Chronocidal

omg... it's Darth Potato-Head!! actually kinda reminds me of one of my first gif experiments in high school..

Or, if you just happened to be a good enough shot to nail a carotid artery, although that's really pushing it.

ACK.. stupid internet.. sorry, double post

Yeah, I can remember when a TRU was organized in nice long aisles... you had the video games aisle, the gi-joe aisle, one for board games, one for radio controlled cars, one for all the bikes and power-wheels things, one HUGE one for legos, plus the usual SW toys and barbies, sports equipment, etc... Then one day, all the nice aisles were replaced by a mish-mosh of angled displays, all disorganized, ridiculously set up, and the biggest waste of space I've ever seen. It literally took me half an hour to turn the right corner to find the Legos, cause they were in a weird nook facing away from everything. Ticked me off. I've hardly gone there since. It just got too hard to find anything, and it looked like the whole store had been redesigned by some neo-cubist modern artist.

Heheh.. so Vader isn't what Palpy was hoping for.. and he sets his sites on Luke instead. Which, if you think about it, is probably the only reason Luke and Leia even lived. I have a hard time believing they were actually able to fool Palpatine when hiding them. I mean, the guy fooled the entire republic for several years, and had things planned out from the beginning. Seen in this light, it actually DOES make sense that Anakin may be his son, however far fetched.. I mean, it wouldn't be much of a stretch to make Anakin's mother forget. If Palpatine had everything planned from the beginning (he keeps insisting he knows what'll happen in ROTJ) he may have planned to use Vader to get to Luke, and maybe Leia. The idea that he wasn't satisfied with Vader implies he probably has other motives for him, seeing as he went to all the trouble to repair him... but then, irony of ironies, maybe Vader pulled the same wool over the emperor's eyes that he had used on the republic, and hid his true intentions till the last.

You know, after reading this, I realized the one thing that would make most mecha designs, no matter how impractical, at least possible. In a lot of sci-fi genres, artificial gravity, or at least the ability to manipulate it, comes pretty standard, and isn't really explained. I know of a few series that don't rely on it, but if the ability to manipulate forces through energy were to exist, it'd be a simple task to negate the stresses and strains on a mech, and make it just as effective as the human body. Granted, it's still a huge bulky mass, and one huge target. But with gravity partially negated, it might work. Of course, then you get into the issue of, "if you can really manipulate gravity, why are you building a mech?? You could just make a giant floating weapons platform, and ditch the mechanical arms and legs." So, as cool as it would be to make a mech, I don't see much of a reason to do it, beyond maybe navigating nasty terrain, a-la AT-ST, but with a more stable design like that John-Deere thing.

*looks at shot of Grievous with lightsaber* Hmm. Looks like Anakin wasn't the only jedi to make his lightsaber out of a flashbulb handle.

Hehe.. if the old symbol had 7 branches, and the empire's has six, I'd bet the missing branch is the Jedi. But actually, I thought the old symbol had 8 spikes? It was printed on the AOTC ships. Or maybe that was just a jedi symbol?

Hmm.. whoa.. k, that's interesting. Look at the symbol poking out under the edge of the pilot's hoses. Or am I just seeing things?

Here's a shot of the new low-vis markings I'm making for it... I'm thinking this'll have probably between 6 and 10 skins, depending on how much I get done with finals coming up

Heheh.. I love how the pilot looks like a tie-pilot with the face cut out to add an X-Wing-ish visor...although I never knew what good a yellow visor would do. The clone troopers are getting similar treatment as well... notice how the t-shaped visor has been subtley replaced by a wide goggle-shaped visor, wth a dark stripe painted down the center.... plus, they've got the classic stormtrooper vents now. About that scene of the fight they showed... I honestly don't think that was from the actual Obi vs Anakin battle. I could be wrong, but it looked like that took place in a big room, kind of like a training chamber.. and given the fact that in all that swinging their lightsabers only actually connected once, I think it was more of a training exercise, or maybe friendly competition/practice on control. This may lead up to the final duel, but I get the feeling it's an early shot meant to emphasize how powerful Anakin's getting. What I'm really noticing is all the ship design lineage...I'm looking forward to seeing a brand-spanking-new Corellian Corvette (aka Blockade Runner), and how it plays in here. Looks like we're also gonna get to see an early lambda-class shuttle, among other things... I honestly half expected to see early Y-Wings in this movie, or maybe Z-95 Headhunters... I mean, they're already old in ANH, the Rebels would've been using Y-wings exclusively if the X-Wing design team hadn't defected with all the prototypes. I may have to get that fighter, even if it is a toy.. it'll go nice next to my ultra-huge Trilogy X-Wing. I just hope they come up with a decent reason for the split wings.. with the X-Wing, it was supposedly for better weapons coverage in combat, and maneuverability by spreading the engines further apart... with this thing, it looks like all they'd do is make a bigger target. Edit: K, I just noticed something... in the description about the pilot clones on that scanned page, it mentions two types of craft.. the ARC-170s, and something else.. it looks like Y-Wings, but I think it may be V-Wings... can anyone tell for certain? And if it is V-Wings, what are those? I know the EU has their own version, but that was an atmospheric craft, and developed long after Endor.

Alrighty, time for a serious bump.. this thing was on the back burner while I fixed up my computer, but it's back in full swing again. I've got about 6 sets of markings which are mostly done, and I'm just working out the flying bugs. Here it is in one of the sets of test markings that got released for the model kit.

glad you all like it.. I hope to be putting it up for download for FS2004 pretty soon, just need to work out the control programming a little more. Dat... wow.. that's really come a long way. And I thought it looked good the first time. I've got a question about rendering for all you here... what do you all do to make the renders look more photo realistic? I've never really been concerned with it before, since I make models that usually wind up in games, but what kinds of plugins and settings do you use?

K, here we go, quick low-vis repaint

HOLY COW ON A STICK! *hugs his cube* (just watched it, it was loading while I typed the last comment) You know, a lot of that trailer looks like it's from the same storyline as Ocarina of Time, simply from the areas and characters. Hyrule Field looks like it's back, and a lot of those enemies look familiar. The graveyard's in there, albeit more creepy, and it even looks like the area under the well is in there too... *shudders* uggghhh...that place was nasty, even with N64 graphics.

Actually... if you read ALL of the main Zelda storylines, ie, the ones involving Zelda, I think they do connect somehow, even Windwaker.. they have a lot of similarities, and I think the games weren't written in order. For instance, I think that Ocarina of Time is actually a prequel to one of the original NES Zelda games, but I'm not sure which one... and I could be wrong. But they do have connections.

K, do you actually need the box, writing and all, or are you just looking for the cover art? Cause I have a few background sized images of a few of the boxes, mainly the VF-1 series of kits. They aren't in huge resolution, but I think they're all about 1280*1024.

LOL.. you beat me to it, I was thinking the exact same thing.

Hmmm.. I worked with X-Wing Alliance for a long time, and I don't think I ever saw one made... I could be wrong though. I have all the stuff to compile the opt files, but I don't think my MS Flight Sim YF-19 model would work.. way too high a polycount for XWA. It's a pretty old game, and had some serious limits on model detail. I'll ask around and see if anyone has one though.

Hehe.. well, it's not nearly the same render quality, but I had some fun this weekend with textures.. I'll be posting this thing soon, it's finally almost done.. lost a lot of work in a hard drive malfunction, and had to redo most of the textures.

LOL... nah, I mean, the pieces literally don't exist. The thing weighs about 10 lbs, and there's no lego joint on earth that'd support the knees and hips. The legs are probably gonna have to be solid. Sad too, as the arms are super-posable.

I dunno, but every time legos come up, it makes me sad that the pieces don't exist to make this baby work....

Lol you think that's a reference.. you didn't see the one where Starfire randomly sprouted a very familiar looking growth from her forehead. I think that's the only episode I actually watched all of, hoping they would take it more the FLCL route, but alas, the horn was the extent of it. Other than that, I rarely have watched the show.

Something interesting to note about those tubes... The fronts of them aren't exposed in the original lineart, at least not in fighter mode. Hasegawa changed the lines of the forward fuselage when they made the model, and those tubes got uncovered. Where the model's lower fuselage has a thin fuselage around the front landing gear, with small flat portions to either side, the original fuselage was rounded all the way across, and covered the fronts of those tubes. So, they can't be guns, at least not in fighter mode.

Holy crap... TISINC wants $250 for a plain Roy -1S.. I've been happy with my -1J fastpack set, I just feel like I need Roy's as well.. not really for any reason other than for the Jolly Roger markings. Maybe I'll get a set of strike packs if I find one, but I just love the yellow-black scheme.