Mr March

"You glorious sons-of-bitches!"

Not bad at all. I like the uniform interpretation and the direction you're going to recreate a more "realistic" analogue for Hikaru's crazy hair in the animation

We aim to please That's Miyatake Kazutaka's art book. It's not for sale anymore, but it's not very rare at all. I obtained a copy not but a year or two ago for $15; how rare could it be? Scanning and posting art on the internet is a touchy subject legally. Good news is you're not likely to be sued. If you are, you'll probably just be forced to remove the material from online. Problem is the internet is just one big sharing space and millions of people have posted billions of copyright scans already, with more every year. Some companies have tried suing people for doing so, but the result is futile. Companies would have to sue all their customers; at that point, why run a business at all? Which is what many young people have been arguing for over 15 years now. We should have new business models that no longer create artificial scarcity to make money. Anyway...

Quite good. Very comic book style and I like the dramatic angles. Good work!

I think Sharon Apple is my favorite, although I think my nostalgia for Minmay will always hold sway over my better judgement. But Kanno's work with the Sharon Apple character was just so interesting and diverse. It was also a very significant departure from music we'd come to expect from Macross both in tone and technique, or even most anime. I listen to the SDFM/DYRL/FB2012, Macross Plus and Macross Frontier soundtracks by far the most out of all Macross music.

Simple but very effective demonstration of the model to final build. I also love the glossy metal lighting. You need to make some more very high res wallpapers with that model. I'd love to see more of it

I think we've already discussed this many times before, but I'll just repeat that tans can be guaranteed that if this live action Robotech movie does actually get made, it will look nothing like Macross. For two reasons: Hollywood ALWAYS does their own thing with whatever rights they purchase, very often to the point where the resultant film can be recognized as the original work in name only The original Macross is far too old in technology and technique for modern audiences. Expect the look of the film to be something more along the lines of Bayformers/GI Joe/Avatar. The people behind this film have already publically stated the production design will not follow anything from the existing IP because they are ignoring it all. Which is kinda good for us Macross fans, because once people see the film we won't have to suffer "Oh, is that like Robotech" when we talk about Macross because no one will ever mistake the two for each other

Interesting discussion. Some things to note... During the Macross Plus/Macross 7 era, there seemed to be a deliberate effort to steer away from the term "FAST Pack". While it's true the prototype YF-19 and YF-21 retained the terminology, there was a change starting with the VF-11B Thunderbolt whereby the trivia named the added space equipment Super Parts/Super Packs. This continued into the Macross 7 series in which the term "FAST Pack" is almost nowhere to be found in the official trivia, but "Super Parts/Super Packs" are labeled for each space-optimized valkyrie, including the VF-11C Thunderbolt, the VF-17 Nightmare and the VF-19 Excalibur. Recently I've been working to finalize the M3's Macross Frontier section, adding new trivia and profiles for the YF-24 Evolution, The VF-25/MF25 Tornado, the YF-25 Prophecy, the YF-29 Durandal and cleaning up the existing profiles. While re-reading the official trivia for the VF-25 Messiah, I found this note... ...which MAY imply these systems were previously isolated in earlier valkyries. If true, the old FAST Pack systems may have required their own guidance and tracking systems as Valkyrie Driver has suggested. So the term may have been more approriate in the pre-Macross Plus era. As it turns out the Macross Frontier era brought about a kind of return to Macross roots and the term "FAST Pack" made something of a partial return into the franchise trivia. But it seems those writing Macross trivia didn't know, didn't notice or didn't remember that the newer term was "Super Part/Super Pack". So as has become typical of the Macross Chronicle writer's tendencies we've seen in so many pages of the series, they decided to COMBINE the terms as a compromise. So we see frequent mention of Super FAST Packs throughout Macross Frontier

Ugh, that old Sea Sergeant artwork is killing me to look at. Okay, I wanted to save this for the next update, but it's just bothering me too much so here's a much improved version...

Must be our lucky day

Great presentation. I hope publication works out for you.

I think I'm with Renegadeleader on this one. I want to like it - especially because it seems like a daring change from the boring crap that's become the norm for Schwarzenegger - but I'm not feeling it. It's just too melodramatic and forced. Perhaps it's just a bad trailer. Maybe there's hope. I want to believe...oops, wrong thread

Perhaps it's impolitic of me to say, but I wouldn't want to see your exceptional talent blown on something like this Robotech film. Believe me, I understand that as a Macross fan this would be as close to a dream job for you given the original subject matter is Macross, one of the formative influences of your career. But your skills would be wasted. This far into development hell, the chance that it will actually be any good is less than 1%. Everything public released about the movie thus far reveals that the people behind this don't even get Robotech, to say nothing about being a light year away from anything Macross. They are already branding the property for big summer box office homogeneity. There hasn't been a single word printed that indicates there is anyone behind this project with even a spark of passion, innovation or devotion to the source material. I think you're being a bit hard on the creative SoCal community of filmmaking. There is virtue in an artist wanting to avoid being beholden to nostalgia or source material. I've often critically spoken of such slavish reverence and how it is the Achilles heel of even the best current filmmakers like J.J. Abrams. In a film industry that is currently drowning in creatively bankrupt nostalgia, I can sympathize with some artists defiantly fighting against such pressure. And their unique visions have created some incredible designs in a lot of great films, despite the ratio of crap to great being 10-1 HOWEVER, that isn't the case here with Macross /Robotech because nearly all the grand history of Japanese anime mecha design is an amazing creative goldmine unknown to the vast majority of North American artists. The creative teams on the live action adaptation shouldn't be avoiding that rich history or it's distinctly foreign aesthetics...they should be embracing it as the amazing creative source that it is! I will agree with you that the typical SoCal established style is NOT befitting for something like Macross and is not giving any consideration to how integral the mechanical design is to the IP. To say they don't get it is a galactic understatement, hyperbole justified. EDIT oh, and yes, get involved in whatever Ruairi is doing. I'd love to see you on the live action project currently happening.

I just don't think X-Files can be scary, tense or disturbing anymore. The internet age and a reality filled with Google Earth and a digital camera on everyone's dog has pretty much destroyed any suspension of disbelief for these cover-up, conspiracy theory kind of stories. When everyday folks like Julian Assange and Edward Snowden uncover more about our compromised "democracies" than Scully and Mulder did in 9 years of FBI work, I find it kinda hard to be drawn into the show like I was in the 90s. I guess I just don't have the same fears today as I did back then, so it kinda ruins the show

LOL, the problem exists because there is no official canon policy Personally, my current favorite fan theory of Macross canon has definitely got to be the "Macross Chronicle trumps all previous 25 years of established trivia" policy

I'm so glad Paul Johnson has finished his short. A truly astounding piece of work. As a fellow one-man show, I know well the crazy work involved to build something all by yourself over years and I have to say he has accomplished a masterpiece of animation. Remarkable. And yeah, that score has to be replaced

Hmmm, I'm not sure I understand. Do you mean the side view and the "top" view schematics of the valkyrie variable fighters are not to scale with each other (like the VF-1 Valkyrie compared to the YF-19)? Or do you mean some of the drawn schematics of the destroids and the like? Perhaps I can help if I understood what the problem was.

Looks good to me. Love it.

One of my primary motives for building the Macross Mecha Manual was to provide reference for artists to build 2D and 3D artwork of the Macross mecha. I'm always trying to add as many schematics and diagrams to the M3 website as I can, but they can be difficult to obtain. To my knowledge there has never been a single book of Macross blueprints/orthographics. I've pieced together what I have thus far by scanning art from dozens of different fan/art books, which given the age and rarity of these books has taken 7-8 years for me to collect. Your best bet for obtaining valkyrie schematics right now would be to collect the Variable Fighter Master File series of books published by SoftBank Creative. These books are all new, published in just the last few years. They contain a lot of schematics of the variable fighters, many featuring art in all three modes. The instruction/decal sheets for models/toys are an entirely different beast. They may, or may not necessarily depict the Macross mecha in proper, official proportions. And those sheets can be even harder to obtain than the Macross books.

GuardianGrey I suppose it's possible the YF-21 foot nozzles could be used as verniers in space operation, but they are clearly described as used for the purpose of VTOL, not verniers. So primarily, they'd be VTOL thrusters of some sort. Since several folks were confused, I figured a diagram would clear it up. The visual guides always work best

Oh Zinjerly, you silly, silly man

GuardianGrey I noticed on page 2 you mentioned something that we should probably correct... The YF-21/VF22 Sturmvogel II actually does have several VTOL components, including propulsion in the feet. The Macross Compendium entry for the YF-21 states: I've attached two pictures the show where the VTOL systems are located.

Interesting design. Haven't seen it before. There is no policy for the Macross franchise about "canon", but even if this "VF-3S Hustler" were a part of an official Macross publication I'm inclined to think it's outside continuity. It's certainly creative. Thanks for sharing! I appreciated the New Macross Mechanical Archives/Nanashi's Information Group, but was always perplexed by WJ's policies. In many ways his policies were the exact opposite of my own; whereas he coveted his sources and tried limiting use of his scanned material (while silmutaneously posting the material online? weirdness...), I wanted to share Macross art with fans who weren't fortunate enough to have extensive, expensive collections of rare books. After all, the books were decades old and so rare it was impossible for us all to own copies. If we didn't share, most fans would never see the rarer material. Never had any ill-will toward the guy, but I struggled to understand him. Citations were always a source of tension with Windjammer/Nanashi and the debates on the subject of official Macross here on MW were rather notable, including some that involved Egan Loo. So I'd certainly be careful before assuming anything. Hmmm, just looking at my post now makes me utter an saddened laugh, even though he's no longer here, that old drama and controversy somehow manages to seep back into the discussion about those times. Not exactly MacrossWorld's finest hour.

I really like it! Don't drop this one. It looks good. Only thing I don't like are the thighs. That black on the inner/outer thighs isn't working.

I'm just messing with ya, it looks perfect I actually don't know if the new YF-19/VF19 Excalibur schematics from the Master File are more or less correct than the old This Is Animation schematics. And I certainly understand that most folks won't have those old books. They look about the same to me, though the VFMF schematics feature a little more detail. Although since we are on the subject, I have noticed that the VF-1 Valkyrie fighter mode schematics in the Master File are a little off. The VF-1 Valkyrie top view schematic from the Master File is more detailed, but has a poor rendition of the cockpit canopy. The VFMF canopy is faulty compared both to Kawamori's original drafted schematics and the TIA schematics. I guess the VFMF can't win em all