Chronocidal
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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
I was just about to ask which EVA unit this one was... that's some kind of crazy power armor. Also, @Shizuka the Cat, congrats on a great pickup, I'm amazed to see the VF-19F for anything less than the original retail price, let alone through Amazon. The S-model got multiple runs, and was really easy to find on clearance, but the both the F and P versions got comparatively shortchanged on production runs before Yamato went under, and were much harder to come by. That one and the P are probably my favorite Yamato molds, hands down. -
Has anyone gotten any multiple orders from NY yet? I feel like I saw at least one get through a while back, but no luck yet on mine, and it was ordered on the 7th.
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Yeah, like I was saying earlier, Disney buying Fox and Comcast buying them are two entirely different sorts of mergers. Fox and Disney are two companies that do (mostly) the same thing: make content for people to consume. Media companies and film studios pop up and die out all the time. It's a volatile market that will always have room for competition. (Whether it's good enough to be competitive is a separate issue. ) Comcast is a company that sells access to the content that companies like Fox and Disney make. They own infrastructure. That's an entirely different sort of organization that depends on stability to even function, and Comcast owns enough of the infrastructure across the country to ensure that certain areas have no other option when it comes to things like internet and cable access. Comcast owning Fox could potentially cause all sorts of other ugly effects across the country, in terms of cable and internet rates. For instance, say Comcast just decides that all Fox-owned content will now be exclusively available on Comcast service. Sucks to be all those other cable companies that won't get any. Or maybe they'll play nice and offer other cable companies a deal to purchase Fox content for their customers? You know that cost will get passed along to the consumers, and then cable rates for everyone but Comcast will go up, and suddenly Comcast looks like a better deal than every other cable provider. Not saying it would necessarily play out like that, and I'm no market expert, so that might just be tinfoil hat-level speculation. It just sounds like that kind of situation would open the door for all kinds of unpleasant shenanigans.
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On the other hand, this also doesn't excuse how lazy they've been with the tampo on the normal releases. I can kind of understand not putting the intake warnings on the YF-19, because they weren't in the animation, but leaving so many standard markings (that were included on the original Yamato releases, even) off of the VF-0 standard releases was pretty darn cheap.
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Why would they even put the VF-22 as an option? It's been done, and I don't think Wave is going to improve on the Hasegawa mold. 171 I'd be happy to see though.
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Could be improved and better designed by not using diecast metal in painted transformation joints. For the stresses exerted on those types of pieces, color-molded plastics are generally plenty strong. I know people like metal parts for the weight, but I don't understand the obsession with it, and it's probably the worst possible option to use in joints on transforming toys.
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All Things Videogame Related: EXTREME VS!!
Chronocidal replied to Keith's topic in Anime or Science Fiction
Digital downloads work great, until you're that guy out in the boonies who would eat through 3 months worth of data to download a single game. Games aren't getting any smaller. Sucks to not live close enough to a city to get cable, huh? -
That's kind of the bottom line for "which is worse" here.. people can ignore Disney all they want. Disney buying Fox is like Ford buying out Pontiac. Comcast? That'd be more like Exxon-Mobil buying them, and producing their own cars that only run on their brand of gasoline. On the other hand, with the deal blown up, watch as Comcast begins actively restricting access to Disney content out of spite.
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Wouldn't that turret have been really useful in ST:III?
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Huh, yep, that page makes me think Wave just went directly from the Master File for the kit. Not the worst they could have done, but they didn't get the ventral fin angles right either. I don't think I quite mind the higher canard angle so much as I mind the main wings looking too flat. That was the first thing I noticed about the kit from the earliest CAD teaser images.
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I'd be really interested to see a visual internal/external breakdown of what each of those individual refits addressed. One thing that does strike me about the CG model is that the exhaust venting on the rear of the nacelles is getting closer to the multi-ported look of the model from "The Cage." But yes, they might be refitting themselves into a weird corner, because the overall trend of those refits would mean the ship is going back and forth between styles multiple times, in no particularly timeline-relevant order. Now, maybe they'll attempt some story treatment to why the look changed back and forth.. I could see them trying to explain that the original launch spec was untested and unreliable, so they reverted to an older structural spec that looks like the NX-01, before going back to the original design once the technology was proven. I'm not saying it's a good explanation, because a refit of that magnitude may as well be a different ship, but it wouldn't surprise me if they go with it. On the other hand, maybe it is an entirely different ship somehow? Trek has always had a love of parallel universes intersecting at the most convenient times.
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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
I had the same thought a while back, and wondered if you could actually use those conformal packs to hide the arms on a masterpiece-styled G1 Dreadwind. The F-2 is a nice mod to the general F-16 shape, looks really good! Funny thing about the F-5 though.. the YF-17 was an evolution of the F-5, before it turned into the F-18. -
The 1/60th version is also a lot thicker, mostly because its central section has to have room for the thighs, and it gives a slightly different overall anhedral to the wing planform. The kit looks like it was squashed down and flattened in comparison. What I'd like to see is some definitive angle for the engine nacelles. They do seem to be tilted a little in the line-art, but it's tough to tell how much. That set of plan views always looked more practical and realistic, compared with the other common 3-view line art, but this one gives the whole aircraft a different set of angles. The higher canard angle seems to be a popular change to the design though. It's definitely shown that way in the Master File, and depending on which frame you freeze of FB2012, they can look higher than the fairly flat angle of that graph paper schematic. I almost feel like that flatter angle is too flat, even if it lines up with the opposite wing angle. It might be partly from the sense that the inner wing needs to be thicker to house the thighs, which would naturally fit a steeper angle for the outer wings... but that's only an issue for the 1/60th design, and actually throws an entirely different wrench in the works, because then it looks like the outer wings need to be thicker to blend in.
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There's nothing to really be swapped out, because the fins themselves are attached to a bottom panel of the engine nacelles. It would be a pretty simple mod to cut them off and remount them at the correct angle, but no, the fins aren't molded as if they bend in the middle, and they're not low enough to be correct. If anything, they look like they're molded permanently in the sort of saggy position you'd get from a hydraulic pressure loss after shutdown. Kit quality aside, the design definitely has some accuracy issues. The wings are so close to level that it looks like someone vertically scaled down everything aft of the canards. Part of that is probably due to the nacelles being canted inward toward the top, which really makes no sense. That tilt might be relatively easy to mod if you just chop off the giant blocky tabs and mount the nacelles manually, but it's a lot of extra work. One thing I did do once I snapped one together is go back and hold the kit up frame-by-frame to the screen during the ending of FB2012. The kit matches the animation very well, but it seems like they missed out on the line-art showing the alignment of the control surfaces. Edit: Found this old topic while browsing for line-art of the VF-4, and if my memory is right, the kit looks very closely based on these planform drawings, with the exception of the angles of certain parts. I can see a little bit of tilt in the nacelles, but nothing like the kit has. I can't find any detailed reference to how the ventral fins fold, aside from the general angles. Is there another detail sketch of them somewhere?
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I can kind of agree, in the structural sense. If you accept that the entire saucer and warp nacelles were rebuilt in the refit, that secondary hull is a lot closer to the refit profile and style than the original TOS design. The nacelle pylons look dumb with the nonsense cut-out section though. However you slice it though, I'd take this design twice over the JJ-Prise any day.
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Honestly, their slightly higher prices don't bug me, because they're the only store I know of with a fairly good history in terms of return/exchange policy.
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The 1D has a unique design, since it doesn't have the elevated rear seat like the VT/VE, and uses a longer normal VF-1 cockpit which changes the chest plate so it doesn't dip in front of the neck in battroid. In real aircraft comparison terms, if you consider the VF-1 to be similar to the Northop F-5, then the normal VF-1A/J/S are like the F-5E, the VF-1D is like the F-5F, and the VT-1 equivalent would be the T-38. Also, YES on the Roy release, and we still need a super pack release. Bandai's just taking their sweet time with those.
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I don't know what kind of sales numbers they might be getting, but I believe HLJ at least ran out their first stock of them, since I picked up a pair at "low stock" status. I'm of two minds about the quality of the kit really. It's good quality molding, fits together very cleanly, and looks enough like a VF-4 for me to be happy to have on my shelf. It's not really up to current standard of detail in aircraft kits, but it still manages to be leaps and bounds better quality molding than many modern kit companies can pull off. Hopefully someday soon Hasegawa and Bandai will catch on to the design, and decide it deserves even further upgrades. Until then though, I'm interested to see what sorts of custom updates people will apply to this kit.
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Or, I can see it working one more way.. but it would require two more pivots along the length of the shoulder bar. They could really be anywhere along the length, and just serve to rotate the arms into the right position again after flipping the shoulder bar underneath the wings. I don't really see any real way to make that work well with this model though, since it'd just be a very weak rotation joint with nothing to support it.
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Hmmm, that shoulder bar mechanism is making my brain do calisthenics thinking how it's supposed to function. Given the location, I'm not sure it's supposed to actually flip over, or if the line art just shows it flipping up to rotate the shoulders out, before flipping back down.
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Not a problem, I love this design process! I'm glad the wing works better that way for battroid as well, that's just a convenient change then. I think what I noticed about the further forward wing position was that the leading edge line was so far ahead of the pods on the back.. I don't really know what to call them. All of the VF-9 images I can find seem like the center of that upper intake/nozzle/thing is centered on the line along the leading edge. Plus, I think the wing being farther back just makes the plane look faster. Keep up the amazing work, this will be one heck of a project to put together when it's ready to order!
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I can kind of understand the higher price, being a niche design for a very niche market. Far as the quality compared with other aircraft model releases though? I'm not going to say I expect any more aircraft savvy than your typical Bandai attempt, because they don't typically make aircraft kits. For what it's worth, they did a much better job at landing gear than Bandai ever has.
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I recently had an assembly line going, trimming parts and testing the fit of the four kits I picked up from HLJ. Everything goes together very smoothly when carefully trimmed, with the one exception being the small tabs/slots that sit above the intake ducts on the engine nacelle halves. Can't get to a picture at the moment, and mine are now trimmed to avoid the issue, but these tabs and slots tend to be slightly misshapen, and will cause a gap in the upper lip of the intakes, underneath the beam cannons. This gap was pointed out in a previous photo of someone's completed build. I'd recommend just cutting those tabs off, and filing the surrounding area flat to be sure the engine halves go together cleanly. There's really nothing to be lost by doing that, and even if you're just snapping the pieces together, those tabs don't serve any particular purpose.
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Loving the tweaks, they really streamlined the design I think! The new profile looks a lot sleeker, and I like how the changes to the legs looks to have shifted the shoulder mount forward. The shorter intake lips look really good too. One thing that looks slightly off to me currently is that the wings look like they're slightly too far forward. The shape and size look great, but my balance/stability senses are tingling, since it looks like the center of lift is a little too far forward. Not sure if it would cause any serious changes to the wing folding alignment (for good or bad), but here's what I'm imagining. The rounded wing mounts on the sides of the legs would need to move toward the feet slightly, and the leading edge could be blended a bit more at the wing root, but the mounting hinges for the wings wouldn't need to change. Don't think it's absolutely necessary, and it might change the way the wings line up for battroid mode, but moving the wings further back may also help gerwalk mode by letting the arms sit further forward under the wings. Whatever you decide, looking great! I think the little extension in length is well worth the change in profile, while still looking not too big for 1/60 scale.
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I've seen that one pop up multiple times on HLJ over the time since it was released, so I suspect that Bandai actually keeps producing them at some small rate. Outside of Roy's 1S, I think that's probably the most iconic design of the original series, so it wouldn't surprise me if they keep popping them out.