Chronocidal
-
Posts
10759 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Events
Gallery
Everything posted by Chronocidal
-
Technically, the Arcadia YF-19 doesn't even count in that category though, since the wings might be floppy in fighter mode as well. I'd actually say the same about the VF-19s though, they feel more solid than the YF-19, and not just for the wings. Maybe it's the polished surface hiding flaws, or maybe it's just a difference in tolerances, but the YF-19 didn't seem to me like it had the same "WOW!" factor straight out of the box. I dunno, maybe by the time the YF-19 came out, I was just spoiled by all the VF-19 variants. From a design standpoint though, I'd put the VF-19s ahead by a decent margin. They had a more streamlined intake design for one (that blocky lip still bothers me), and less fiddly/fragile bits around the hip plates, but they also made a few unnecessary changes to the YF-19 design that actually made it more annoying to transform. Specifically, they added an interlock to the wing root hip hinges that keeps them from rotating out away from the chest unless the wingroots are first pulled out, away from the hips. That's great... except you need to rotate them out away from the chest to unlock the chest for gerwalk mode, and they're locked down by the chest, so you can't extend the hinges to unlock them. It winds up meaning you need to do a bunch of hip-related shenanigans to shift the wingroots enough to unlock them, all for a locking mechanism that really has no purpose at all, in any mode. Still, it's a beautiful design, I just hope I can find a way to make the wing mechanism not suck.
-
Bandai Macross Δ Mecha Collection Small Scale Plastic Model Kits
Chronocidal replied to IXTL's topic in Model kits
Those old fighter-only kits were actually 1/100 I think, which would have been a much better size all around, especially since they would have been in scale with the HMR line. But you know, heaven forbid that the Bandai model and toy divisions should ever coordinate on anything ever.. -
I wouldn't call their X-Wing kits anywhere near their best work. While the kit is insanely detailed, and even very fun to build, the fuselage is a gappy mess of nonsense, due to them deciding, for some reason, that the nose markings HAD to be molded in color.. despite not including any other colored parts in the entire kit. On the other hand though, while they still went with the molded marking panels, the Y-Wing is both a lot better designed, and insanely intricately detailed (you might have to assemble parts of it with tweezers). The TIE Fighters too are nicely designed, and will look beautiful straight out of the box with no paint or glue, because of how they broke down the solar panel assemblies. Anyhow though, if you can manage to find ways to get the VF-25 kits to stay together in fighter mode, they do look nice when everything lines up. The biggest lesson I've learned with any Bandai kit is that you really have to clean the parts. Bandai's molding is top-notch, but even they will have slight bits of plastic flash or mis-molding sometimes, and you have to make sure that you clean up sprue attachment points carefully. The parts will fit together nicely, but only once you get everything aligned. I found that I had to squeeze the hips pretty forcefully onto their joints before they would sit nicely under the chest. Once the hips fit, the arms and shoulders all align better as well.
-
I dunno, I really wasn't impressed by the VF-1 kit they did. For some reason, the design team went way off of the line-art, and tried to reinvent a bunch of things that didn't need to change, while simultaneously getting a little too ambitious with the transformation mechanism and the tiny details. I'm not going to argue about Bandai being able to design amazing model kits. It's when they start getting into things that transform, and decide to get "creative" with their interpretations of established designs that things start to fall apart. I just hope they learned a lesson or two about designing these kits from the VF-25s. I've given up hope that they'll ever discover that you can just Google the term "landing gear" and get some wonderful design references, but at the very least they need to include tabs to actually keep the darn things from dissolving into a froppy mess in fighter mode.
-
Given the option, I wouldn't mind screw covers if they would make them easier to remove. It just seems like every time I actually need to take something apart to fix it, I'm stymied every which way by screw covers that are so over-glued, I have to destroy them to get them out. Bandai is the worst for this though. At least with Yamato/Arcadia, the screw covers are usually easily identified, and not covered by massive glued-on panels.
-
Finally opened up my HMR Roy last night, nice little piece of engineering. A little fiddly to get the arms situated properly in fighter mode, but I like the sliding mechanism for the most part; I freaked out a bit the first time I tried to rotate a shoulder, and the sliding hinge popped off the shaft (nothing broke, they pop on and off pretty easily). Those ball joints actually feel tighter than any of my 1/60 Bandai valks. Makes a nice little desk model though, and I like that you really only need the canopy cover and gunpod handle to fully transform it. Was also happy to see that the popped-up fast pack angle I've seen in a lot of pictures is just from the backpack not being pushed fully aft. They line up nicely level once everything is pushed into place. On the flip-side of that though, I think my biggest gripe is that they printed most of the skulls at a screwy angle (I didn't look closely at the canopy cover). They're all aligned with each other, but it's like Bandai used an off-kilter reference point to align them, and they're all tilted pretty significantly. I might also try to pry apart the dual reaction missile clusters, because they're assembled entirely cockeyed on the pylons.
-
Oh good freaking grief Bandai, learn how to make decals that don't suck already. These have that same stupid screen-printed pattern as the VF-25 ones did. It looks terrible in the close-ups.
-
Bandai Macross Δ Mecha Collection Small Scale Plastic Model Kits
Chronocidal replied to IXTL's topic in Model kits
See, now that is pretty. I might have to do that as well. Despite the lack of an actual VF-17, I was really happy when I unlocked both Gamlin's and Millia's VF-17 schemes for the VF-171 in Macross 30. They just look great in those colors. -
I've got disassembly pics of the old Yamato one buried somewhere on the forum, but the structure is basically identical for the Arcadia one from what I've seen. The thing to keep in mind is that pulling the nose apart might let some smaller pieces for the landing gear doors fall out, but I'm not sure the Arcadia version uses the same little parts.
-
I might have to take the plunge on this one, though I don't know if I want a pre-painted kit or not yet. It's tempting to not have to worry about decorating it myself, and just display it.
-
STAR WARS Merchandise Episode - 2
Chronocidal replied to Black Valkyrie's topic in Anime or Science Fiction
Going to be grabbing at least 3 each of those A-Wings and Ties. I might even expand all my kits to groups of 4. -
Pricing aside, I'm kind of happy he was an exclusive, just to avoid dealing the the usual preorder nonsense for Bandai products in general. I'm thinking the Roy might be my only HMR VF-1 though, since I've got so many 1/60ths (though I might get one TV release for the rest of the missiles).
-
Yeah, I must admit I'm not really sold on anything about the 31, structurally speaking. It's not a bad design, but it does a whole bunch of little things that irritate my design sense. I might get a couple, depending on my attachment to any characters once I see the show, but I'm finding the 262 much more interesting all around.
-
STAR WARS Merchandise Episode - 2
Chronocidal replied to Black Valkyrie's topic in Anime or Science Fiction
Awesome news, I'll have to pick up a few of those. -
I'd call that a spoiler the same way it's a spoiler to tell people that there are cars in "Fast and the Furious" movies. Though, whether people would consider a reveal of whether the packs are ugly or not some type of spoiler, I can't say.
-
Actually, that surprised me that Bandai went so far as to make all the extra parts, and surprised me even more for not selling them as a webshop item. They just don't seem to like people being able to mix and match weapons though, for whatever reason.
-
My Roy just showed up at my door (with the stand), and that is by far the biggest pile of nonsense packing I've ever seen. THREE external boxes, the biggest of which would've held a full 1/60 VF-25 with packs included. Felt like I was opening a set of Russian dolls. Quick once over looks like everything's in place though, I'll probably pop it open later today. Edit: Don't know if I'm really surprised or not, but I'm a little disappointed that they didn't include the triple missile clusters. They weren't in DYRL, so I guess it's fair not to pack them in, but I've definitely been spoiled by Yamato/Arcadia packing everything in to give you the most flexibility. Looks like I'll have to get another HMR to get the TV missiles.
-
All Things Videogame Related: EXTREME VS!!
Chronocidal replied to Keith's topic in Anime or Science Fiction
When they announce a new X-Wing or Tie Fighter game, I might start caring, but given it's EA, it would probably only be caring enough to rant about everything wrong with it. -
I believe you mean, "That's not true! That's impossible!"
-
Small update about the wing mechanism, I finally got the screw cover out of the underside of the wing glove. It took a lot of prying with a razor blade, but I kept the part mostly intact. It's a battle of patience getting it out without deforming it horribly, and even then, the part fits so tightly, I definitely warped the edges of it. Slightly sad news is, my original thought about a sliding joint won't quite work, the distance involved is slightly too long. Measuring the distance between the base swingbar pivot and the one at the wingroot, the wingroot is 3 cm away from the base when folded for battroid, but a little over 6.5 cm when in the outer position for high speed mode. So, a sliding joint to shift the pivot outward for high speed mode would need 3 segments, which might be too fragile or bulky to fit well. I'm going to keep brainstorming on that one. The slightly better news is that if you ignore the swingbar entirely, the wingroot pivot stays essentially stationary between normal fighter and battroid position. So, you could potentially replace the entire swingbar with a single piece that screws in place, and just have the wing pivot on its own. On top of that, locking the swingbar in place has one other benefit. If the wing doesn't have to shift outward for high speed mode, there's an opportunity to extend the trailing edge of the wing to give it some surface contact against the sides of the legs, and keep its sweep constant in fighter mode (though attaching fast packs might alter the contact point somewhat). I'll post some pictures later of what I'm thinking about, but the gist of it is that where the very trailing edge of the wing meets with the wing glove inner surface in battroid position, there's some hollow space in the wing glove. If you were to add an extended tab at the trailing edge to rest against the legs, there could be room for that same tab to slide inside the wing glove in battroid mode, so it doesn't interfere with the wing position. You'd just need to cut a slot for the tab to rotate into when the wings are moved for battroid mode. I'd love to keep high speed mode just for making it easier to display these in cramped spaces, but it'll take some fancy engineering to rework the existing swingbar to let it work better, and not flop around.
-
I want to say it doesn't surprise me, but those odds are terrible. For me it's only been one of two that had a shattered leg, so higher percentage, but lower number. I'm really careful with all of these now, and really haven't transformed them except to inspect the knees to see if there are any cracks. That metallic plastic is really sketchy, and when I saw what looked like a fracture starting on one of the plastic flow lines on my Luca 171, I put it back in fighter and left it.
-
Saban's Power Rangers, in theaters March 24,2017
Chronocidal replied to Old_Nash's topic in Anime or Science Fiction
The big argument I always hear against sculpted breastplates usually amounts to the fact that armor is meant to deflect blows away from the vital organs, while a sculpted chest could direct the force of blows directly into the sternum. While I can agree with that whole-heartedly, I want to say the circumstances may change when you move from metal plates held against the skin, and start talking in terms of cybernetic or biological enhancements that may be less about a person wearing armor than they are directly modifying a person's strength at the molecular level. If the armor is literally a part of the person, it's not as likely to injure them. Not that I'm trying to defend these designs, which look pretty derivative of every cybernetic armor I've seen in the past ten years (my first impression was a mix of Iron Man, and the game Warframe). Mostly, I think people are tired of the over-sexualized form-fitting armor that so many franchises love. The heels though.. just to play devil's advocate, I want to say there might be a good reason for boosted heels in the armor (mostly thinking of the heel springs you get in Portal) but if that's the case, everyone should have them. -
I've been hoping to get a second 25G for a long time, just so I can actually hope that I get a crotch plate this time. My first order was just flat out missing it, and Bandai showed it's usual care and consideration for US customers in replacing it. Ever since then, it's been using the super pack groin as a placeholder. I've actually seriously considered replacing it with the YF-25's though, since it's also blue and white, and actually I think matches the 25G's scheme better.
-
Considering how many times we've seen this exact same error, I think it's just that the people running the quality control don't know how to read English characters well enough to know there's anything wrong. It's not like the parts are even symmetrical, they just flat out put the markings on backwards. I think the first time this was brought up was the leg armors of the tornado parts, and there's really no ambiguity at all which way those should face.
-
Well, remember, half of the fighters in Macross don't even use horizontal stabilizers, because that functionality is basically taken over entirely by thrust vectoring. A modernized F-104 with computer controls and omnidirectional thrust vectoring would probably be able to keep up just fine. But anyway.. yeah, I want that 262. Assuming I have the transformation sequence figured correctly, I love the twisty flippy acrobatics the fuselage has to do to make a full set of limbs out of a cranked delta wing design.