wm cheng
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Everything posted by wm cheng
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I like to shed a little light on the "old=good / new=crap" debate. In the "olden" days a lot of these designs like Star Wars or 2001 had aerospace experts/consultants come in to the art department to consult on the designs. Of course it was film after all, so a lot of these designs were "enhanced/exaggerated" or altered to make them look better to a camera lens or serve the script beats better. In any case, the designs had a original basis that came from experts in their field. Also Production Designers were usually architecturally trained with "real" scenography/production design degrees. However, today, most of these designs come from concept illustrators which are trained in fine arts and digital painting (so cal schools). They know how to make a "sexy" rendering and painting. They could be called upon to paint up a 12th century stone castle one day and design a futuristic robot the other - they're key skill is to portray a seductive image with emotion and lighting - not necessarily any mechanical logic or understanding. I get some of these beautiful paintings come across my desk and everytime I have to look into how a piece "actually" joins or connects, it either fades into darkness or is obscured by a lens flare! To compound matters, a lot of newer hotshot Production Designers today have no architectural background or film/scenography background, they come as friends to directors/producers, set decorators that have moved up, music video or commercial ad designers and just fell into the right place with the right people at the right time. Unfortunately, our present day society is all about the image, not substance anymore. Thus, this culture is reflected in film design as well. IMHO! p.s. don't dwell on this ED-209, its an early concept, I don't even know why Marketing chose it, its not chosen from the Designer or Art Department - I guess someone at Marketing thought it was "neat"! The revised version that I've seen is much better in everyway (heck! I even like it, and would love a model of it!)
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That ED-209 is a very early concept illustration (yes, unfortunately from the same set of concept illustrators from so-cal as all of the recent movies...) - but the newer updated designs of ED-208/9 is much better looking (IMHO). Unfortunately, I didn't have much to do with any of the mech designs on this one (except some various data port connections on the RoboCop suit itself - the bulk of the design work started while I was still on Pacific Rim), I'm working on the Lab in this one so far.
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Argh! with all this talk of VF-17 & 171s - just to clarify, are HLJ saying that they will NOT be carrying the web-exclusive VF-4G? Oh, no... if that's the case, especially if amiami isn't going to be carrying Yamato stuff - what are North Americans supposed to do? (finger itching closer to the panic button - as if my hand isn't already there missing out on the VF-25G) ;-(
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Yes, please, I would be in for a group buy - any Japanese fans here to help us out?
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Yep, its exactly as I designed it because I supervised the construction of the physical sets. However, the CG extensions are done at ILM after my employment with the production - so I will hope they will follow my designs for the virtual world.
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I certainly hope it comes with a stand - its getting impossible to find a 1/60 clear yamato stand these days (any hints?)
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Porkins standing by!
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Conn-Pods are the control cockpit within the head of the Jaegers (robots)
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That's my Conn-Pod in the background!! - get those stupid actors out of the way... they're covering up my set ;-) In fact all the Conn-Pods are mine.
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I'd spray it some kind of aircraft metal frame colour - it would be pretty hard to glue and file and keep the brass clean and have the same sheen throughout construction. Maybe we could wire up the internals and create a cutaway or combine it with a 1/72 Hasegawa model for the skin in some areas - that would be a huge project!
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Wow, kind of interesting to do a complete cut-away - but it must be a bitch to build... I wonder how much?
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Me three? if there are any left over.
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I'm in for a group buy!
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Yep, its really kind of sad when you look at the big picture. Actually, luckily most of us are older and have the monetary means, I would feel really bad if I was still a kid that loved this (probably more passionately than us old folgies) and can't afford it. It would have been out of my financial realm when I was in highschool when I was first exposed to Macross, I still remember when the Gold Book first came out and I had the first printing in my hands (came back to it for a few weekends to look at it, and admire it) when an adult came in and literally bought it out of my hands. I had to save up for a year to buy it back then - but that memory has never left me!
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Wow! The fighter mode looks awesome.... they really pulled it off. Not feeling the other modes though, but I never could even in the lineart.
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Wow! Congrats on the coming kid, how do you ever get to build with a 4yr old?! I've basically stopped any and all my hobbies since my daughter was born 5yrs ago. My life has been on hold (and yeah, I AM COMPLAINING... everyday!) - but I see it that eventually in 6yrs, she won't think I'm cool anymore - then I'll get back to my life - I take cool daddy for as long as I can. It's basically toy collecting for the next few years (and model hoarding;-) Invest in a Sil-Air compressor - that's what I got after I threw away my ghetto refrigerator compressor 15yrs ago. It's near silent and has an air reservoir tank that it mostly uses from, the compressor only kicks in to fill it back up - you get really smooth airflow (no puttering at all) and its near silent (even with the compressor going to fill the tank up). I think they're a bit on the expensive side, but they last and its the last compressor you'll ever need.
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Thanks Mickyg I love to see your work too! My guess its the Windex - just take it out of the equation - don't use that stuff for anything but cleaning and stripping.
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I would have felt better about it if they took the care initially and did it right in the beginning , instead of gouging us fans that took the initial plunge and are now left scrambling for something they should have done in the first place. I'm not happy about paying for failed prototypes, that's what R&D is for. And now, this whole under supply situation just seems like a giant "slap in the face" to me - its not like they didn't have the experience from the F & S renewal release to gauge the current demand.
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I love details! Especially when I don't have time to build myself, I can live vicariously through you, thanks. I wouldn't really use Windex to thin down the paint, I use Windex to strip or clean my airbrush of Tamiya acrylic only. I personally think the Tamiya thinner is really designed for airbrush use (its really not that expensive considering how many hours of effort you put into this babies), I believe there are thinners in it that retards the drying process a bit (as acylics tend to dry quickly) which helps in creating that perfectly smoothed self-levelled effect. There should be no textural or "orange-peel" effect at all - if so the paint is either too thick, or the air pressure too high - the worst is when you get a "sand-paper" effect! I've seen Windex breakdown the pigmentation/binders within the Tamiya acrylic if you use too much of it (you see the pigment bits come out of the paint). Plus if its too heavily laden with Windex, it could attack any underlying layer of Tamiya Acrylic you would be painting over. There is no hard and fast rules for ratios of paint to thinner - in fact I find it various according to colour and whether its matte/flat, glossy or metallic paint - however its always between 1:2 and 1:1. Glossy lighter colours need to be thicker as it doesn't cover as well, while matte/flat paints tend to dry too quickly and needs more thinners, and Metallic colours tend to be heavier and needs more thinner to spray nicely through the airbrush. So its kind of a black art to this - but generally, it should have the consistency of milk - that will get you into the right ballpark.
