Chronocidal
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Well that's.. slightly both disappointing, and amazing. Maybe LEGO really just doesn't realize how deep the pockets of the typical adult collector really are? I hope they haven't bitten off more than they can chew, in terms of production demand. I feel like they're really only hurting things by not allowing back orders to be placed, because they can't get a proper estimate. If they don't plan on actually limiting production, I don't see why they don't just let everyone take a number.
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Edit: That's the 1/72 kit, not the DX. Had me going for a moment there, though. It's a fair point though, I don't care enough about the series to really feel one way or another about the wrong color, or other nonsense. It's disappointing, sure, but it's the level of dedication I've come to expect.
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Yeah, they all just suck at color matching. Maybe they're trying to nip yellowing in the bud ahead of time, and just produce things that don't match to begin with?
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I'd frankly be surprised if that's not exactly what they do once the existing contract expires. If HG loses their license, and Big West wants to reel in the loose ends of their franchise, I don't think there's any way HG is going to be able to outbid them. There's no way HG could pay Tatsunoko enough to turn down money coming from Bandai and Big West's deep pockets.
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Fortunately the head laser on the VF-1A is pretty simple to make a replacement for, at least compared with all the other variants. Depending on where it broke, you might even be able to just drill it out, and pin the parts together to repair it. Just picked up Mirage from the post office, loving the look of it overall, and definitely my favorite head design on the 31. One thing I did notice about the magenta color.. for once, it's kind of a good thing that so much of it is painted. It might be my lighting, but the cast plastic in the shoulders looks much darker than the paint. The painted surfaces are all a good match. Something else I realized while messing with it though, related to the fuselage gap behind the canopy. I noticed that if I unpeg the folding plate under the cockpit, that gap mostly goes away. I think pressing that plate into the underside all the way is actually pulling the nose downward, and widening that gap. I don't know if it bothers me enough to experiment, but I might try trimming down the rearward edges of the tabs on that underside plate, and see if that relieves the force pulling the nose down.
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The thing that I always wind up coming back to when trying to imagine how people can control a giant mech? Think of video games, and how much complexity can be accomplished with a few buttons and thumbstick. I mean, I don't want to downplay the complexity that much, but exactly like that "stow gunpod" move you mention, a vast majority of motions could be pre-programmed, and designed to be adaptable to various situations. Working out walking, running, jumping, etc. is probably not that different from generating procedural animation routines for game characters, albeit while using gyros and thrusters to keep balanced, and advanced terrain mapping sensors to deal with finding proper footing. Same for picking up objects.. you sight in on an object, get in a heavy duty sensor scan to determine size, density, and other characteristics, and then perform an adaptable computerized routine to reach and grip the object. Hand to hand combat could be as simple as directing a targeting reticle, selecting a power setting, and mashing the "PUNCH" button, with the computers filling in the rest of the details. The only time you'd really need direct control of fingers and such would be for extremely delicate operations, like picking up extremely small and fragile objects, like people, and in most cases we've seen, it's more that they're shaping the hand to let them climb in, and then closing just enough to hold them safely.
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Just out of curiosity I looked it up.. while I'm not necessarily going to trust Bandai's measurements of it being truly 1/72 scale, the actual size of the PG kit is 482 mm. The new UCS LEGO one is listed as 33"/840 mm, which actually works out to 1/41 scale. So.. yeah. The LEGO one is actually bigger than the filming miniature, which was 32". Edit: Also, success! Sort of. I've been taking stock of my parts, buying a couple small sets for the missing bits, and attempting to build that Ideas Shuttle from scratch. I know I haven't got the elements to build the tank and boosters, but I'm pretty sure I've got everything necessary to build the orbiter now. Fortunately, the only bits I was lacking were the bay door segments, and nose section, both of which are available in some of the currently available sets.
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I don't remember needing to press particularly hard on anything to get them to latch, but after seeing the hook-shaped rear peg, I just automatically hooked in the rear peg, and pressed them rearward and down to get the front pegs in. Didn't feel like a particularly beefy click when the front pegs settled into place, so I imagine they'll pop out easily enough if you lift the front edge.
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Hm, I only have a regular edition Milia on order, but if it pops up again, I might grab one. I put an HLJ order in for both versions of Max, since the premium one won't be out for a year, and I can just cancel if I can't grab a premium Milia when they arrive.
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Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, in theaters Dec. 16, 2016
Chronocidal replied to Dobber's topic in Anime or Science Fiction
Yeah, as nice as the nostalgia is for some of it, taking that entire segment of the Death Star battle soundtrack verbatim doesn't fit. The sound effects were an improvement, but the music needs more cutting and pasting of different segments to fit the scenes as they're laid out. The cut back and forth with the guy on the planet was especially jarring. Also.. funny as this is might sound, I don't think he used the best cut of the Yavin battle tracks... they sounded older, and lower quality than the rest of the scene. I think using certain segments from Endor would've been better fitting as well. -
So, I didn't even look at the instructions or parts when I put mine on, they kinda just went on with a little pressure. After they're mounted, I glance at the instructions, and realize there are supposed to be differences in the top and bottom panels. Go to check, and find out that just out of pure chance, I put them all in the right place. But yeah. If you pull the silver door panels forward, it uncovers a marking indicating which ones are for the top, and which for the bottom of the fighter. Think top is a triangle, while bottom is a triangle with a bar under it. I will say that the missile packs feel like a really natural addition to the design though. They bulk it up some, but it actually feels like they streamline the overall profile better.
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Hopefully they'll be producing these for a long while, but I hope they have a decent gauge of demand by the actual release date, or there's going to be a lot of disappointed people hammering the online shop site. Like, I don't want to say I'm concerned that they're not going to produce enough of these to meet demand, partly because of the $800 price tag... but all my recent experience with Bandai, and even the Saturn V set has made me wary. Just out of curiosity, what scale would that falcon be? I know the minifigures are a lousy point of reference, being about 1/48 in height, but 1/32 in width. I'm curious how this is going to compare in size to the 1/72 Perfect Grade kit, and whether it'll actually be closer to 1/48.
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Bandai screwed the pooch with the reaction missile mounts though, it's going to take entirely new arm shields before they're usable. Should have just included them from the start, but then that would have made a dangerous amount of sense. We might know for sure what's up if they're included in Mirage's packs, since she used them on her standard fighter. If so, we can probably expect a second set of packs for Hayate with vaguely different markings to go with the exclusive knight-schemed 31J. Depending on how difficult it is to get, I might try and get one of those, but if I do, I'll sell off my second normal Hayate, and use the knight emblem one for a battroid super pack pose with Mirage.
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Problem in the legal sense, maybe not, but if the "creative" team in charge of the franchise had half the imagination of a sack of rocks, they wouldn't have been milking the same 1980s cartoon designs for 30 years now. Part of me thinks the reason they're such copyright trolls with anything even remotely resembling mecha from the original cartoons is because they're fully aware that they don't have a snowball's chance in hell of ever coming up with an original design, and they're going to cling to those designs for dear life, just in case the writing team ever comes up with something to use them in.
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STAR WARS Merchandise Episode - 2
Chronocidal replied to Black Valkyrie's topic in Anime or Science Fiction
Actually, provided you could get proper support from Bandai to order them, the Death Star stand bases are pretty much their own sprue, so it would be really simple to order a bunch of those, and just have a ton of leftover stand pedestals that can be used for other projects. Just in a general sense though, I don't think anything in Star Wars really needs decals. There are a few panel markings and things that look enough like stencils that you might need one or two on smaller kits, and some things that would just be a pain to paint, like the barber-pole stripes on some X-Wing gun barrels. Cockpit details can be useful too, though I tend to prefer raised details. Other than those sorts of things, I think it's worth putting the time in to mask off and paint the big blocks of color that most Star Wars ships use for markings. The Bandai kits even have most of the colored portions molded separately, so unless you're going for a custom paint pattern, you can just put the kits together after they're painted. Some "weathered" decals can look okay, but I think they stand out a little too much against a painted weathered surface, and getting them to blend in might be more work than just painting and weathering everything yourself. -
What's sad is that part of the reason the shoulder triangles are so weak is because of all the complicated nonsense of the lower triangle covers. The rounded cut-out section on the lower half of the shoulder parts is only there to give the lower triangles room to swing in and out, and that cut-out is a gigantic weak point in the part, where a slight over-tightening of the screw holding the shoulder together can leave the whole thing in shattered fragments. The design is really better off without any underside cover at all, so the shoulders can actually remain structurally sound.
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I want to say the right type of plastic-weld glue might work for a while, but those parts are under stress almost non-stop from the way Bandai designed them.
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Tough crowd indeed, but remember where you're posting. To me, the lead-in and ending are almost too similar to the original theme.. it's obvious nostalgia-bait, but then the switch to the "theme" is so jarring that I think the disconnect is more off-putting than helpful. Then all you're left with is a stock "building tension" sequence of strings jumping all over the scale, making you think it's going somewhere... then it doesn't. It just falls off, and slaps you with another nostalgia riff to the face. It's like they took two entirely separate themes of format A-B-C and D-E-F, and then did a cut and paste to give you A-E-F.
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Yep, just two, and I'm only getting pairs of Hayate and Mirage so I can someday do their back-to-back reaction warhead pose from the last episodes. The rest of Delta Flight is going solo.. assuming I even get around to getting Arad. The second one's staying in my HLJ warehouse until some other stuff gets released.
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I think Memorial Day was the traditional release from the start of the franchise, but Christmas just makes more sense on multiple levels. With Marvel releases coming out roughly three a year, they can keep December free for Star Wars stuff, and not sabotage their own movies. Between that, the merchandising extravaganza that goes along with Christmas, and people having time to go as a family, there's really no downside.
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STAR WARS Merchandise Episode - 2
Chronocidal replied to Black Valkyrie's topic in Anime or Science Fiction
Don't believe so, but I have seen them reproduced in various ways. If Bandai offered up a pack of assorted plates, I'd be happy to buy a couple (dozen). Realistically speaking though, the panels aren't necessarily 1/72 scale. Those panel designs were used all over the physical Death Star filming surfaces, and I don't think there was any specific scale to them. The filming miniatures weren't generally filmed at the same time, and would be composited later (which is why older copies of the movies will have visible copy/paste regions showing around ships in space), and ships and details could grow or shrink to fit the frame. The biggest scale snafu is really the A-Wing kit, and its included turbolaser turret. If you want a proper frame of reference, look very very closely at the top of the turret, and you'll find that the upper rear deck panel for the X-Wing was also used as greeblies on the turret. For the turret to actually be in scale with the 1/72 fighters, the actual rotating portion at the top would need to be closer to the size of an entire baseplate. Really, the baseplates and turrets are probably a much closer scale match to the micro-scaled fighters you can get now, but I do not know how many of those there are available. I'd expect the PG Falcon to need a ton of painting and detailing to look correct though. Certain parts might be molded in color, but a massive amount of the ship's detailing is purely weathering applications. -
My first of two was shipped from CDJapan on Sunday morning, arrived at LAX yesterday afternoon.. now I get to see how competent LAX customs are this month. I didn't even ship EMS, just registered air mail. CDJ just always seems to be ridiculously fast for some reason.
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Wouldn't that be "The Re-Return of the Jedi" then? Or, maybe Episode IX: "We Found One More!"
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So.. I can't say it was bad musically, but it really just sounded like someone slapped bits of classic Trek themes on the ends of some stock trailer music. The center portion sounded a lot like.. well, frankly? I thought someone ripped it from one of the "Pirates of the Caribbean" soundtracks. I kept expecting it to jump straight into one of the main themes.. actually, that's it exactly. It's like someone twisted around the "Hoist the Colours" bit in the third movie. One of the comments about the video mentions a conversation held between Robert Wise and Jerry Goldsmith, about his first attempt at the ST:TMP score lacking a signature theme. This has exactly that same problem. It's good enough as a background track, but it sounds like it's just a lead-in to a distinct theme that never happens. It needs some sort of actual melodic line for you to hold onto, or it's just going to be completely forgotten.
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I don't know what you'd call a reverse ret-con (maybe proactive continuity?) but I think later on someone linked Guinan's "space magic" senses to her time spent in the Nexus. Can't say where I heard that though, so my mind may have made it up. Otherwise, she was shown hopping around the timeline like a teenager on a joyride. Unless it was just a casting screw-up showing her younger on the Enterprise B than she was in San Francisco in the late 1800s, she wasn't seeing everything in order, and who knows how many times she may have been back and forth across the timeline. Personally, I'm just going to write her off as Gallifreyan, and be done with it. She never made sense anyway.