command and control node for a fold-receptor network. The fact that she turned out nominally human might be due to the fact that she didn't get the standard initial training and indoctrination the Protoculture would have given her. The implications there are pretty far reaching, and could point to a lot of particulars of how the Protoculture operated. The fact that Mikumo flat out begins belting out "Ai Oboete Imasu Ka", but only the first line (and, inexplicably, in Japanese ), makes me think that the entire reason the song worked in DYRL was because hearing that first line was some sort of "ATTENTION: ORDERS INCOMING" command line. I could be remembering entirely bass-ackwards though. I know the lyrics were found and translated by Misa (and I'm starting to wonder how accurate or complete that translation was), but was the music itself composed by humans, or did they find a snippet of the tune to put the lyrics to in the SDF-1's databanks? Edit: Scratch that, I forgot, the scene in DYRL where the SDF-1 flies in with the Zentradi fleet at their backs has Minmay singing just the first line of the tune. It still doesn't make sense that Mikumo used the Japanese lyrics for that line, but it might have just been coincidence that the document Misa found matched the tune.

Just finished watching a first run-through, and actually, I'd say the faster pace fixed a lot, just from the fact that a lot of the goofier and more hackneyed elements were left out. Putting the Walkure history at the beginning was also a huge plus, since it allowed them to completely abandon the prison sequence from the original show. Leaving out some of the subtext and exposition helped a ton, as well as removing the nonsense Berger character entirely, which simplified the conflict by basically removing an entire faction. Also, battroid and gerwalk actually got some good usage! I can't say it was necessarily worth $80, but I definitely feel more satisfied with this than spending that same money on the series. There are a lot of shortcuts taken that remove extraneous nonsense from the series, while basically hopscotching between the key plot points to tell the same story, and I think it comes out more cleanly overall. The method of bringing everyone together for the finale was definitely an improvement. The whole thing just felt a lot more streamlined, with a ton of baggage removed.

Small thing I looked over entirely while building. There is a standard socket for the normal stands included in all the other kits, I just snapped on the cover plate without looking at it closely. it's hidden beneath one of the small turquoise panels on the engine block. Obviously can't get an upright pose with it due to the position and height, but still looks a lot better alongside the other kits than the big upright stand this kit came with.

It's been a busy couple of months, but most of my stuff is still sitting in my HLJ warehouse for delivery. I did pick up a 1/72 HobbyMaster Vigilante though. Do metal aircraft count as toys? Eh, works for me. With no parts to fall off, and only the nose probe to watch out for, this one's pretty swooshable. Gorgeous plane, and they did a wonderful job with it, it's such a slick design. Also, I have no idea how this thing ever fit on a carrier, it makes the F-14 look compact by comparison. Also been having fun putting together the Bandai B-Wing kit, but that'll take a while before it's anywhere close to done.

"It's not pink, it's light-ish red!"

I admit.. I'm slightly tempted to build one and paint it up in the same NASA scheme as the X-29. I'm not quite looking forward to figuring out how to prime and paint that material though, the few prints I've gotten from Shapeways have been really heavy on the preparation work.

I'm in the middle of some home renovation, but I'm looking forward to picking up a kit once I've got my workshop the way I want it.

The piles of unanswered questions that fans were left with at the end of TFA, and subsequently told in TLJ that they should ignore them, because they don't matter. Basically, enough dangling plot threads to knit a sweater.

I can't even call my response "non-committal"... they literally just said they'd ask the dispatch center about it, probably because I asked if there was any issue shipping it. We'll see if I get anything more in the next few days, but I'm really not holding my breath at this point.

The HMR VF-1s are a bit bigger than 1/100 scale, I think they were closer to 1/85th or something? I know Jenius did the math for his reviews. I imagine 1/100 decals would work fine, if you can find them, but depending on the sizes of the individual markings, 1/72 military aircraft decals may work as well.

Ugh.. I forgot what a pain blurays can actually be.. got my copy in the mail, and can't even watch it because my PS3 is packed up for moving, and PCs can't natively play the discs yet. Now I know why so many discs these days include the digital copy.

I posted another ticket with a similar note, saying I'd heard of orders placed after mine that have already been sent. We'll see if I get any kind of response. If they offer to send me just one, and refund the other as store credit, I'll probably take it at this point, since that would probably pay for a pair of armor packs.