Chronocidal

Know what would have been an amazing upgrade for this re-release? Hardpoints.

That is just stupidly unfair how good that looks compared with the YF-19 release.

Honestly? I would take that in a heartbeat. For all the difficulties in handling it and transforming it, the Draken looks amazing.

You both might be right, but the thing that's throwing me is just how beefy the arms look, even for in fighter mode. They don't really look any different, just like they're straightened out and plugged in behind the shoulder mounts. The diagram is not really helpful, since it doesn't really indicate which parts are shared between modes, and it doesn't show the shoulder/intake plugs at all when going to fighter, only that you remove them for the high speed mode.. which is dumb, because those parts weren't even something that were discarded for that. Edit: Yeah, I don't think it comes with more than one set of arms. There are more pics in the model forum thread, and this lists the extra accessories. This one really does make the YF-19 look half-assed by comparison.

The insane part? Despite being a partsformer, it still uses the same arms in all modes, and they don't suck. Seriously, Bandai.. the arms on your DX SUCK. They should be SO MUCH BIGGER. I don't want to rant, but it's almost insulting to see how good that 1/100 looks compared to the DX. They didn't screw with the details, they didn't ignore the lineart, they didn't do their usual Bandai "we know better" shenanigans with the design, it just looks like it should have always looked. It's like we're back in the v.1 DX VF-25 phase again. Kind of sad.. that one actually sort of puts the YF-19 fighter mode to shame by comparison.

I do like what was done well with the 31AX, but I still prefer the overall look of the standard Siegfried and Kairos. The thick wing roots bug me a little, but mostly I think the redesign of the canopy screws up the nose profile something awful. That weird single-piece canopy never sits flush all the way, and gives the nose this weird curvature that bugs me. And there's still no excuse for the thermometer pod.

Just got the purchase notice from HLJ for my pair of CF-171 kits, so those should be ready to ship out soon.

Boy, silly me, thinking they would put photos of the finished product on the box art. Those are still the same pre-production photo(shop)s. I think my favorite part is that half of the "feature" callouts on the back of the box point to details that do not exist on the toy.

That was amazing and hilarious all at once. Gotta love that what I thought parts of it were referencing turned out to be literally true in the end.

Fortunately scaling up tends to work better than scaling down, since you tend to lose a lot of detail when shrinking a model. This Arwing was designed to be printed twice as big, and the original was done on an SLA printer, so it had much finer detail. I had to make quite a few adjustments to support some of the finer details to keep them from getting warped or marred by the extruder. The wings had do be thickened up significantly before the edges just completely disappeared in my slicer, because they were thinner than the printer could register. Still, the lines on most of it are so fine, I might just see if I can get away with a good primer, and not sand the whole thing down. The wingtips are far too thin to sand that much, and a lot of the points and edges would disappear. I took a little time yesterday to design and print a stand for it though, and this is the kind of thing I will always love my printer for. I love making custom display bases for kits.

It's not just you. From a top-down perspective? The best summary of what they've done is like they've taken the YF-21's planform, and hiked its pants up to its armpits. Everything ahead of the midbody is compressed forwards, with the back end becoming overly chonky. The nose is definitely shorter, because it doesn't look like they're using any sort of trick like Yamato did to shorten the nose for battroid. The arms are also wayyyy undersized. The biceps look incredibly wimpy, and the lower arms could have been made much beefier with all of the room in the back end.. but they just didn't. I'm still going to try and grab at least one, because of course I am, but the overall impression I get from this? It's not like they improved battroid at the cost of fighter mode (or the nonexistent gerwalk that we still haven't seen), it feels more to me like they decided "Screw it, make all the modes equally bad." The only improvement they made is to the legs. Between the skinny, undersized arms, the redonkulous backside, Liefeld-level torso chonk, and lopsided aircraft stretching, I don't think any mode actually looks better than the Yamato.

Figures that I'd get charged for mine at HLJ literally single-digit hours after I shipped my private warehouse. Oh well, not in a rush. I'm going to wait until the Fire Valk and my 171 kits come in and ship that as a bundle.

It's hard to tell if they've made any changes, but the things that stuck out to me about the painted prototype still stick out as being very obviously wrong and completely off-model from the lineart, so at this point I'm just assuming that Bandai's doing their usual thing and deciding they know best. Also.. It actually looks like it has swappable feet for battroid mode. Where was that feature when they made the garbage feet on the YF-19?

It's definitely hefty, but mostly hollow, since it has a cockpit and internal mechanism to link the wings together. I think the walls themselves are mostly solid ABS, about 3-4mm thick. Frankly though, I don't have the room for a project that big right now, and the plastic spool I was using ran out in the middle of it, so I'm holding off on the huge one, and have been focusing on one about 60% of the size. It's about 9 inches long with a 14 inch wingspan with the wings spread. I would guess that's something like 1/48 scale? It looks about right for a pilot I have sitting around, but the physical dimensions of this thing are nonsense, since the cockpit in game only had a disembodied head under the canopy, and barring insanely compact propulsion technology, the pilot would have to be riding the engine like a bicycle. Printing is pretty much done, with maybe one or two parts left to re-print if I decide to roll the dice and see if I get a better result on some of the details It's obviously due to the N64 polygonal nature, but this thing is pointy, and there are lots of little bits that can snap off easily. I actually had to thicken up several of the parts to allow them to print correctly, because my printer software was having issues trying to print parts with infinitely sharp edges. The original large design was made with metal rods and dowels in mind, but shrinking it down let me break it up into a press-fit kit that holds together really well. He also had the laser pods mounted on magnets to let them be extended, but I changed those to friction tabs to be more compact. Was really shocked by how sturdy the ABS spool I got is, I was able to print the parts at half size, and they hold up very well, even the wing hinges. They stay on the pivots on their own, and I just ran a section of thick paperclip through them to hold them in place. Still easy to pull apart with some effort, so it will be simple to paint. Fun fact.. I separated the wing sections right about the same place the wings would break off in the game, so I could even display it with damage if I wanted.

Your best bet for that would probably be the 1/72 Hasegawa kit, since the 1/48 would probably be too big for 1/60.

I think the overall proportions are slightly different, because I don't think the HMR slides up the nose quite the same way as the Arcadia. I haven't transformed either in quite a while though, so I might not remember it correctly.

Yeah, it's kind of noteworthy that none of the Macross items in that video thumbnail have seen more than a vague tease by Bandai. They obviously have other priorities.. and it kind of feels like they will use any and all excuses to put off anything new for Macross. This year has.. well, the gif above puts it very plainly. They've really done almost nothing this past year. Yeah, there's been a couple HMRs.. and they teased an exclusive DX VF-1S that no one is going to be able to purchase. Everything else has been (more expensive) re-releases of things from years ago that they can put on the international market now. I can't really fault them for milking their existing products in a new market, but they just do not seem interested in putting any effort toward satisfying anyone waiting for all the stuff they tease every year.

I feel like Plamax is bound and determined to sell model kits that do everything model kit builders do not want.

I think any attempt to actually assign a scale to that YF-19 is a fool's errand at best, but yeah, I would assume they based the measurements on the length of fighter mode, and didn't try to account for the proportional shifts in battroid.

Not mine, an artist essentially gave the ship in Starfox 64 the HD treatment. They extracted the in-game model (all 200 polygons or so of it, given it's a 1995-ish design), then rebuilt it into a kit using box art and publicity renders as a reference. Essentially took this: Extrapolated the details from this: And turned it into this. I'm going to eventually print the whole large model, which has linked swing wings, and several optional parts attached with magnets, but for the moment I'm more focused on a more manageable model that's about 60% of that size, and without some of the fancier features. I still want to make the wings swing though. The nerd in me seriously wants to build a stand that mounts into the engine, and will slowly roll the model while playing the menu music.

Right on the money! I had been working (very slowly) on a model of the version from Starfox 64 for a long time, but I went browsing printable models the other day, and found this one. Immediately gave up my goal of making my own model, and decided the buy the completed one to print after I saw the author's video of assembly and features. He made his mostly in liquid resin, so I've been modifying a few bits to make it more ABS-friendly, and it's not going badly, but the polygonal nature of the basic design is proving tricky to get solid structures. I've had to thicken and rearrange some areas, since printing slicer software tends to have issues with perfectly sharp edges. The author goes by "nerdmakerengineer" and has some incredible models on his CGTrader profile, including a Tie Phantom from Rebel Assault II, and an insane X-Wing replica kit designed for 1/12 scale figures. Seeing how this works, I might put a couple of my own designs up for sale/download. I still have a few tweaks to make to my old printed Excalibur model, but I'm tempted to try and make a much larger version than my original.

Something to keep in mind about the VF-0, I think they are naturally raked. They were patterned after the F-14 after all, and it wouldn't surprise me if they just modeled it in a general kneeling position. In Bandai's case though, it also might be that the rear gear are actually too long. The old Yamato VF-0s had gear that splayed outward, and I think the Arcadia's followed that pattern. The HMR version there certainly looks like there's a fair bit more clearance under the back of the gun than the Arcadia would have.

I might have slightly underestimated how big this model is going to be once I make the rest of it.... The print failed on the smaller one due to missing some wall thickness in important places, but I think I'm going to make a new one in that size once I get a new ABS spool. I'm debating how to give the wings a ratcheting rotation joint, and I might actually just embed some LEGO joints in the model. Edit: Got the rest of the big fuselage printed, and fits decently, but going to take some filler. Going to re-try the single-piece one overnight.

On the plus side, at least it can't be as bad as the VF-2SS. That thing is just a pile of joints that you can eventually manhandle to look sort of like an airplane.

That's completely worth it, you could just cut a new laser out of sheet plastic, don't even need something as fancy as printing.