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Chronocidal

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Everything posted by Chronocidal

  1. Chronocidal
    Woo, I love this part.. where we get one cad image to look at, and we start picking it apart driving ourselves crazy with anticipation. It's definitely looking like the VF-19s when you compare the intakes and wing glove joints. The intakes are pretty weird looking though, almost unfinished due to that thick upper lip (kinda like they just stuck the VF-19 intakes on there for the render). Looks like it'll have the same neck cover as the VF-19s, which is fine by me. Looking at the battroid pic though, the hip design looks strange. I've never seen anyone separate the upper intake from the wingroot gunports, so that's definitely a new take. If they're basing it off of the VF-19 hip design, I'd guess the gunport is attached to the hip mount, while the upper intake is hinged like the triangular panels that swing up and slide back on the VF-19s. I'm not sure the hips in the battroid pic are the same as the ones in the fighter one though. Also looks like the tails don't slide up (yet), and the feet look like ball joints again, based on the angle they're at. The vents in the shoulder covers look a little weird to me, but might be just unfinished. I'll be interested to see how they deal with the gullet this time. The VF-19 had that nice wide body ahead of the intakes that they could fold into panels under the chest, but this one's gonna need something else to cover the sides of that flap. I'm also hoping they went ahead and ditched the "canon" transformation for the crotch plate. The locking/shifting one on the VF-19 just works infinitely better, aesthetically and structurally. Personally I'm just thrilled that they're re-tackling the design now, and I don't have to feel any regret over hacking up the nose section on my original 1/60 to try and fix the nose shape. I'm also perfectly okay with them taking the VF-4 route with this one, both with sale methods and pricing. It'll restrict how many I buy, but long as I have at least one or two, I'll be good. If they open up the production lines, and we get runs similar to the VF-19 in cost, I'll grab as many as I can.
  2. Chronocidal
    So... much... drool... keyboard... shorting... out. Hurts a little to say this, but I will probably buy one at any price. Possibly multiples. If they release the supernova schemes, I'm going to need to take out a mortgage.
  3. Chronocidal
    Yeah, that's my favorite method to display pretty much any valk capable of it, mostly due to the limited space I have. You can play with the balance point on the VF-1 (and a few others) by closing the feet a notch as well, so it works with and without fast packs. You can really pack em in like sardines that way. Sadly, it doesn't work for a few valks due to unique foot designs. If you twist the ankles around on a VF-27 you can kind of do it, but otherwise it's like the SV-51 with the triple toes making it difficult. Same with the YF-21/VF-22, since the feet aren't external. I haven't tried the VF-4 that way yet, but I'm not sure the feet extend far enough to make it past the tailcone.
  4. Chronocidal
    Are they renaming it the Xbox 180 then? Good to hear they're not completely deaf to reason, but it's funny that it took such a huge uproar to convince them they were trying to market an unsellable idea. It does make me wonder though. If the situation had been reversed, would Sony have done the same thing? Or, if both of them had gone the same route, would the outcry have been enough to get both of them to change, or would they have just stuck to their DRM-happy fantasy world, and told the market to get used to it?
  5. Chronocidal
    You know what does throw me off about the nose.. they really did curve it downwards a bunch. Not as much as that previous kit, but more than I've seen on any other recent interation. Line-art pickyness aside, it just looks weird that way to me.
  6. Chronocidal
    At this point, issuing bundles would only piss people off... so I'm tempted to think that's exactly what they'll do. Actually though, if they were going to release bundles, I don't see any reason why they're re-releasing a stand-alone Alto.
  7. Chronocidal
    Woo, got my payment notification from AmiAmi, should be on it's way soon.
  8. Chronocidal
    I went to go check my NY account, and despite not receiving any actual email about it, they did post a shipping confirmation and tracking number. I think they're just behind with their email updates, so if you haven't gotten any notifications, make sure to check your order history.
  9. Chronocidal
    I paid at preorder and it's still being delayed for who knows why. I got the "shipped" note, but so far, nothing beyond that.
  10. Chronocidal
    Yeah, NY is really dropping the ball on updates for this one so far, wonder if they're having shipping issues. Got the notice that it was shipped, but no updates, no tracking number, etc. Could be related to their little blurb about a new pre-order system, I guess.
  11. Chronocidal
    You know, honestly.. that doesn't bother me nearly as much as the crappy fit of the parts. I can make up for their ineptitude at painting things easily enough, but I have half a mind to go and make shapeways replacements for all the junky die-cast parts the renewals have. I know people like their die-cast, but seriously, that looks freaking ugly.
  12. Chronocidal
    Sheeesh.. I gotta wonder what type of effect this has on shops who stock Bandai stuff. How can you make any kind of yearly budget projection when the company providing your wares shafts you out of entire product runs? Glad I got my NY order at least, but it's strange how long this one is taking to process. I got the "shipped" notification around midnight, but still no update with a tracking notification.
  13. Chronocidal
    The version 1 armored parts for Alto were only ever a webshop exclusive that was never reissued, but Ozma's was released in a bundle. The original color Alto super parts were also webshop only, and never saw a re-release as far as I'm aware. The blue Alto (Bluto? I'm gonna call it that now ) super bundle seemed to be a sales disaster, since it sat on clearance for months at various shops. Watch, that one will wind up being worth the most of all the V.1s later on. Hopefully Bandai will have it in their hearts to re-release the super/armor packs for all those people buying the second run of Alto, but I wouldn't count on it. At this point, I've just come to accept that I'm going to have to buy each webshop release when I can, because it probably won't happen again, even if I don't have the valk to put it on yet. Actually, given the coming Alto re-release, I wonder if they'll follow that up with Michael instead of Ozma, and then release both of their tornado packs simultaneously. Production-wise, that would make perfect sense, the parts would be identical except for a few colored bits and tampo printing. Frustrating for people waiting for an Ozma re-release though. Given how impressive and iconic Ozma's armored VF-25 is, I'm amazed they haven't capitalized on that more with a bundle.
  14. Chronocidal
    Since Steam already works offline anyway, I don't see why they'd need a patch. But I kind of doubt MS is planning ahead for that type of thing. Doing so would undermine their entire goal of being able to manage the licenses of the games. If they someday had a kill switch that just said, "Ok, you can stop checking for licenses now," not only would they probably tick off a lot of developers when they do it, but it also means that they've got a built in backdoor waiting to be exploited by console modders (not that I doubt we'll have mods that enable to consoles to play offline within weeks of release anyway). If they're planning to use the same authentication network for future consoles, I can see that coming back to bite them in the backside, but it might be a while before it becomes a problem.
  15. Chronocidal
    Nice to see the fighter can lock together a little better than they did it before, at least. I don't know. I mean, it doesn't look entirely terrible, but some things are just so far off, it's really hard to overlook them. The arms looks skinnier than the 1/48th's, and the entire leg mechanism just looks weird. Sad part is, they went to all that work to make a fancy leg hinge system, and somehow they still can't get a decent gerwalk pose. Considering you can already get dedicated battroid and fighter kits, I would have hoped they would have emphasized gerwalk a little more, but that screwy knee design just looks terrible. The model and toy departments at Bandai reeealllly need to stop with this nonsense about the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing. Knee swivels should be a standard feature on anything by this point.
  16. Chronocidal
    If enough of the preorders get cancelled, you'll probably see them popping up for at or below retail at NY soon. I don't know if it'll happen, but it's worth watching their listing page to see if the price drops from where it was before the release.
  17. Chronocidal
    If it's as good as you're saying, I'm gonna have to grab myself one soon. Do you have to build in the support structure, or does it know how to do that on its own? Also, what's the maximum part size you can make? I'm currently experimenting with useful ways to cut engraved panel lines into my model, but I'm wondering if Shapeways will have the ability to leave lines this thin. That excalibur model is pretty small, and I'm probably going to have to hit around a 0.1 mm thickness to get the details I want. That is, unless I get my own printer, and blow the thing up to about twice the size it is now.
  18. Chronocidal
    Yeah, I'm pretty sure those little things are fold quartz communication transceivers. The ghosts have them under the nose as well.
  19. Chronocidal
    I had to do a double take on the name there.. I read it as "U.S.S. Hobo Creek" Honestly, now I'm tempted to make a couple of joke starships with goofy names, using some of the tiny models I've picked up for cheap over the years. Remember those old AMT "Enterprise Incident" kits that had the TOS Enterprise and two Klingon D-7s? I don't recall the circumstances of the purchase, but I somehow acquired three of those kits for ludicrously cheap prices, and have a stockpile of the electronics from them. The ship name that comes to mind at the moment though is the USS PennyArcade, NCC-1337.
  20. Chronocidal
    Makes me wonder if maybe they weren't able to bring over all the old molds, but were able to keep the original CAD models. If forced into a bankruptcy damage control situation, it might make sense to just abandon the assets that would be the easiest to remake. I honestly don't know though. Given that they're unpainted, I'm personally hoping for a plain white strike pack kit. I'd love to make a couple of custom sets for the VF-1 kits I have, and white's a lot easier to paint over than dark blue.
  21. Chronocidal
    Nah, I think I'm going to keep them generic enough to use on either the Alto or 30th versions. Might put the black stripe back on, but for now I just like them blank. They're the least busy part of the entire design.
  22. Chronocidal
    So, took a bit of rubbing with Tamiya thinner (alcohol might have been better, but it worked), but it's mostly done. Debating whether to remove the stripes from the shield too, but it's taken a bit of work to get the yellow off the plastic. Say what you will about Bandai's painting, but they really managed to layer a ton of yellow on this thing. It took some sanding and scraping to get the yellow tint off the plastic, it had stained it yellow pretty heavily. Looks really nice with the white wings though, and the yellow bits don't clash since Alto's actually has a few yellow markings on it.
  23. Chronocidal
    Well, I went for the full removal option for now. I just took off all the stripes on the wings, including the yellow and black. I wouldn't have minded if the black stayed, but it was too hard to protect it while I scrubbed away the yellow. I can always mask and repaint it. Anyway, if you go to remove those stripes, you'll have to mask off the wingtip pods. Mine lost a tiny bit of paint under the edge of the tape, and it's white underneath. Nothing bad, I can touch it up with black and it'll be fine. I'll also need to repaint the lights on the tips of the wingtip tails, since those were right over the top of more of that yellow. The annoying thing is de-panel-lining it now, because that yellow really sticks in there. I'm gonna have to scribe over a bunch of lines to get the yellow out of them, and even then the plastic is tinted with it. I might give everything a light sanding to remove that. Got one wing done, will start on the other tomorrow. You're right, it doesn't look bad leaving a tiny bit of the yellow, since even Alto's plane has some yellow details on it.
  24. Chronocidal
    So, interesting discovery. As I went to start stripping the yellow paint off one set of the super packs, I did a little disassembly, just to make things easier. The wingtip fins snap in and out pretty easily, just don't force them. I do that, and surprise, surprise... turns out that the gunmetal wing pods are not entirely molded in that color plastic. The bottom half is white. So. If you're going to be stripping paint off, be careful.. the black will possibly come off the bottom half and leave you with a half-white pod.
  25. Chronocidal
    Anyone else able to load bigger pictures? Either the forum is wigging out on me, or the thumbnails only are linking to.. themselves.
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