PointBlankSniper

It really doesn't seem like there are any connection features to accomodate the sound booster... Also gotta wonder if those shoulder holes are cosmetic or if they are deep enough to hold the 19P's speaker fins.

By mecha convention, it's kind of a goofy shield, but IMO it passes for a buckler

I forgot the black part at top on the 25 already already sticks out and has to fight with the chest cover and the neck plate on the way in lol As for the shield, it's not just the hump ending early up the fuselage, but the shield also seems to only start where the hump would have ending on the 25. Its edge seems to line up 1/3 of the way back from the front of the tail fins, where as the 25's starts right at the front where it meets the hinge. The 24's shield definitely looks much shorter than what the 25 has.

NGL, at first, I thought the nose thing was a fat indent with a reverse thrust nozzle because of the internal details towards the rear, but it doesn't check out with top view having an outline following the nose profile, and every interpretation of it has been sensors, so I'm probably wrong. Anyway, judging by the line art, it looks like the cockpit block itself is actually pointed. I think a quick way to eyeball whether there is room for that would be to see peek under the collar on the 25's battroid model. Or just keep them whole pieces regardless and invent a simple toe in pivot should it get in the way later lol

The whole sliding and retracting wing thing came about from trying to explain why there still looks like a swing wing slit at the back of the wing root when it can't have swing wings anymore lol. The folding wingtip was simply from recognizing that rectangle-ish shape looking similar to the wing root hinge for transformation. Ultimately, you gotta ignore me at some point, and pick somewhere to stop at, or the project will never end 😁. Meanwhile, the more I cook, the crazier it gets. Now I've realized a further gimmicks could be had with the super pack, by building on the retract and fold features. Maybe it's encroaching on an armored pack... but w/e lol Let's say the wing tip booster wraps inboard over the folded wing a little. Either a simple brick that cannibalizes the wing span, or hinged to flap open in a small tie fighter or x-wing profile for fighter mode. Then also have a clip on wing root booster like the 25, covering the dog teeth. With enough arbitrary wing span coverage by both sections of boosters, when a wing retracts for battroid, the two boosters could mate up and lock together into one solid block of jet pack, while almost concealing the underlying wings entirely. The individual booster pods need not be big like the piececs that inspired them, they just need to mostly conceal the wing surface and form a block of back boosters. In fact, the pods/boosters similar to the 29's or even smaller might be enough. Now also having taken the 29's pack for inspiration, it can't end there lol. The 29's super has a booster pod under the stabilizer. That doesn't work here, because only the 29 has that wide deck of a wing root to accomodate the backwards retracting wing. What does work, is stealing the 31's trick. The very same over wing pack, right on top of the folded tail stabilizer, you mentioned. It's basically part of the jet pack block without moving. But that's not all. Suppose they brought dorsal cannons to the mix, kind of replicating the 29's (more like the 17's individual cannons tbh) gimmick. If my eyeballing is correct, once the wing roots stand up for battroid, the cannons merely need to swivel 90 degrees through the leg cutouts, to become hip cannons for the battroid. Add telescoping as needed. Since everyone's got their super pack lineage traced back into the 24, we can't leave the 27 out. That can be solved by willfully misinterpreting the shoulders in the bottom view. I think you mentioned having leeway to play around with it too. Sure it looks like the 25's shoulders down there, with how the back of the shoulder mates up with the elbow. But since we can't see depth from that view, we can just say it's actually the top of the shoulders folded over the arms like the 27. With that out of the way, we can then steal the 27's shoulder top super part mount, and slap on w/e equipment there. Could be more boosters, turrets, or missile pods for all I care 😉 Based on the 25 and 29, the circles are equipment plugs. The collar set being for missile pods is standard affair. But for the shield though, I think it would be the perfect chance to slap a short missile container on there, and say that's where the 30 got it's gimmick from, since it doesn't have any packs to draw its lineage from. This has gotten complicated and I hope I don't have to hand draw on MS paint to make sense of it 🤡 At this point, I think I need to stop myself or your pet project will be derailed into obvlion 😁

Bandai almost never completes any line up of a series. Its like their core value at this point.

Crazy ideas: What if for battroid, the dog teeth slides backwards past the front tip of the wing root, then retracts diagonally forward inside of it, like how the 29's wings retracts diagonally backwards to add the super pack wings. If that's not complicated enough, make the wing tip panel fold over itself where the outer aileron sits, like how the 30 and 31 fold under. For no reason other than storage, and makes for a nice backstop for the stabilizers to rest on when they fold down. In fact, those folding joints could be a hardpoints to give it AX style super packs. On the bottom view of the 24's line art, there is a slit shape similar to the wing root's folding joint, that seems to be erroneously missing on one wing, but present on both sides of top view. That's the piece I'm picturing as the joint. On the 31, that piece extends into a double joint before folding, so the funny panel overlap and the slant end shouldn't pose a problem here. If it was normally already an exposed weapon hard point on the bottom side, it would make the whole AX super pack mounting thing simple. After staring at this for a while, I've noticed that the leading edge of the wing and the wing root's tapering inward at the base of the stabilizers seem to be longitudinally mirrored. That is to say, if in battroid mode, with the legs out of the way, the folded and retracted wing tip might actually butt up seamlessly against the stabilizer base. The width spacing checks out perfectly with a brief finger measure check lmao. It's unfortunate that this seemingly perfect alignment serves no purpose in fighter mode since the engine/legs are in the way. Basically it's all an excuse to pretend that's where the derivative models got their wing gimmicks from lol.

Slightly new packaging look must mean they are locked in to w/e stategy or quality standards this release stands for. The 17's arm is peeking out from the side. Since it's ready for show, that one's designs are definitely locked in too lol.

I always had the impression that 24s were deployed from the convos around here, but its nice to know where it comes from is lol Super packs at this point might indeed be getting way ahead of yourself, but I've been wondering what the hypothetical 26 that got canned could have come out like, eversince you started working on the 24 😁

The ECM or data collection thing for the YF-25's head is what I was thinking of. Guess that rules it out from looking too much like a 24. In the same vein, I've been thinking the 24 was intended to be more of a direct drop in replacement to the VF-11 (and 171), more so than the way the 17 was shoehorned into the role through modding it into 171. So I was thinking maybe going a little backwards helps with head design ideas. Then thinking back to Isamu's valks for single laser designs, it suddenly dawned on me, his custom 29 might literally have the closest head possible to the 24... If you want a more cyclops take to Isamu's jewel + visor design, I think the VF-0D is good place for inspiration. For a cyclops with brow look, I'm not sure how you are picturing it, but I think the 25A/G has a bit of that going on too. Maybe you can figure out how to roll all those ideas into one. Don't have much thoughts on the shoulders atm, but I'm wondering if that shield is long enough to fit a knife lol.

I was under the impression that it was kind of just a 25A or G head too, but upon closer inspection, it doesn't seem like it. The A and G don't have those vulcan(?) humps flanking the laser's mount, and the helmet contours are totalle different, not to mention the laser is different shaped. It's actually the 25F that looks closest to it. I think there's something wrong with the 25F line art you used for comparison. The red sensor box where the laser would normally be is totally missing. Inside those black stripes, similar to where the 24 has the vulcan humps, the 25F also has them. I can't tell if they are still there in the 25F's line art. The next closest thing is actually the 31A, having a single laser, and the vulcan humps, but the designs and proportions are off. One thing that's for sure is that the 24 definitely stows its head facing backwards. I'd say hacking (or clipping?) together a laser from 25A or 31A and copying 31A's lack of ears to the 25F's helmet would probably be the simplest approximation for the visible parts of the head. For the hidden parts, I guess you could take inspiration even from the YF-25, since it's the closest link to the 24 that we have. But I think there might have been lore that the YF's head looks intentionally primitive with a giant camera for testing reasons, so it may not truly represent any sort of lineage to the 24's designs.

I just noticed this shot wasn't floating around before, I think... maybe it was added later? bandai's not even trying to hide that they are stowing the gunpod wrong lol

Nice work with the wings. I think the nose are supposed to be very different, considering some parts like the feet and intakes look identical between the two. If you think about how the 25, 27, 29, and even 30 are supposed to be direct descendants of the 24, but all of them look nothing alike beyond general mechanisms, I think it's safe to assume any differences noticed are intended. So my read is that the cockpit is that little bit larger. Other things like the nose being that little bit stockier might be intentional as well. The line down the center of the nose might be a chine, or could be a two tone nose design along with micro fins at the front of the gear doors that survived into the 29's design. Maybe looking at the 29's line art might help you a little. The 27 might have little features in common with the 24 too. Admittedly, the 30 being related in any way, more than just vague wing profile, is kinda bs lol. Maybe the engine humps with the little slit sensor thing up front counts for lineage... Following that train of thought, those hexagons on top of the engine near the ankles might be missile hatches, something that evolved into the 30's missile container with topside hatches, and then the 31 reverting back to calf missiles but with a large door. The real thing up for guessing to me is whether the intakes are actually that faint bit taller on the 25, since they do look identical by design, or maybe the scaling of the two images just wasn't perfect so there's nothing to that, idk lol

Most of the stock problems are just the effects of bandai's strategy to feed scalpers rather than customers. Even japanese people take swings at bandai for eternal stock shortage and scalper problems every chance they get. Yet bandai still focuses on jumping between small batch reprints, spam new series and new designs nobody asked for without fulfulling demand, spam pbandai limited runs, etc. They do everything in their power to create stock shortage and raise the value of scalping. Then they blockade cross region retail at the expense of regions with bad distro and local pricing, in the name of combating scalping. But there is no legitimate logic to it, because in reality, they are just giving more power to scalpers by giving them exclusive rights to peddle merchandize between regions. They singlehandedly built the scalper empire, and they will do everything they can to continue to fatten it. So it's not really an HLJ issue IMO, other than the fact that they are the last one allowed to do cross region retail, so all the symptoms are showing through them. It's just bandai totally not secretly having back channel arrangements or managing the scalper network themselves 😉, and totally putting in all their efforts to stop the scalper industry😉, that they totally didn't have a hand in birthing 😉, and cutting out all the distro and retailers for retail equivalent pricing through p-bandai isn't just another step in their strategy 😉. I totally don't think every individual scalper and scalping retailer is just an undercover bandai staff 😁 Its not going to improve because bandai's priorities are as suspicious as the consistent quality and QC issues of their DX/Metal Build/tamashii lines. Just another thing that even japanese people are openly dunking on them for, and they don't care. Their games also have some of the most heinous DLC schemes, despite people forgetting that is a thing between every release. Bandai is run by corporate vampires, so things can only get worse.

Still haven't watched so never realized that was a thing. Googled around to check. Now it makes sense. My googling has revealed an old thread on here with an image that proves the gunpod is wrong though. It's supposed to also have a white version of the Kai's speaker launcher rather than the regular gunpod lol

I think it's the camera angle, and the head design. 171 is taken slightly top down, so it's proportions are squatted, and the chest looks lower than it really is. The head and its colors are blended into the ear lasers, which gives it a photogenic V shaped silhouette that follows how the chest also tapers together towards the front. 17S is taken level with the waist. That makes the chest look as wide and thin as it really is, and looks like it hangs high up on the skinny torso. The legs' full lankiness are exposed by the direct flat angle. The head is cylindrical and silver, which stands out like a soda can, while the lasers are dark with no highlights so they blend in to the back side parts and main body, making them contribute little to the silhouette and proportions of the head. Overall it it makes the head look too narrow for how wide the chest is, and the chest too wide for those legs. It's basically a "V" shape vs a "t" shaped silhouette. Only one of them looks like an angry robot.

I don't have mine yet, but if I'm not mistaken, you just need to flip one wing up at the wing root hinge and drop that leg at the intake/thigh. You've already got it out of the box, so it shouldn't be much more work to take a peek. You just need to see the top of the "101" and the corner that it should/shouldn't align with. This is assuming there really aren't any double same sided shoulders in circulation.

Think the buttstock is supposed to be a skeleton underfolder, so it was always supposed to shorten to the same length, just without spitting... They should have done a new gunpod mold, not just for that, but also the ammo gimmick and add the beam ammo. That is definitely an intentional feature. The wings are different shaped, so definitely new parts. They put them there on purpose like the new wings on the 19Kai. I agree that it's a cool play option and I wish the frontier valks also got, and bandai should release more missiles to actually use the feature. Wanting them removed is kind of being the no fun police... I don't see how it's possible to mount the back pack guns. The piece it goes on has no ports on the surface, and all of its edges are blocked by something, so they can't even hook anything around. They either have to dremel some tab slots in before packing it in the box, or give you double sided tape with the pack. I feel like the way they announced this is a declaration that they won't do a super pack for it. Not even the 19Kai looks like it has plugs for the sound booster. I feel like bandai killed the idea of add ons as separate purchases, that's why anything that was going to have a pack had their packs included since WWM started. I'm still huffing my hoping for the arm cannon, but I honestly don't think it's ever happening.

I think everyone is reading too much into the preorders with an old mindset. Everything from revivals like 25G, Tornado, 31J, 262Hs, 171EX, 25S armored and 27, have all been selling out very slow. Some of them are still in stock. Even the PO for the Fire Valkyrie is still in stock at a few places. PO madness is simply no longer much of a phenomenon for these toys. The only exception to this was probably the YF-19. While the 21's sales were hampered despite being new and having demand... It seems like it's just the current trend with DX Valks. It may just be the result of the overall known issues of recent bandai action figures in general, including metal builds, and the economy, and bandai overproducing as they embrace global releasing valks after the legal issues of the macross IP cleared up Even if they had perfected the sculpt for this release, my guess is that it would just sell out at a similar same pace. There's no way this thing could sell out faster than the 19Kai

Mark H. replied a comment saying the shoulder fins don't come off. And another one saying the leg missile hatch doesn't open even though it seems like it should.

Honestly, the only thing glaringly inaccurate in fighter mode is that the elbow guns are far past the shoulder panel gap that it should have been in line with. And then the shoulder missile port(s) upon closer inspection. Otherwise, line art for fighter mode seems to have always had those leg proportions.

It would be crazy if you mange to put together the mythical Evolution. I think there's a 3d file of the YF-24 on cults3D. Not sure if it helps with what you want to do.

TBF the new revival Armored Ozma from its promo, to box art, right down to the instructions, had the wrong paint job on the head. Same for the visor and canopy colors on the 27. Those came out to be animation accurate like the renewals when you look at the actual toy. So bandai is willing to ignore all their photographed/rendered materials and sneak in a correct toy in the box. But this scenario we now have is very drastic, and requires new molds, so it almost certainly is not happening. Maybe if people scream at them on twitter as early as possible, there would be a chance lol.

Honestly, your Siegfried looks more like a real plane than the Kairos. IMO you've proven that looks like an absolutely fine combat aircraft with the right paint job. In this comparison, the Kairos looks a bit cartoony with those panel lines and colors. It probably doesn't help that the delta wings and dog teeth were always kind of mismatched to the flow of the body's shape and makes it look more sci fi/toy like to me. I always thought Kairos would look better with lambda wings. If the outer wings were erased from the join outward, and a random person was told to finish drawing the rest of the wing, I think the natural response would be to draw a lambda wing, even without knowing what it is. This comparison has made that idea obvious to me lol Anyway, have fun cooking up your next project.

You can never be done tweaking a piece of art, so this is a good place to let this piece be completed. I just want to request a shot with the regular 31A beside or in formation with this, just to see them together, if it's not too much trouble.