Akilae

Personally, I don't think any artistic talent is required for basic 3D modelling, that is to say, you don't need to be able to do a pencil sketch of your intended object. Just speaking for myself, I have little grasp of basic art skills, my skills pretty much limited to stick figures (once did a presentation with stick figures, was a riot and the prof gave me an A just cause I was amusing, otherwise she had originally asked for "sketches"). I think the key here is to be able to understand how objects are composed. Basic geometric knowedlge would help, ie a computer is essentially a cube, squash down the sides a bit, cut a few holes, and voila!, a basic case. Then understand that there is no such thing as a perfect 90 degree angle, so you bevel the case to give it a more rounded feeling. You'll also realize that everything in this world as a thickness, so you extrude a tad. Kick it up a notch (*bam!*), and you'll be dealing with Sub-Ds and lines that are fluid instead of being straight, and that's the real kicker. The key to successful (I think) Sub-D usage is to be able to see how the lines flow on a given object. Take a look at might gorgon's model for a good idea. I was stuck here for a long time since I had a hard time visualizing the lines, till one day it just hit me and I could look at any object and be able to visualize how the lines flowed. Sorta like what Neo saw towards the end of the Matrix... er... either that, or I was smoking too much of the good stuff back then If you want to try it out, but don't want to spend the big bucks, check out Blender. It's a tad hard to pick up, but it's free. Sorry to hijack your thread a second time gorgon. Very nice work on the landing gear I say.

What department store sells 1/48's? What's the name of the place, i would like to know if there is one near where i live. It's also amazing to still find a store that sells the 1/48 Roy. How much were they asking for it? mm.. the SOGO department store in Taichung, Taiwan? hehe... I guess only in Asian department stores would you be able to find stuff like that... must either be selling like hotcakes (and my contacts in the import/export companies say they are), or they're not selling enough to justify a department store stocking more. Cause right across the aisle were MG gundams, Ex-S, Ex-S (er.. the other version..), ZZ, FAZZ, and PG GP-01, Zeta, etc.. A real fleeting glance at the price (can't spend too much time in the toy section ya know, on a date and all that...) said >$100. I'm converting from NT to USD, so the conversion is really off, considering I only saw NT$3xxx, where x=any random number. Nowhere as high as ebay though. Thanks for the tips guys, I'll take a closer look at it the next time I'm there... if another Macross fan hasn't grabbed it yet...

woot!! Sagittarius! So um... does anyone have pics? is there an echo in here?

I found a 1/48 VF-1S in my local department store and was thinking if I should get it. But I had my eyes on the re-release with the minor fixes here and there. Are there any visible differences in terms of the box between the earlier releases and the later ones? I would love to take the thing out of the box and see if the elbows bend to a 90 degree angle, but I don't think the toy section's manager would be too happy about that

This actually happened to me, although it was my cousins, and they actually touched.... Lil brats tore into my room and started demolishing my models. Oops, there goes the Suzuki Katana... dang, there went the shuttle and the launch tower... hold on, did he just crush my LEGO collection? on and on... and all the while the parents are saying "oh you're too old for toys anyway, why not just give it to them?" Total Body Count: F-91 (beam saber snapped, shield cracked), smaller F-91 (totally dismantled), Suzuki Katana, Honda dirt bike, F-14 (nose cone and gear snapped off, missiles removed), shuttle and launch tower crunched, LEGOs reduced to basic building blocks, etc.. The LEGOs weren't TOO bad, since I could always put them together. The models were irreplaceable. Nowadays, I got a display shelf with a glass door that is padlocked shut. I'm so happy that I hadn't gotten into Warhammer back then... would have pulled out the switch if they destroyed my Tau army.

novels?? never knew the anime was based off novels. hmm.... very interesting... I'll need to get my hands on the novels then.

Yeah, same here... I liked how the story was set up and eventually built up to the grand finale, but in terms of the final few episodes itself, they could have maybe lengthened it by two episodes or so, allow for more development for one of the last characters in the anime to develop a bit (spoiler free-discussion, so no names =). Somehow I feel naughty for grabbing all of the torrents the day before the licensing announcement was made

whoa, those are SCHWEEEET...... how come we never get anything like that over here....

Well, getting a starter *box* isn't a bad way to go about doing it if you know what to do with all those cards, ie what kind of deck you want to put together... I started off with a starter box, and looted/pillaged my way up to a fairly complete Ice Age collection, a tri-color deck, a white weenie/green wyrm deck, and a black/red direct damage/pump-up deck (this is the one that got me thrown out... I was pumping up my Hoar Shades and destroying land/casting fireball like mad, lol). I don't think any of us would really be of any help even if we could dig out our cards again, as Ladic said, if you want your bro to have fun with other guys, then better off buying new cards. Now if only I could find somebody with an Ice Age Jester's Cap I can win to complete my collection...

But how would you explain the symbiote's love/hate relationship with Peter Parker? P.S. Haven't seen any of the new Spider-Man stuff, so I don't know if it's explained.

Whoa, the Wataru PC Engine game... never thought I'd even hear anybody mention that one again... I don't really remember the game much, but the anime was a staple during my childhood. Good memories. I remember the "Last Blade" series of games being pretty impressive... never actually played it outside of emulators though...

Got it, played it, loved it, never finished it, lol. It's a great game though, wonderful atmosphere, and the soundtrack is pretty good.

heh, my deck is still stuck back in the Ice Age (with a smattering of Mirage...). Went to a Magic game a few years ago and got thrown out almost immediately. Half of my deck was illegal under current rules, not to mention most of the MtG crowd there were too young to remember Ice Age. I remember there were fancy starter decks that had the whole thing set up for you, didn't even need to put together your own deck. Give those a try. *grumble about REAL men putting together their own decks back in the day...*

DVD set? Of Kevin Smith's New Jersey Trilogy? Always struggled with whether to pick up all five DVDs or to wait for a set...

I was just wondering about this... saw Daredevil over the weekend, and I couldn't help but notice that the eyes on Daredevil's cowl are covered with... something. I thought it *might* be interesting to see how Batman would look if they did the cowl like that.

nah.. they don't want to do that. The last thing that the AF wants to happen is to drum up popular support for the YF-23, then they'll never be able to get rid of Northrop again

Come on guys, share, share! Well, at least next month is less than a week away

So ah.... any chance a kind soul could post a pic of this fugly plane here? Where I am right now .mil addresses aren't accessible...

Didn't Amano design the characters for FFIX? At least that one seemed to be a far departure from VII and VIII.

What's wrong with Rocketeer? For a movie that barely registered as a blip on the cinematic radar, I thought it was a wonderfully done film. Of course, Iron Man would have to be much, much darker...

TOM Cruise? huh... I always figured Stark to be... older... and a more haunted man. Then again, seeing his performance in The Last Samurai seemed encouraging... hey, he gets to do the whole "demon in a bottle" act again I wonder if there's ANY chance we'll get a glimpse at Spider-Man's symbiote suit...

Iron Man!!! I've been waitin for that forever... wonder which version suit they're gonna use for the movie...

So... using a knife is less acceptable than tearing one's own limbs off by sheer brutal force? wow.... wonder what's the logic behind that. Hopefully companies are beginning to see the wisdom behind subs... although why Onimusha 3 took out subs in favour of dubs is beyond me. The problem with dubs: voices tend to be dumbed down and made to sound younger than some of the original Japanese voices. One that I can think of that made a lot of different would be Raiden's voice in MGS: SOL... maybe ppl would have hated him less if he had retained his rather mature voice in the original Japanese dub. I, for one, am glad that knowledge of XG isn't required, since I never played the game. Yes yes, it's one of the greatest RPGs ever, I even have it sitting right next to my PS2 in its jewel case. Just no time these days to pick up a plot-heavy game... So.... now that XS II is just within sight... anybody know when XS III is planned?

I remember only one part where party formation tactics really mattered, when you had only Momo and Ziggy. Other than that, only reason to care about formations would be if you're planning on doing something special... like.. uh... try out all the new moves? Or trying to play a "Perfect Game" Maybe it's just me, but I just put everybody in the front line and broke out any offensive tech I had. Money was never really a problem for some reason... I think that's cause I gambled a lot. Did miss a whole lot of the story though, until I stumbled upon the in-game encyclopedia. Wealth of background information in there that really makes a difference.

Dunno how they plan to do it for Xenosaga, but at least for .hack all of your saved eq, exp, and character relations get carried over. If you don't have a saved game, then you'll start off with a pretty generic character. mmm.... would be interesting to be able to use Shion's ultimate summon right at the beginning though