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Chronocidal

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  1. Chronocidal
    So, this might be an oddball question, but I'm just curious. I've never worked in resin, so I think I'd actually prefer a raw printed plastic version to build up and work on. Would it be possible to buy a complete printed kit from your Shapeways shop, or even just part by part? I've looked through your shop, and it doesn't look like all of the pieces are available currently.
  2. Chronocidal
    Seriously, those things are so heavily stickered, they look like papercraft models. I can't really tell if the others are fully painted, or if they're just computer renders though. They look a little too perfect for the size they are.
  3. Chronocidal
    I don't remember the VF-25 kits being quite that expensive, but I think I did get them on sale at the time. What I do remember is that prices for the armored pack kits were just obscene, and they never went on sale. I think they solved this issue easily with the armored packs, but the base VF-25 kits and supers were floppy messes in fighter. Fortunately, it's not hard to add a wing glove locking tab almost identical to ones on the 1/60 v.2 DX version (a couple holes drilled and filed, and a locking tab glued in place). I haven't tried the same thing with the super versions, but once the v.2 DX came out, I really lost most of my reason for owning the 1/72 kits.
  4. Chronocidal
    Yech... those decal canopies look nasty. Wish they would just stick with 1/100, that line had so much potential, but it's like they stopped caring after releasing the YF-29 and one VF-25 variant.
  5. Chronocidal
    Far as I'm aware they're not even to any particular scale, just "whatever fits in this box we're already making." The ones they did show were somewhere around 1/180.
  6. Chronocidal
    I'd honestly blame the design more than the plastic since the assembly and tolerances seemed to be a bigger issue. But that's just me. I just think anyone designing something with that many superfluous parts and unnecessary mechanisms is asking for it to fail horribly. I think only time will tell if Bandai's engineers learned from that, but as far as I know the YF-30 was pretty much problem free, so they may be getting better.
  7. Chronocidal

    Bandai DX VF-31

    Chronocidal replied to UN Spacy's topic in Toys

    If you take a look at some of the 1/72 kit news, you can at least see 2-3 individual pod designs for them, but the differences are pretty slight. I'm just stumped that they still don't have anything more than what looks like half-baked DX prototypes to show. Those are nowhere near finished products, judging by the lack of parts that look like they should actually move (looking at the fighter mode).
  8. Chronocidal
    Late reply about the multi-colored part thing, but Bandai has been using that in at least one of the new Star Wars kits. The Tie Advanced kit molds the solar panels on a double layered sprue that's clearly filled in separately. The end result is that the entire solar panel is molded in color, with no seams between the gray and black plastic. The only downside is that you actually have to cut the parts free from two interwoven sprues of different colors, and you wind up with black bits of plastic showing around the edges of the gray panel. I personally prefer the way the standard Tie's panels are assembled, but I expect they'll do a similar trick with the Interceptor when it comes out. For kits this size though, I doubt they'd even consider something like that technique. The multi-colored sprue marks on such a tiny kit would be huge.
  9. Chronocidal
    I don't think the Frontier kits were even bad exactly, they looked just fine if you put enough work into them... the amount of work required was the biggest roadblock though. I still think I like the shape of the model in fighter mode even a little better than the 1/60 toys, since the fighter profile looks a little cleaner. Eh, I may get one or two of these, but the only reason I picked up so many of the 1/72 VF-25 kits was because, at the time they came out, the Bandai DX versions were absolutely hideous by comparison. The big thing they seem to forget in their models though is that the leg needs a sideways thigh swivel for gerwalk. The multi-jointed hips and knees help a little, but that thigh joint is really necessary for any good gerwalk poses.
  10. Chronocidal
    Hey, it could be a lot worse. Insurrection was pretty much just a standard TNG episode with a bigger budget, and though it had a fairly predictable plot full of silliness, it was Oscar material compared with the eye-gougingly bad level of terrible trek fanfic that Nemesis sunk to. I'm just hopeful that they take the ship blowing up bit, and run with it straight back to a revised ship design that has any sense of realistic internal and external scale to it. I'd say go straight back to the original Connie Refit design, but that's probably asking too much, and I hesitate to imagine what they might "re-envision" it as this time.
  11. Chronocidal
    Really, the VF-4's fighter adapter is my favorite Yamato/Arcadia adapter period. It attaches solidly without having to half-way transform the thing, and actually sits right under the balance point, so the valk both looks and feels centered on the stand. I did trim down the locking pegs on mine a little though, to get it to snap in and out of the sockets easier. The pegs were so big they deformed the area around the sockets when I first attached it.
  12. Chronocidal

    Bandai DX VF-31

    Chronocidal replied to UN Spacy's topic in Toys

    I'd be a lot happier with the design if they did more to streamline the spine like they did on the YF-30. That gappy ledge between the engines just looks really unsightly to me, and I'm having a hard time looking past it for some reason.
  13. Chronocidal
    The knee isn't exactly a common issue, but when it happens, it's usually a complete disaster. Mine broke into so many pieces, I could use it for confetti. It's really not so simple as a reversed pin, and the likelihood is, if you've broken the leg off, you probably need an entirely new knee joint, and the leg is so overglued together, you may destroy it worse trying to install a new knee.
  14. Chronocidal
    Wow, I'm a little surprised they had enough for a sale, but I guess that just means the 0S didn't even sell all that well. Kinda sad, but more sad that I've gotten accustomed to picking up everything at release now, instead of waiting for clearance sales.
  15. Chronocidal
    Fixed.
  16. Chronocidal
    The markings aren't hard to do yourself (with a decent amount of research) but yeah, there are a lot of different panels and colored portions on the other x-wings. I might see if I can use the references on that site about the turret to make a bigger one than they plan on including. Might be able to make a shapeways kit for it, but the bulk of it would be easiest to make with sheet styrene.
  17. Chronocidal
    Careful asking that kind of question around modelers, you might get digitally tarred and feathered. Are those the actual turrets they're coming out with though? If so, yeah, they just look way too tiny. Not bad against the surface, but the fighters throw everything off, because the turrets just don't look very threatening at that size. The turrets should be at least the size of the tile base itself, so it looks more like the size of a multi-crewed artillery emplacement, and less like a machine gun mount. Though, maybe they're just planning ahead, since those look like they'd be roughly in scale with the new micro-scale ships they're planning. One thing I would like to see though is a re-release of the x-wing kit without all the jigsaw colored pieces for the nose (or at least mold them all in gray so I don't have to cover the red plastic), and a wider selection of decals to make more than just Luke's ship.
  18. Chronocidal
    Found a topic on a modeling forum about someone building a studio scale replica turret, and whether the turret was meant to be the same size as the parts used suggest, a lot of the greeblies slapped onto its surface were some of the same parts used to detail up the surfaces of other ships. This was the one used in close-ups (I think only one was built), so minus any fancy camera work, it probably is the correct size compared with the studio-scaled fighters. http://www.therpf.com/showthread.php?t=136082 I love reading these types of articles though, they go into a detailed breakdown of where all the identifiable parts came from, down to which kits to buy to make your own. The gun barrels are apparently 1/32 MiG-21 engines. Anyway, the only thing I can find consistent about the death star surface details is their inconsistency. They were assembled in whatever shape or form worked for filming, so there's really no rhyme or reason to how big or small they appear. This shot from inside the trench has several sections outlined, all of which were used for Bandai's stand tiles. The big section outlined in yellow is the base included in the Y-wing kit, the pink and green sections are the tiles used for the tie fighter and tie advanced kits, and the red section is roughly one quarter of the base included for the x-wing, with the other 3/4 coming from other details that I can't find a screen capture of. Suffice to say, keeping in any kind of scale when dealing with the death star may be a good way to go crazy.
  19. Chronocidal
    Looks like it's way too small based on what I remember, but I'll have to find some comparison shots. I know there's concept art showing the proper scale. A-wing looks really pretty though, I can't wait to build up a few. What I'd love to see are a few pure death star tile sets of different styles, mainly the under construction types from the second death star, with cranes and support structures all over. Edit: After a little research, Bandai may have worked themselves into a corner with the turrets. The version they're trying to replicate is supposed to be pretty huge. It goes further than that though... you kind of have to forget scale entirely when replicating bits of the death star, since nothing was actually constructed in the same scale, and I don't know if canon dimensions for things we've seen even exist. Here's a shot of the trench, with a few things highlighted. Those circled elements are bits of the surface that have been replicated in the tiles included in the X-Wing and Tie fighter kits. The tiny pegs with the orange arrows pointing to them? THOSE are the turbolaser turrets. Basically, the stand tiles are nowhere near 1/72 scale. If the turbolasers were molded into those tiles, they'd be so tiny the 1/72 pilots could hop out of their cockpits, and kick them over. I think the best option would be for them to only model the top-most section of the turret design they have, and scale it to the same footprint as a single tile. That would get the turret itself in about the proper scale to the fighters at least, but it would also make the turret big enough to be its own kit.
  20. Chronocidal
    I doubt it would be too hard to splice a few more lights in, or just repurpose the ramp or cockpit ones to run some fiber optic strands. The lighting from those big lights is a little much for the interior. Also, just out of curiosity, does the Bandai kit include the original style rounded sensor dish?
  21. Chronocidal
    If I remember sizes correctly, the B-wing's about the same size as a Y-wing, at least in terms of longest dimension. Shouldn't need to go to 1/144 for that. But... yeah. A-wings are a bit smaller, but not as small as I remembered (about 3/4 the size of an X-wing), so pretty small, but not bad. Just means I can buy more of them. Fortunately, once you get rid of the sprue, these kits are all really compact with a little disassembly, and you can easily fit 4 or more of the kits in a single box. The turbolaser's a nice addition too, so I'll probably pick up a few of them, and I'm going to have to grab a bunch of Interceptors and bombers. Any release dates listed?
  22. Chronocidal

    Hi-Metal R

    Chronocidal replied to joppewo's topic in Toys

    There have been a few seen here in the past, but they were an extremely limited kit made of higher density plastic, and priced beyond what a lot of people would want to pay for a kit, even if they had been readily available at online retailers. As of this morning, AmiAmi still had some in their shop, but I'm not sure if I actually want to double dip on the Regult yet. My passion for Macross merchandise generally comes from fancy transforming aircraft, and this doesn't really qualify as either, so having one to pose with the Glaug might be plenty.
  23. Chronocidal
    Hard to tell if they're actually detachable, or it's just an assembly point, because the back end of the back plate above the pod is so blunt and un-streamlined.
  24. Chronocidal
    I don't know about the ankle joint itself being stiff, but on my VF-0D, extending the foot out of the leg from fighter mode is a massive undertaking. I generally wind up removing any pointy, fragile, or scratch-prone piece prior to doing it, just because I have to get such a death grip on the leg to yank the thing loose. Have to agree though, I miss the original gear door design, they just looked and functioned better in general. They were easier to open, but more than that, they didn't fall out, and the old hinge design actually resembled the types you see on real aircraft gear doors, with the pivot being buried inside, and the hooked pivot moving the door out and away from the opening.
  25. Chronocidal
    Wow, the color on that Alto is baaaaaaaaaad. Makes me sorta almost glad that the one I got was the blue-tinted "movie" release. The 2SS is looking good there though, I admit it's sort of refreshing to see a truly battroid focused take on a valk, even if the fighter mode suffers from it.
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