Zinjo

Well that actually better explains his outrage at the teasing. How many guys would like to be called "Ms" or "Milady", nevermind "Princess"?!

With Bandai it typically depends on the "level" of kit purchased. "Perfect Grade" kits are about as advanced as you can get with mass produced Mecha models. Unfortunately you only see those in the Gundam lines, not any other. If you want a variable fighter kit, that's fine. I would rather have the toys to pose and transform and the static kits to build. The amount of cost to produce a transforming model kit is always added to the final cost. This is why you can get a Hasegawa Valk for nearly half the cost of a Bandai transforming variable fighter. Granted Hasegawa has been selling kits in North America for decade now, while Bandai America has only really been actively marketing kits in North America for the past 15 years or so and that has mainly been of their flagship line, MS Gundam. Hasegawa understands our market and they produce a high quality kit for the most economical price by selling fighter and battroid kits as separate units ( I don't think any kit manufacturer has made a GERWALK kit since the 80's!). This reduces the costs of the kits to the consumer and thus, they sell more. I owned a few Bandai transforming kits in my time and both the VF-1 and the VF-2SS kits were awful. They transformed, but the parts never fit right and they looked odd in all modes. The VF-25 is a substantial improvement, but allowances had to be made to accomodate the transformation they devised for it. Thus, the kit still doesn't look line art perfect. Now if you want a transforming Valk because the DX toys are so expensive (because they are), I can respect that and don't begrudge you for doing it. However, we must keep in mind that with a high quality toy like the DX, the Japanese market will pay more for that quality, unlike North Americans. Now a transforming VF-25 kit is an economical substitute to the DX toy, but certain allowances still have to be made for sake of transforming a 1/72 scale kit. Hasegawa doesn't have this issue since no allowances to the look of the kits need to be made and therefore they look line art perfect (well as close as possible anyway) as either fighters or battroids. This type of quality coupled with affordable kit prices is how Hasegawa has been making money on the Macross franchise for the past 25 years. Bandai has been doing the same with the Gundam kits, however when faced with any transforming mecha, it appears they feel compelled to make it transform as well (this has always been their way.... ) Maybe we'll get lucky and the 1/48 scale VF-25 will be a "Perfect Grade" kit with a perfect transformation. I'd be willing to buy that for sure.

Well it appears to me that many on MG are feeling quite betrayed at the moment. A trusted source of information about Macross has been proven to have published false information (willfully or inadvertently has yet to be revealed). There will be anger and bitterness toward Shaloom for quite some time, if not indefinitely. He has taken his position of leadership and trust and betrayed his fellow Spanish speaking fans with false information. I suspect the same would happen here if one or several of our translators were to do the same thing. It is unfortunate. I believe we should be ready and willing to share the information we are priviledged to gain from our translation team with MG, to fill the void that shaloom has now left, as Gubaba has already posted. We are all fans here and if we don't support each other's communities then what would become of our favorite franchise out here? We don't have the same level of information access as our Japanese counterparts do, so we work with what we have. What we create for our communities should and must be above reproach for our own sakes. At MW we are very fortunate to have the likes of Gubaba, Sketchley and the other translators who contribute regularly for our benefit. I would encourage our Spanish speaking members to pass on their gems of information to our friends at MG, so they benefit as much as we do.

Very Nice!

I'd strongly suggest you check out March's Macross Mecha Manual. for reference materials. I'm not sure if I have anything more than what Marchy has, but I'll check my hard drive... Here are the links to the various VF-171s: VF-171 NUNS RVF-171 VF-171 EX Plus VF-171 EX Super All images are from official published sources

Respectfully, if you want a transforming Valk, buy the toy... It will hold up much longer than a transforming kit. Kits by their very nature are meant to be displayed. However, Bandai makes outstanding entry level kits. I've never seen the need to have a transforming static kit in the age of transforming toys with a quality never before seen, but that's just me...

I think a better challenge is for John to consider a conversion kit for a VF-1 Armored GERWALK in 1/72 scale! Now that would be as rare a subject as his 1/72 Monster was!

The tree to finished kit may be be a dying art, but toy modding has become the younger generation's hobby of choice it appears. A pre-packaged , pre-built kit that can be displayed as is or modified into what you want. Hence the appearance of scales traditionally used in plastic kit building. The greater sophistication of toys construction is another factor in the sunset of kit building. You compare a VF-1 toy even ten years ago to one produced today. The quality of sculpts coming out now are truly stunning! Hence the trend toward toy modifications rather than the traditional kits. That's the main reason why I am committed to collecting all the VF-100 series coming out (hopefully they'll do all the VFs ). The sculpts are truly beautiful and they are the perfect size for displaying in my apartment. I plan to see if I can get some of the Deculture decals made in the right scale so that I can modify the VF-25s. The sad thing is that kit bashing a completely unique subject or diorama building is quickly disappearing as an art form in the hobby. Another factor is the population densities in urban centers, where more and more people are opting for condos over houses, which speaks to your lack of display space as becoming more and more common. Hell if I had the cash, I'd be commissioning several Cheng kits for my own collection (no joke!). On a side note dude, you really should take the opportunity to submit hires (300+px) pictures of your Valks to Hobby Japan, Dengenki Hobby, or Model Graphix. I'm sure the Japanese kit builders would get a kick out of seeing a Western Macross fan's work published. In many ways its on par if not better than many we've already seen published in those pages. Something to consider.

NICE! Just wondering why you chose to use the old UNSpacy insignia?

Amen brother.. I really want to see the submissions for the Custom Messiah contest BigWest was running! Will it be available through amazon japan?

Boooooo....

I have no issues with that if it gives SK the opportunity to finish working on a original story for the second one. With all the merchandise Bandai is pouring into the market, it is no surprise they are willing to bankroll a couple of movies to keep market interest up. When you consider that the VF-100 line alone (if they do a new release every month) will run for at least 2 years with all the VFs they are planning to market.

Yes, Jaylew's SDF-1 is probably one of the most impressive works I've seen of the Macross. I keep trying to get back to a few wallpaper ideas I have for it, but RL tends to get in the way of good intentions....

Saying Frontier is a re-telling of SDFM is about as erroneous and dismissive as saying MacII is a retelling of DYRL. Neither statement stands up against any factual analysis. Mac F has many homages to past Macross productions and has a few twists on the original's plot points, but is in no way a retelling. It is another installment in the lore that is the legacy of the Protoculture.

I LOVE 'EM!!

That VF-400 really is a sexy plane... Though, considering its a redesign using 2059 tech, shouldn't the insignia be the NUNS?

My guess would be the design. How many women singers do you know of who can build kits?

True. I foster the notion that the ancient Zentradi ships of SDFM were largely as they were designed by the PC, thus were not as prone to fold faults. Then mankind comes along and says "Hey, if we toss out these useless purple crystals in the fold drives we can do this..." Then all of a sudden fold travel becomes limited by fold faults and no one knows why. I also tend to believe the Zentradi gunships were/are much more powerful than humanity's cannons due to the fact that they are still the original PC design, whereas all cannons built by mankind were reverse engineered for the most part. For all we know fold quarts may also improve the efficiency of the power output of Macross cannons...

Well the SD dimension is close enough to be easily (relative term) tapped, so it is entirely possible that faults could be stars, planets or nebulae from our dimension... Though for something to create such a tar pit in SD space it would have to be very large considering the distances travelled by folds.

Bandai has the money and they want to sell more stuff....

Much like an aircraft going "around" or "over/under" a storm. It isn't the most efficient route, but the safest...

How about one is a bit larger resolution? I blew it up a little and cleaned up all the artifacting that tends to accompany that.

Well for the battroid sequences, you could simply not show any transformation and restrict the player to cockpit view. So long as the battroid can move like a robot infront of the screen, it should be good enough.

Then they'd be travelling through an artificial wormhole made in real space, instead of SD space. The wormhole through SD space, would look different than streaking starts. This is most likely why SK used the animation he did in Plus and Frontier. As for "fold faults", I tend to consider them as areas of space or SD space with dark matter deposits, which is substantially more dense than matter. Thus by travelling through them, the amount of energy needed would be more. Much like driving from a paved road through soft sand. You can get through it, but it will take a lot more gas than if you were still on a paved road. The Fold Quartz would have to have properties that allowed them to cut through such dark matter as opposed to muscling their way through it.

It could simply be that the RPG writers did the math. 1 lightyear = X km 1 light day = X km 1 light hour = X km They may have simply took the math backwards by using 10 days vs 60 minutes, with the constant being 10 days distance at the speed of light. Since no actual speed is every mentioned during a fold. From that they could come to a ballpark determination of how fast fold travel is. Now Kawamori has certainly changed the way he presents folds, or modified them to a couple of different types. A) Point to Point Fold - short distance which creates a fold bubble (Fold Jump?) B) Long distance Fold - long distance fold which creates a worm hole tunnel. (Space Fold Travel?) The Macross crashing to earth looked like it came out of a long space fold as well as Vritai's ship when it travelled to the main fleet, whereas when the Macross folded to Pluto and the Zentreadi fleet showed up in the Sol system, it looked like short range jumps. The only exception seems to be in Mac 7, when the City 7 folded it looked like traditional fold animation, eventhough it travelled a long distance. It is possible that now that cg animation has developed this far, it allowed SK to realize his vision for what a long distance fold was supposed to look like. Just a theory....