No Love for Southern Cross?

[Seto Kaiba]

1 hour ago, tekering said:

Incidentally, Marie's Logan is the only one to survive their debut appearance...  These "cannon fodder" Logans are only briefly onscreen before they're destroyed, and after that Marie's is all we see for the rest of the series. 😅

For some reason, Southern Cross's writers and the design team "Ammonite" seem to have had it in for the Logan.

Despite already having a bunch of secondary fighter designs that were specifically and explicitly made to be destroyed onscreen, the Logan's the one they saddled with the rep of being replaced because it was ineffective on the battlefield.  That the Logan's a bad fighter in-universe is one of the few consistently mentioned details about it.  Even the show's promotional materials get in on it at points.  

(That Marie Angel's hangs on for as long as it did is apparently more an indicator that the "Cosmo Amazon" just that good.)

[Big s]

Just got my notice from bbts that Dana is in my private warehouse.

[pengbuzz]

On 4/17/2024 at 11:31 AM, Seto Kaiba said:

For some reason, Southern Cross's writers and the design team "Ammonite" seem to have had it in for the Logan.

Despite already having a bunch of secondary fighter designs that were specifically and explicitly made to be destroyed onscreen, the Logan's the one they saddled with the rep of being replaced because it was ineffective on the battlefield.  That the Logan's a bad fighter in-universe is one of the few consistently mentioned details about it.  Even the show's promotional materials get in on it at points.  

(That Marie Angel's hangs on for as long as it did is apparently more an indicator that the "Cosmo Amazon" just that good.)

Too bad we couldn't get some Logans in as patrol craft for the cities in the next Macross series as cannon-fodder to get blown up.

Edited yesterday at 05:06 PM by pengbuzz

[shazam]

8 hours ago, Big s said:

Just got my notice from bbts that Dana is in my private warehouse.

Same!

Edited April 18 by shazam

[CoryHolmes]

I might have spoken too soon!  I just got a notice in my mailbox that there's a parcel waiting for pickup

[strikevalk]

[tekering]

Lipstick on a pig? 😉

That's a pricey chunk of ham on display... and some 3D-printed upgrades, by the looks of it. 🤔

[pengbuzz]

Has anyone else ever noticed that the Spartas' transformation is basically:

 

Spoiler

...turn around and bend over?

 

[Seto Kaiba]

22 minutes ago, pengbuzz said:

Has anyone else ever noticed that the Spartas' transformation is basically:

  Hide contents

...turn around and bend over?

It is, yeah.  Designing a believable transformation for something like a car, a tank, or a plane is pretty damned hard even when you're cheating and using "anime magic".  It gets far harder if you have multiple alt-modes to consider and they all have to plausibly look like they belong to the same vehicle.  

Designing that same transformation in a way that can be applied to a transforming toy or model kit is exponentially harder.  

Keeping it simple while still getting the job done is a virtue, even if it sounds silly in the abstract... and the Spartas's transformation is simple enough that it CAN be replicated on toys or model kits with a minimum of "cheating".  The Ammonite design team did all right job considering they were trying to keep the designs simple enough for merchandising and were not by any means specialists in designing transforming robot toys the way Kawamori is.

(There are certainly transformations that could be described in less dignified terms out there... like the Gundam Arios and GN Archer from Gundam 00.  Their combined flight form essentially involves the GN Archer jamming its head up the Arios's backside.)

Edited yesterday at 05:10 PM by Seto Kaiba

[Seto Kaiba]

Seeing a decent-quality arming doublet figure really makes me wish Tatsunoko Pro would go back and revisit the Science Fiction Sengoku Saga pitch they canned back during the development of Super Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross.  There's a fair bit of love for retro designs on the air right now and that could actually go over pretty well.  Certainly a lot better than their attempts to get back into the mecha genre.

[tekering]

On 4/16/2024 at 7:35 AM, Protoman said:

3D print files for the Logan are now for sale. 

You know, seeing the transformation demonstrated on YouTube, I was excited by the potential of producing my own Logan and purchased the files for myself...

...but now, after seeing photos on Facebook and comparing them to the lineart, I'm experiencing considerable buyer's remorse. 🤕

I first assumed the model looked poor because it was made on a low-rez FDM printer, as opposed to a proper SLA resin printer designed for miniatures.  It's a terrible decision that reflects badly on the designer, but that doesn't mean the design itself is poor... except now, being able to examine the files in 3D software, I can see all the geometrical discrepancies and misshapen proportions.  It's fat where it should be lean, and lean where it should be fat, and a lot of the angles are wrong.  Frustratingly, most of the inaccuracies have nothing to do with engineering, either, as they'd have no bearing on transformation.  🤨

It actually looks like a Logan toy designed 40 years ago, if Takutoku or Matchbox had tried to produce one.  Perhaps the designer wanted to capture that "retro toy" look...? 🤔

Regardless, i guess I'll just have to teach myself how to do 3D modelling. 🙄

[Seto Kaiba]

5 hours ago, tekering said:

I first assumed the model looked poor because it was made on a low-rez FDM printer, as opposed to a proper SLA resin printer designed for miniatures.  It's a terrible decision that reflects badly on the designer, but that doesn't mean the design itself is poor... except now, being able to examine the files in 3D software, I can see all the geometrical discrepancies and misshapen proportions.  It's fat where it should be lean, and lean where it should be fat, and a lot of the angles are wrong.  Frustratingly, most of the inaccuracies have nothing to do with engineering, either, as they'd have no bearing on transformation.  🤨

It actually looks like a Logan toy designed 40 years ago, if Takutoku or Matchbox had tried to produce one.  Perhaps the designer wanted to capture that "retro toy" look...? 🤔

 

My assumption would be that the person who created the 3D model probably used the animation itself as reference instead of the line art from the animator's model sheets.  

These kinds of issues are very common in fan projects by Robotech fans, who frequently fail to even consider the existence of things like off-model animation, animation errors, or dialog errors and inconsistencies.  Southern Cross unfortunately had a fair amount of off-model animation, and that's led those fans to some... interesting... incorrect conclusions about the designs of the series.  Inconsistencies in how the Tactics Air Force fighter "Sylphid" is drawn led Robotech fans to conclude there were as many as three different types with different wing designs when there's actually only one, for instance.

I'm betting that 3D model was put together using a combination of incorrectly-proportioned fan art and a stills from the animation, some of which are off-model.  Considering the weird lengthening of the nose and widening of the body, I suspect it's Yui's fan art they referenced.