danbickell

Yeah, that's my guess as well. Maybe a Robotech roleplaying book? Well, new page in the thread deserves new pics! Those first ones were hastily thrown together after a 10-hour stint of work to finish up the model. Here's a few new shots with a little lighting, and an angle of the top. Here's a little illustation of how the separately angled gun turrets allow for straight guns in fighter but angle apart like all the drawings show it in battroid when the guns are angled up. It also shows how much perspective effects how the shape appears (the smaller renders are orthographic views): Another thing I forgot to show off is how the neck rings "work" when the head looks up and down (separate pieces that can articulate): LOOK INTO MY EYE!

Those heads from the pachinko footage and Ultimate Frontier are interesting, especially the external latch mechanisms for the front chin panel. There's another aprocryphal drawing (don't know the source, it isn't any any of my books) that shows that panel as a radome for a radar array: Of course, apocryphal details, no matter how interesting, are exactly what I'm trying to stay away from here. My goal is to include any and all details depicted in the DYRL original design work, and the original TV art where it isn't superceded by DYRL additions/changes. Ideally, any deviations would be limited to shape and proportion tweaks and mechanical issues with making it all "work" with the transformation. Unfortunately, there is much about the design that requires anime magic to actually work in 3 dimensions. That's why all the toys and models vary so much in their shapes and proportions. Personally, I think the Yamato 1/60 V2 is about as good as it can get for a toy at that size. The proportions work really well for all modes. Where it falls short with shape problems is mostly just a compromise for the small size and trying to incorporate a "perfect" transformation and still have features like deployable landing gear. That drawing of the VF-1S and VF-1A with the girls is from the DYRL This Is Animation book (page 81):

I LOLed! :lol:

Thanks! Ha, another reason it might be like Christmas is because it only seems to happen once a year! Wish I had more time to work on this... The Yamato 1/48 S head is pretty good, at least for a TV head. It matches the original TV lineart quite well, but it falls short in a few areas, especially for a DYRL head. Of course, the Yamato 1/48 doesn't tuck the head in very well into the nose recess (it hangs low, which at least helps with the shoulders being too low as well), so that got them around any clearance issues with the guns and the nose. The front of the head has good taper, but it doesn't follow through to the rear, and so the gun turrets don't have the angle. As a result, the guns are always straight when rotated. The neck detail has more than 2 neck rings as well, and while it still has a similar look to the TV lineart, it isn't a good interpretation for the more detailed DYRL design. The targetting sensor/laser on the top of the head is too small, and positioned too high up as well. Both the Yamato 1/48 and 1/60 V2 heads suffer from a visor that isn't recessed enough (again, works better for the TV version), and don't have enough of a protruding "hat bill" above the visor. Here are the DYRL detail drawings I used for my primary reference: This one shows the long overhang "hat bill" I'm talking about, which I think looks great, and it really helps with the fit in fighter mode (assuming the head tucks in as it should). The overall shape is too narrow, with too wide of a chin. To match a model to it, even with a lot of perspective, it looks totally weird. The details on this drawing really bring the design alive to me though, and I only wish the A head got as much attention. This drawing is another favorite of mine, and it is surprising how much of the new details match between the previous ones. Again, the S head shape is wrong though. It is too short (front to rear), with too big of a visor and not enough space between the visor and the guns. I think Yamato might have been looking at this drawing when they placed that sensor on the top of the head on their 1/48 (placed incorrectly high and too small). This one has a lot of the updated S head details as well, though the gun turret details are a bit different. I actually went more with these details, because I felt they work a little better. This is also where the panels on the neck come from as well. I'm going to try to replicate some of the detail from the head transformation mechanism, but it won't actually work right for the transformation. I chalk it up to another attempt to make sense of the impossible elevated seat egress concept. I hear you, Talos. The heads can look pretty weird in orthographic views. We're so used to seeing them drawn with perspective, and the designs tend to get oddly interpreted when modeled. The VF-1 Master File (vol. 1) orthographic views are particularly hideous (to me) when it comes to the heads. Here's some ortho side views of my A and S heads, just for you: EDIT: Here's another shot that I forgot to post. This shows the head tucked in fighter mode. I might make a S model-specific fairing panel to fit the head closer, but I actually like a little bit of the eye showing anyway, so we'll see. The "hat bill" fits nicely with the bottom of the nose, reaching almost to the back of the landing gear bay.

Finally, an update with new content! Better late than never, right? I'm only going to do 1 day of E3 this year, so I've been taking advantage of the down-time this week to finish up my VF-1S head model: I was originally planning to save this until the complete VF-1A was done, but while working out the chest and LERX and transformation mechanisms, I came to the conclusion that I really had to nail down another head and the rear of the nose and head cavity details before I can move on with confidence. I started with the Hasegawa 1/48 plans (though I still don't have a copy with decent resolution...), but ended up matching the Yamato 1/60 V2 head shape quite closely. The details are all from the Kawamori detail drawings done for DYRL, which match pretty remarkably well between them, but are actually each pretty far off from a shape that works. I think this is why we see a fair amount of variations between all the toys and models throughout the years. One particularly tricky area is having clearance for the guns in fighter mode while tucked up against the nose (guns straight forward). With the bottom-heavy trapezoidal cross-section of the nose (as seen in most later iterations of the design, as opposed to the earlier round shape), the wider flatter bottom of the nose leaves less room for the guns. The wedge shape of the Yamato 1/60 head (wider at the rear) helps this, while also providing for having the guns point straight forward in fighter, while angled apart the more you rotate the guns up and back. Most toys, models, and drawings seem to treat the guns like they are on the same axis, rather than each having it's own angeled axis, which would require each gun barrel to have to be jointed (which never made much sense to me mechanically) in order get the angles right in the different positions. The model clocks in at over 140k polys. Much of that is in the eye details, which actually has nearly 4x the surface area to cover compared to the 1A head. Some of the detail is borrowed from my 1A model (the parts that are consistently the same in the DYRL detail drawings), but all that extra space required most of it be built from scratch. Here are a couple of wireframe renders, for those who might enjoy them:

Thanks. Looking at that cockpit render, I'm just extremely anxious to texture it. That's when it will come alive. Right now, it just looks like an unpainted plastic model kit, to me. I want to paint it up, decal it, weather it, and add some lighting! I was hoping to update this thread soon. I've been working on the VF-1S head over the long weekend, and it is coming along well, but not quite ready to post yet. Hopefully soon (if I'm not jinxing myself...). I think the image size limit is just for images stored here. I have been adding most of my images to my gallery here, but I've been linking to higher resolution versions from my Photobucket in this thread.

Sorry, I don't have anything online these days. I don't even keep a portfolio online anymore. With the exception of this VF-1 model I've been slowly working on in my spare time, everything else I do is owned by my employers. All my recent stuff is from unannounced projects that I can't show. Those last 3 images are old stuff from Call of Duty World at War and Black Ops. All of that is X360/PS3 resolution, with normal maps. The plane (a PBY-5A) exterior model is 12,000 polys (although there is a 100,000+ interior model inside, which one of the game levels takes place in). The tank (a King Tiger) is about 11,000 polys. Those M-16 variants were a demonstration of a modular weapon system I prototyped for Black Ops, averaging about 8000 polys per variant. That was designed for significant memory savings by only loading a set of parts that had about double the memory footprint of a typical weapon asset, from which you could get several different guns from (6+ for the price of 2). They never implemented it after I left the company, but they went ahead and used the art anyway (although they darkened the textures to make it look black like Vietnam-era, instead of the pre-Vietnam early model treatment I gave them that would have been appropriate for the time period they first used it in). I'm still working on the VF-1 model (slowly...), and hope to have the thread updated by the end of the long weekend with the VF-1S head I'm working on. http://www.macrossworld.com/mwf/index.php?showtopic=34651&st=0

You are not mistaken. They were all decomissioned 20+ years ago, but the National Defense Authorization Act of 1999 required that 2 Iowa class battleships be reinstated (mothball fleet, but still maintained) up until 2006, when they were struck from the registry again. Since then: NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT FOR FISCAL YEAR 2007 "In the conference report (H. Rept. 109-360) accompanying the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2006, the committee included instructions regarding the transfer of the battleships USS Wisconsin and USS Iowa to the Commonwealth of Virginia and State of California, respectively, and the President's reversion authority pursuant to a national emergency. The committee seeks to clarify that the battleships USS Wisconsin and USS Iowa must be regarded as potential mobilization assets and both the recipients and the U.S. Navy are instructed to treat them as such. The committee notes that the following measures should be taken: (1) the ships must not be altered in any way that would impair their military utility; (2) the ships must be preserved in their present condition through the continued use of cathodic protection and dehumidification systems and any other preservation methods as needed; (3) spare parts and unique equipment such as 16-inch gun barrels and projectiles, be preserved in adequate numbers to support the two ships, if reactivated; and (4) the Navy must prepare plans for the rapid reactivation of the two battleships should they be returned to the Navy in the event of a national emergency." The whole thing is available here: http://www.congress.gov/cgi-bin/cpquery/?sel=DOC&&item=&r_n=hr452.109&&&sid=cp109WUZzm&&refer=&&&db_id=cp109&&hd_count=&

I think it is tan, and it isn't just shading. You can clearly see, from all the angles in all the frames, that they only colored the parts that are tan in the CF scheme. The forearms have the tan color, but the hands and the upper arms and shoulders are white. The chest is tan, but the nose cone is white. The sides of the legs are tan, but the rest is white. All the white parts that are shaded/in shadow are a dark gray that doesn't match the tan parts. Likewise, they used darker tan for the shaded tan parts as well. Loook at the inside shadowed portion of the left leg. Compare the right arm to the shadowed left arm. I think they simply tried to color Kakizaki to make it look like a CF, and apparently it worked well enough. You don't see any of these skull squadron markings on the CFs seen in the hangar scene, save for the one shot with the green and black leg fin.

Nice! I was just looking at the movie again earlier as well, but I didn't take any screen grabs. The color does seem a bit inconsistent in those, though. Look at the hangar crew uniforms, changing from orange to yellow, matching the yellow on the missles, and then clearly orange. You can see the difference between red and orange in the rear angle of the FAST pack going on the leg, but in the side shot both the kite roundel and the leg circle appear the same shade or orange (and we know that the kite should be red). Is that the "HD remastered" copy? It looks like it, and the colors and contrast seem washed out compared to the prints in the gold book. Yeah, I do like the red/orange and green and blue accents. A little bit of color helps make these otherwise drab color schemes pop. The 1/60 CF 1A that I have is one of the earlier ones (V2.0) with a pearl canopy, and a buddy of mine has the newer (V2.1) release without the pearl canopy, and we often comment on how just that little bit of color from the pearl canopy makes such a difference with this color scheme. I would just like to see a few details be different for the paint scheme on a DYRL CF 1A release. Red leg circles, backpack dome, and the front or back portion of the leg fins would be great. A few tampo printed smaller markings like head arrows or numbers in matching colors would be awesome too. Another nice thing they already have done to differentiate the TV CF 1J from the 1A was that they printed the UN SPACY on the legs and Prometheus on the tails in black instead of white, in addition to using a different shade of brown.

That is a fan-colored image, not official, and it doesn't accurately match anything seen in the movie. Here's another frame of that scene with the CF Kakizaki (from the gold book): You can clearly see the black and green chest chevrons, black and green leg fins, black stripes on both the arms and the legs, and the green arrow on the head. Totally Kakizaki skull squadron, with the tan parts colored in. Personally, I don't think any of these features would make a good DYRL CF VF-1A. Here we have proper DYRL CF valks: This is exactly what I would hope for. Same old CF scheme, but with some different details. The red leg circles and backpack dome seem to be common amongst these. They are already on the right track with ARMD 01 on the tails instead of Prometheus, and they should continue that with some numbers and other small markings as seen here, to differentiate it. I would love to see a FAST pack set with different color (a dark neutral or bluish gray) and different squadron roundels and markings like shown here. The more they can differentiate this release from the previous TV CF release, the better for everyone. More people will be interested and buy the more different it is, and if they can make it more different and more accurate to what is shown in DYRL, we all win.

Exactly! Of course, that scene is near the end of the movie, after Kakizak (and his VF-1A) are no more. They colored parts tan, in the CF scheme, but that's all they did. Even in this screengrab (which is a bit washed out), you can see the tan on the arm and leg, but in other frames the tan is more obvious.

Other than the DYRL A head and fixed-posed hands, it also appears to come with the DYRL pilot, gray instead of white (matching the DYRL skull squadron), no brownish color on the feet and intake covers, and has ARMD 01 tampo printed on the tails instead of Prometheus. Hopefully it will comes with some different squadron roundels for the fast packs, and maybe red leg circles, so we can recreate the DYRL CFs shown in the hangar.

I found one more difference on the "Photozoomer" deal on the Yamato site for the DYRL CF: the tails have ARMD 01 tampo printed instead of Prometheus. Confirmed DYRL pilot, too. Edit: also noticed the feat aren't brownish like the TV CF.