Chronocidal
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Everything posted by Chronocidal
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That really is an awesome idea. If it starts stressing the shelves, you could always use a wider or longer clip to distribute the weight over a larger area. On that note, I'm wondering if a clip with the mounting point rotated 90 degrees would be useful, or just unnecessary, since I imagine you could accomplish the exact same thing with a 90 degree bend attachment at the base. Turned that way, you could set up multiple branches extending forward to hold several valks at different levels and angles in the center of the display space.
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All Things Videogame Related: EXTREME VS!!
Chronocidal replied to Keith's topic in Anime or Science Fiction
At some point in the not too distant past (maybe a year or two?) I remember trying the game, and finding that it had a buyable add-on pack that included a full set of TOS ships/uniforms/weapons. The TOS Constitution class was a fairly overpowered starter ship, but yes, it made the early gameplay much more entertaining. Really though, the thing I found most impressive with the entire TOS setup was the attention to detail on the ship interiors. Whereas all of the TNG+ interiors look insanely oversized and astoundingly generic, the TOS ship interior was a room-by-room recreation of the TOS sets, correctly scaled, and full of little easter eggs to find. -
Given the issues Hikaru and Minmay ran into in the incomplete sections of the ship while trying to open doors? I'd say it was a sensible precaution.
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STAR WARS Merchandise Episode - 2
Chronocidal replied to Black Valkyrie's topic in Anime or Science Fiction
After looking at some of the Revell stuff, I don't think "best of the rest" is anything to shoot for. The only kits they have that seem to have any effort put into them are the reboxed Fine Molds ones. -
Macross Collectibles Market Watch - Current Auction/Store SOLD prices
Chronocidal replied to jvmacross's topic in Toys
In one sense, I'd consider the 1D kit more valuable just because it's a viable source of spare tan parts for the 1D, or VT-1. I know I mostly ordered that kit to have a spare 1D head to swap onto my VT-1 for fun. If all you need for your Platypus are the two-seater specific parts, I'm sure someone with a VT-1 with busted shoulders would appreciate the matching replacements. You could source all of the universal parts from an easier to acquire kit, since they'll probably be painted anyway. Really wish they had put out a kit of the VT-1 style two-seaters, preferably in VE-1 gray. Would have made a good number of custom paint schemes a whole lot easier. -
So the search function refuses to find this topic for some odd reason, but fortunately it wasn't buried too far. Apologies for digging up this old relic, but has anyone every taken apart the backpack drone for this set? My drone has nozzles that are limp as a soggy roll of tissue paper, and I need to find some way to get them off without destroying the drone. Pried off the glued on screw covers on the underside, only to find that that the only thing the screws do anything for is holding the center piece together, while the entire engine pods are glued shut. I'm tempted to try and just pop them off the ball joints, but I can't get any leverage on the nozzle, and I'm worried I'll snap off the goofy jagged petals if I try.
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Very nice reference. I never understood why it got molded that way to begin with, but always assumed it wouldn't be that difficult to fix.
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Did Hasegawa ever do anything to correct the massive engine droop on their 1/72 VF-1 mold? I know the 1/48 doesn't do it, and I've seen people mod the 1/72s to fix it, but I haven't looked at those kits in a long time.
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So, assuming the white parts of Bandai's decals aren't speckled for some ludicrous reason, you could always scan them, replace the screen printing with solid colors, and then print decals yourself to lay over the top of the Bandai ones. I'm tempted to do that myself already. Scan in my sheets, reproduce them in vector graphics, and only use the white sections of the existing decals.
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Just want to say, I hope someone finds a way to get this kit setup with injection molds some day, because it really is beautifully designed to go together easily. Got my painted kit a bit ago, and she's a beauty. Looking forward to finishing up the last few details on her.
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That's kinda been the general approach to everything since Frontier though, just having the chest plop down on top of the torso and kinda sorta almost lock down, while the head flops around on a nearly secured sliding/rotating platform that may or may not be grinding paint off the nose of the valk. I really haven't been impressed with the stability of any of Bandai's valks in battroid. All but the VF-19 Advance and YF-30 have seemed to rely on floppy/sloppy hinged panels that have to be positioned just right, and may never actually lock down in any appreciable manner (shoulder panels on the VF-25s, 27s, and 29s, and sloppy as hell hip bars on the 171s).
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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
Now, maybe if you actually had them launching off of rails externally, sure, but "drifting through the atmosphere containment field" just doesn't have the same punch as a catapult launch. Closest to the traditional start up sequence we get is really the original hangar deck sequence from Episode IV. For Episode VI though, they just skipped ahead to that awesome musical fanfare sequence having all the ships setting up for hyperspace. -
After this much time, and after as many complaints I saw here about the VF-25 decals years ago, I cannot believe in the slightest that Bandai has not already received an earful from their customers in Japan about how lousy those decals are. There's really no route for feedback from this side of the globe though, so you have to trust Japan to make those complaints for us. Really though, I don't think these kits are even aimed at "serious" modelers, so Bandai probably doesn't care that the decals suck, because they know that people who actually want good ones are going to wait for Hasegawa kits somewhere down the road.
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Hey, long as they don't blatantly photoshop out some sort of hideous feature that doesn't look how they want it to, I'm all good. I don't display the boxes anyway.
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I find it hilarious that that transparent version comes with the exact same stickers, so when you apply them, you suddenly get giant patches of solid fuselage.
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Who knows really, there's only room for so many twists to the plot. I just want to see it happen because it'd be something new, and unexpected from her character. Hopefully the 31's just suffering from inept display syndrome (IDS ) and will fit together nicely in-hand. Bandai's presenters never have been very good at prepping any of their products for display. I really don't think anything is going to fix the backplate though. The twisty flippy origami fold system they have in place is never going to give a very streamlined spine, and it looks like instead of folding the spine itself like the YF-30 did, this one actually lifts up by supports on either side of it, making the whole mechanism use twice as many moving parts as should be necessary (another of Bandai's more frustrating calling cards ). I still think the un-streamlined butt of the spine is just an unmitigated bucket of ugly though. Whose idea was it to make the tip not flush with the upper surface of the pod? The YF-30 was soooo much better there.
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Glad to finally see a shot of something that's closer to final. Think this is the first time we've seen one where significant portions of the plane weren't molded in a solid piece, so yeah, there's going to be gaps now, because the people prepping the display haven't had to deal with all those fiddly parts. The gappy backplate really does look nasty though, I hope that can fit together better. As far as Mirage singing though... I honestly have been waiting a long time to see that particular twist in Macross, kind of the anti-Basara; a purely military female pilot who starts singing and gets better at flying because of it. Watch, Mirage will finally cut loose and start belting out Ikenai Borderline mid-battle, then suddenly start outflying everyone. Triangle wise though, I could actually see Hayate's love of Freya's singing convince her to give it a shot.
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Now if they'd only give us some freaking missiles already. Still pretty clearly all under development though, those legs still look like a single piece from intake to nozzle.
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Macross Δ (Delta) - Mission 12 - READ 1st POST
Chronocidal replied to azrael's topic in Movies and TV Series
By this point, I would actually figure the VF-1s might be manufactured on the private market, similar to how companies have purchased the rights to produce brand new P-51 mustangs for private and international use. What actually does surprise me about the Macross universe in general is that we don't really see many purpose-built civilian craft anymore (or I just don't remember any besides Hikaru's fanracer and fanliner). Nearly all of the privately owned vehicles are either retired military models, or derivatives of them. -
Macross Δ BD/DVD Thread (now with delicious English subs).
Chronocidal replied to UN Spacy's topic in Movies and TV Series
English subs have me entirely sold, but not one disc at a time. The extras and smaller size of a boxed set always make it worth waiting for. -
I'd actually forgotten about the F-15's nose gear, was trying to think of anything that opens that direction. But even then, that's a tiny flat door which is partially shielded from the airflow by the tire and strut, where the VF-31's are giant scoops. Even if they don't get ripped off entirely, they're going to massively slow the plane down. Good points all around. As far as gear location goes though, once you start talking about craft with such ridiculous amounts of thrust, and also thrust vectoring all over the place, rotation probably wouldn't be so dependent on how close the gear are to the CG. The thrust these engines put out in-universe now is probably enough to not even need a catapult. The only valk toys I've seen that actually look decent that way are the YF-21/VF-22 like you said, and the SV-51, which stows its gear in very Su-27-like bays along the sides of the fuselage. Most others just kind of shove the gear into whatever space is available. The VF-11 at least tried, with the rotating strut, but they were mounted too far back in the bay, and wound up too stubby to do much good.
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More mechanically speaking, in terms of the landing gear. Sure, you can say and do whatever you like with Macross universe overtechnology, but up until now, they really haven't used that sort of magical mechanical nonsense on things as mundane as landing gear. All of the landing gear on pretty much every valk ever designed up until now would probably function perfectly well if you produced a pure aircraft using modern technology. These things? They're shock-less sticks that rely on a torsion joint for any sort of suspension or compression. Not to mention that without ridiculously strong materials, the gear doors would rip themselves clean off the aircraft when they started to open, because they open into the airstream, and not pushing against it. Then, assuming the gear actually do compress, if they take a hard landing, you're going to have the gear doors slamming into the shins, and potentially seriously compromising the airframe. Don't they store missiles in there? I'm not saying that they wouldn't work without the right amount of non-existent applied super-technology. It's just that on an aircraft that generally follows the design conventions of modern day aerodynamics, they look completely out of place, incredibly ugly, and entirely unbelievable from a functional perspective.
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The wonky colors are based on a badly painted animation cel, so yeah, I think that's the definition of a mistake. Trying to figure out where the cel posted earlier came from, but a bunch of real gems came out of the episode "Viva Maria." Lots of amusing colorations in the show, including a few shots of characters so off model you might be separated from your lunch. Another particular shot in that show has the M&Ms using entirely standard blue fast packs as well, followed by a scene where, yes, that panel on Max's leg pack is white... because they overblew the exhaust flares from the engines, and the entire lower leg is solid white. Yet another scene has the lighter panel showing up because the rest of the leg is shadowed by the wing. I dunno, maybe Bandai felt like they had to do something to differentiate their own releases? They seem to have given up on using the wrong chest stripes, so I guess they had to do something else wrong to compensate for it.
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The booster packs make sense from the perspective that they're adding a significant amount of extra weapons systems, and all that extra mass is going to need more fuel to get it moving, and possibly more thrust to keep it functional. Unfortunately, these just look ugly. I don't mind the armor pieces on the rest of the valk, they blend in decently, though the under-wing panels look a little out of place, and I'm curious what they're for. It's the boosters that blow the whole thing to pot. They're huge, not even remotely securely attached, and make the entire plane look horribly unbalanced. Yes, they look a lot like the VF-11's boosters, but those were mounted on the main body, not mid-wing, and they weren't that big. I think the only thing that would fix these is either mounting them on the main fuselage (not likely because of the wing folds in the back) or splitting the booster down the center, rotating it outward, and sliding it over the front of the wings like the VF-25, placing one nozzle above and below the wing. Mounting that entire monstrosity on just the stub of the folded tail looks unstable to the point that I have no idea how they'll stay on the toys at all.
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I actually like the twisty nose design, it's actually a nice way to bend it without leaving the nose to flap around if the connection gets sloppy. The landing gear though.. there's just no excuse for those in any sense. The front gear doors make no sense at all (are they actually like that in the show?) and the rear ones are seriously just afterthoughts. Whether the designs are even viable or not as seen in the show, it looks like no one with any actual comprehension of how aircraft work designed the kits... oh right, it's Bandai. I'm starting to think Kawamori phoned this one in though, and let Bandai's mecha-monkeys work out the details. I don't think anyone with any sort of engineering degree could ever come up with that design, and be able to keep a straight face.