Chronocidal
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Everything posted by Chronocidal
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The tampo process isn't necessarily a quick thing to setup though. That's a lot of little tiny things to do that they haven't been setup for before. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if the display model they're using is actually an old Yamato that was used in their photoshoots. The early Yamato promotional pics had all the markings on them as well. As far as the backpack emblems go though, I'm ok with them not being printed on the non bundles, since it lets you put them on any valk, but the character specific ones like with the M&Ms should've been printed from the start. I just can't ever bring myself to use any of the stickers, so all of my packs are still bare... but that's my own fault. -
I've recently taken to clipping parts off of sprues, and combining similar kits. I've got at least 5 or 6 1/48 VF-1 kits in a single strike kit box, 3 1/48 YF-19s in a single box, multiples of all of my star wars kits combined into single boxes, that sort of thing. The best ones are the VF-25 kits I stocked up on. Each plain or super-packed kit will fit in a 1 quart Ziploc baggie. I've gotten at least a dozen of the things in the box for my Armored Ozma.
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I kind of wish they'd always printed the skull logos on the fast packs.. but that would have limited how they're used. I've just never felt like using the stickers on them, so all of mine are bare.
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I got two of Hayate's and I'm aiming to get two Mirages down the line, but I'm sticking to one Messer for now in the hopes that we get the revamped Hayate scheme one from the end of the series. Said I wasn't going to get them all, but meh.. maybe I will for variety, it's such a pretty plane. Always planned to get Chuck's anyway, I love the yellow on it, but Arad's feels like the oddball out, and least interesting.
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I wish they'd just issued the strike pack versions to start with, I can't really think of anyone who wouldn't have preferred that from the start, given how rare those packs are on the secondary market now. I may pass my two bare Arcadia VF-1S valks onto other owners though, since I just sort of completed my set of DYRL valks in the old Yamato off-white. Could never get ahold of a Max 1S, so I kitbashed a broken-shoulder edition Roy with a spare Max 1A, and voila. I may even have enough strike packs for all of them from one of those early HLJ clearance sales from years ago.
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I do like how they reworked the shoulders to hold missiles, just seems like a really natural feature they should have.
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So, I can definitely say I've gotten more than one of a "one per person" item on HLJ, but I wouldn't give it much weight, since it was only an HMR Regult. I got one on pre-order long ago, and had already received it, but recently was able to grab a second one from a restock, and they didn't bug me about it. If in doubt, I'd send them an email asking if it's ok to order another once the pre-order process is over, and all the stocks for those are allocated. The Regult wasn't in the kind of demand that the VF-31s are, so I can't say that's an entirely applicable example.
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At this point, I'm struggling to understand what they hope to accomplish. First, they release the bare valks, and inexplicably forget to print the ejection seat warning.. then they circulate photos of the product with that marking included, but don't do any of the other markings that Yamato tended to put on for their publicity shots.. Now they're putting out the versions with the fast packs (that pretty much everyone would have wanted to begin with ), and circulating photos that look nigh identical to the old decaled Yamato publicity photos, then advertising two versions, one without extra markings (that may or may not include the ejection seat one), and one with a completely ambiguous description that could mean anything from "we included the ejection seat marking this time!" to "everything on the sticker sheet twice, plus weathering." Really glad I'm not in the market for any more VF-1s, because this is just getting to be a headache. In fact, given how Yamato would retouch their own publicity photos for new releases in the past, I'm not even sure these new ads aren't just retouches of the old Yamato photoshoots.
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Problem now though, how do you tell their new product images apart from the old Yamato ones? Check the photos here: https://hlj.com/product/YMT00085 Looks pretty similar to me.
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Oh, this was another scheme entirely, and it didn't go over well, which is why it never saw more than this promotional display. The 25th black and gold wasn't bad comparatively. (Credit to Anymoon.com for the photo, it came up in a google search.)
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I thought they tried something like that with the first version 25th anniversary scheme? I don't think it went so well. There have been other better attempts by third parties though. One of these days, I'm going to get a display set up for all of my 19s.. think I'm up to 16 now, counting the old Yammie.
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Huh, so I thought there was something weird about those photos.. Bandai's still parading around their prototype like they did with the 31. Was trying to figure out why the control surface fairings didn't cross into the gold, and then it hit me just how different that one looks compared with the production photos on HLJ.
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I'll see if the parts come out useable as-is next week some time. The POM process requires a 0.13 mm border to give room for the laser, but the metal says it cuts exact sizes, so I might need to clean up the edges of the plastic ones. In the meantime, I installed the two sets of handmade ones, and they're holding up ok in fighter mode. Did make one small mistake, and didn't realize that the wingroots use two different sizes of screws, and I made a little bump on top of one wing where the screw tried to go in too far. It's hidden under the root though, so not a big deal for me. The plastic I used might be a tiny bit too thick, so I might sand down the plates, but that extra thickness is providing a nice tight sliding action into the wing, so it's not all bad. Edit: have to admit, the wings feel a bit wobbly, so some higher strength materials will help, but it's just really satisfying finally being able to do this:
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So, after playing CAD hopscotch all day, I finally got the Sculpteo site to accept my patterns. Ordered one pair in stainless steel, and two pair in POM. If the POM holds up, that's the way to go, they came out to about $2.50 a piece. Shipping came out to almost as much as the entire order though, guess that's what you get ordering from France. I'll probably look at using someone more local in the future.
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I was able to get the .svg plugin to work, just needed a slightly older version of sketchup. Been playing with the Sculpteo site settings now, it's pretty simple. Looking like metal is going to be rather expensive, and I might need to tweak the tolerances, but they offer 2 mm POM as a material, and I can get a set of 4 of those for about $12, so I might give them a shot. Should deliver some time next week, assuming they process correctly. Edit: So for Sketchup just can't make connected lines in any format it seems. The site doesn't say it's a problem for POM printing, but it won't do metal that way. I'll probably have to install some better CAD software instead, I thought I could get away with being lazy. Least I've got the base pattern file drawn up though. I just need something that does actual curves, and not polylines.
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That's probably the most tricky and risky part, it'll depend on if they're glued well. There's about an inch and a half on the leading edge of both my wings that isn't glued down, and it was enough to spread them to remove the swing bars. Sadly, not much of a way to get around this. I've actually considered trying to pop mine apart entirely, since they look slightly misaligned where they were glued, and it seems to cause the tips to warp downwards some. I wound up remembering how some folks got cracked and broken wings at release, and decided not to risk pulling them all the way apart. I'm currently trying to figure out how to get a file exported to that Sculpteo laser cutting site, but their plugin for google sketchup isn't working. If anyone has the equipment to try making a copy of the part, I can upload a DXF/DWG/3DS/whatever here to give it a try.
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Hasegawa 1/72 VF-19EF/A Isamu Special *March pre-order*
Chronocidal replied to slide's topic in Model kits
You know what though, Hasegawa hadn't released a Macross Plus YF-19 with fast packs yet. Just leave off the wing boosters and new shoulder packs, and that's pretty much what you have here. -
Got a pattern pretty much finalized for that simple wing mount. I made two copies by hand from ~1mm thickness styrene, sandwiched them in the wing, and mounted them in one wing glove, and they work great. No collisions with the legs or arms, and the wing rotates smoothly on it. I think my measurement (read: eyeballing it) was a little off, and the wing might have shifted inward a little, but this actually had a beneficial effect. With the wing mounted and swept forward, there was actually very little play in the wingsweep, and the wing would only tip backwards a small amount before colliding with the leg. I'm going to load up some CAD software and get a properly dimensioned file built up for sending out to get a few manufactured, but here's a scan of the final pattern. The original swingbars are a little under 2 mm thick, and this piece came out at 2.04 mm, so depending on the material, 2 mm thickness sounds like the way to go.
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Hasegawa 1/72 VF-19EF/A Isamu Special *March pre-order*
Chronocidal replied to slide's topic in Model kits
Yeah, as far as I'm aware, the backstory of Isamu's ride is that it's a heavily modified/customized VF-19EF model like the others owned by SMS. Isamu made the tweaks specifically to restore it back to the shape of his original YF-19, and restored some of the original high performance features that were nixed for mass production. Hence, it's an "advanced" version of the EF model. Glad to see they molded the shoulder packs correctly though. Wish Bandai had cared about that more, and bothered to do something with them besides have them snap on. -
I think people don't like them for a variety of reasons.. In terms of the toy itself, they're really just ugly and not very functional. Wheels are so tiny and jammed into the doors that they don't roll, struts (if you can even call them that) are a generic lump of die-cast that doesn't even try to look like a gear strut. Physically, they're the ugliest gear since the shopping cart wheels on the first VF-25 toy. Both the DX and 1/72 kit basically put no effort at all into trying to make the gear look like the anime, which looked like your typical white gear strut, with the kneecap folded farther back. The only place you'll see that is the 1/144 Tomytech kits, and possibly a future Hasegawa kit. But yeah, in terms of actual aircraft design, they look literally like Kawamori got stupid lazy, and forgot to add gear before the valk was done. Pretty much anything would have looked better for an actual aircraft. I can appreciate the blended look, and not having doors hanging off, but the rear gear are probably the most questionably viable gear design Kawamori's ever come up with, especially for a carrier-based aircraft. Any sort of hard landing, and those kneecaps are going to be slamming backwards into the legs, right into the micro missile magazines.
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Yep, I assumed they'd be a fully movable surface, and looks like they are from the animation, it's just a rotation around a fairly awkward axis. Maybe the axis is flexible, since the canards can fold up and down though. The timestamp is roughly 13:08 in episode 13, and they definitely twist around a bit. Just looks like they tilt up quite a bit before they do to get more of an effect.
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On the subject of canards.. does anyone have any memory or know of an instance showing whether the ones on the VF-31 series actually move, or are they just stationary surfaces? Reason I ask is that their mounting point pretty severely limits how much they can actually move around. Even if you assume the panel lines on the rear half mark the control surface itself, that still means they're only good for a nose-down moment, unless the canards have separate leading and trailing edge surfaces. Just curious, it's part of why I think I like the look of the 31 better without any canards at all. It certainly would make it easier to pick up off the shelf.
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Looking good! I did a similar build of one of the Sv-262s over the holidays, just a quick slap-together job. I think that one holds up a bit better than the 31, and feels more sturdy all around. So as far as things to glue on the VF-31 kits, you're going to need it on a few pieces at least. Namely, the plates that are supposed to snap in ahead of the gun barrels under the wings, and the tail mounts. On mine, the tails are only held in by the outer wing segments, so if you try to extend and fold them, the tails just fall off. Those you can probably safely glue in. The gun barrel panels though might actually need to be removed for transforming the valk, since I think the instructions show it (they fixed this on the DX version, the panels are permanently part of the wing). Other things you might want to consider gluing together are the thighs, since mine seem to love to pop apart if I try to move them too much. I've got another Hayate kit incoming, and I might actually just do one using all the stickers to see how it turns out. I halfway think they intend for the stickers to help hold the kit together sometimes.
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Which is probably why they had so many left over Isamu YF-29s that they put up at a discounted price later.
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Really, the Alto and Ozma VF-25 releases were easy-peasy to get ahold of. Both of them opened multiple times on HLJ, and it didn't require any odd hours at all, I just casually went to the site mid-afternoon. Then they were actually released, and everyone realized that Bandai hadn't screwed them up again. That's when the pre-order nightmares began. Think that was before anyone really knew about NY though, or it was before they started selling the exclusives. I got my armor and super packs through a group order here, and it went easily enough, but even at retail price, the armor packs were always pretty expensive due to how much material is in there. They probably have more moving parts than the valk itself. What's really just sad is that Bandai reissued the valks, but never bothered with the packs. Ozma's armor was pretty much the defining look of Frontier, in practically every episode. Did we ever see his valk without some kind of armor pack? The single time I remember seeing him out of the armor was when he was using the super packs. It seriously feels like I've seen Gundam add-on packs that had 10 sec or less of screentime get more releases.
