Chronocidal

What I kinda don't get with the head area... isn't the head supposed to be above those plates? Or was the VF-19 head area changed around significantly from the YF-19? Gullet is pretty big after all.. but I don't get it. Even with it, I still like the proportions better than the 1/60. Maybe it's being masked by that loose panel, but it still seems a nicer shape overall.. Oh well, I'm weird. The crotch plate probably is causing a few problems, but I really look forward to seeing some better views of this. One thing that might help.. how bout now? Edit: I think I may have realized part of what it is... Yes, this one may be the same thickness as the 1/60, proportion-wise.. but this one is wider. The leading edge design is obviously different that the YF-19, but it looks like it's much wider overall. Between the wider wing root pieces, different leading edge design, and wider shoulders, the wing pivots get pushed further out on this one. Mix that with bigger wings, and it the fuselage doesn't look so tall in comparison.

Sheesh, $50? I got my red leader ones for between $15 and $25 a piece... no ladder or R2, but still, $25 for a figure and a ladder? Heck, even the ForceFX one I got was only $25 I'll probably wait till they go on clearance. Then again.. my sister does work at Target...

Ahh, so that's it.. I just realized what those parts are in the previous picture. They plug up the big gap behind the thighs that the Yamato YF-19 has. You can see the outline of the piece on that battroid pic. And I'm not so sure the legs are drooping.. could be the angle, but it looks like the shield is just mounted really high above the rest of the body. If you look at the location of the wings on the side of the leg, they look like they attach just above the yellow spikey bit on the leg ring, which is about the midpoint on the leg. In fact, that's what makes me think the gullet is better... the gullet on this one looks about the same level relative to the bottom of the intakes as on the Yamato... but the legs on this one, especially in the intake area, look much more streamlined than the Yamato. The 1/60's legs always looked really bulky to me (probably due to landing gear, and also the tail mechanism, a problem the VF-19 gets to avoid due to the different tail design). I'll probably wind up being completely wrong about all this when we see some side views, but even with the gullet, I like the overall proportions of this one more than the 1/60. There does appear to be some real funkyness going on with the shield/head area though, between those ginormous shoulders... I don't see the head, and it almost looks like they either hid it under the shield, or left it off for fighter, and had some trouble with the shoulder mechanism. Oh, and one other difference from the 1/60.. I dunno which is accurate to the anime, but this one's canards don't fold.

Oh, I just meant I still wished Yamato had figured out another way to do it. For a compromise that big, I would've taken detachable gear in a heartbeat. Besides that though, even not counting the gullet... I dunno. The 1/60th YF-19 fighter mode has never really appealed to me for some reason. It just looks fat and bulky to me. The battroid looks fine, but I prefer fighter mode most of the time. For some reason though, I really like the overall shape of this VF-19 so far. Can't put my finger on what's different really, and won't know for sure until closeups are available. Could be the bigger wings (the 1/60's have always looked really stubby to me), or maybe it's because the VF-19 was always more bulky in the anime to begin with. I really can't say. The feeling might go away when more shots of the fighter come out though.

I was always under the impression that the Kai had almost identical wings to the YF-19. The VF-19 models optimized for space combat had the clipped wing design, the big ankle rings, and no canards. The Kai essentially is a cross between the YF-19 and the later VF-19 models, taking the same body style, and adding back in the large forward swept wings and canards. Strangest thing to me is that the shoulders seem a bit huge in fighter mode. Probably a compromise for a better battroid, but it kinda sticks out. I'd like to see a closeup of the head mechanism too. Otherwise, the fighter looks awesome.. better than the Yamato 1/60 even. Funny.. looks like they even managed to avoid the gullet. Probably since it doesn't have retracting gear, but still... I'd love to see what would happen if Yamato and Bandai teamed up.

You've just given me an epic idea for a repaint.

Most of the verniers are still black, yes, but only the ones that are detailed. The orange hexagons on the ankle, as well as the orange rectangles on the side, and the round dot on the shield.. those are supposed to be verniers as well.. at least, I've always seen them labeled as such. If not, I'd love an explanation of what those are. Anyway, I was always under the assumption that there were reasons a lot of the details were black, especially the borders around the leg bays (hinges, exhaust vents for missiles, etc). I'm just not really impressed with what amounts to a simple color swap. It's like they just decided to make random bits orange for the heck of it, without differentiating between colored markings, and mechanical features. The stripes around the nose sensors, and the front of the canopy especially... painting those areas orange just doesn't make a lick of sense to me.

Ok, that is by far one of the dumbest repaints I've yet seen. Seriously, this reminds me of those times when I was about 8 years old, and decided to add "detail" to some of my models. I took a paint marker, and decided to paint random panels different colors. This is exactly like that. THEY PAINTED THRUSTER VENTS FREAKIN' ORANGE. It's like they took the normal paint palette, and just said, "Ok, lets just put orange paint in the machine instead of black." ... Actually, looks like that's EXACTLY what they did... the colors are reversed. Everything that used to be black is now orange, and all the stuff normally red is black, even the intake warnings, and the borders around the nose sensors are now orange. Fail. The color scheme itself isn't that bad really, it reminds me of old test model markings. If only they'd bothered to give a second thought to what parts needed to be changed, and what needed to stay the same, it wouldn't look like some 10 year old had just photoshopped the thing. Still not quite on the level of the "lets paint it black and add a gold border to EVERYTHING" version, but not far off.

*gets his files and putty ready to fix the fail* I just hope the thing is styrene plastic. At least if they release it with the TCS chin pod, the lower sensor is still reasonably close to the original early A sensor pod. Really saddened by this actually... You'd think for all the work they put into the thing on little details, they'd at least get them right. It's like if Ferrari engineers designed the best car ever made.. but decided that they'd only sell it in 3 colors: throw-up puce, baby mustard yellow, and sunburn pink.

I just nearly crapped myself when I got my latest Lego email. Quote: "Celebrate the 10th anniversary of LEGO® Star Wars™ with The Battle of Endor™ and the Home One™ Mon Calamari Star Cruiser™!" Unfortunately, the title was a little misleading. It's not another UCS set (good thing actually, I can't afford any more of those), it's a playset based on the briefing room and hangar. It's not bad though, and the hangar comes with what I think is a new style A-wing.

One other thing to check on the cannons.. I don't remember if both ones with striped guns had this, but I do remember at least one of them having the front ring before the gun barrel painted a sort of yellowish color. I'm pretty sure Red 3 had this, but not sure about 5 (I believe 3 is the model pictured on the box of the old ROTJ edition MPC/ERTL kit).

Any particular details you're looking for? And are you just interested in paint schemes, or surface details as well? It gets complicated here, since many of the randomly colored panels on the ships were actually places where they slapped on patches of sheet styrene, or other spare parts, and incorporated them into the paint patterns. I have a set of instructions for the fine molds kit somewhere, but I don't remember how much detail they go into.. they're for the 1/72 kit, so a set from the new 1/48 one would be better. I can check my references a bit later, I think I have at least a few shots of each hero model from ANH, mostly Red 3 (and if not, I can get some screencaps from the dvd). I remember Reds 3 and 5 were very similar, with a few differences (the movie actually swapped them in a few shots if I recall), and Red 2 was an oddball that used some different parts, including a different canopy frame, and probably engines (funny thing... there's an old vintage J-79 mounted on a stand near where I work, and while the surface details are a bit different, I can never keep from thinking of it as an X-Wing engine.. the shape is identical). Also, I could be wrong, but I don't think they paid too much attention to the markings in Ep 6. The number of ships at Endor was so massive, I don't think they had more than one or two hero models made of X-Wings, and I don't remember any closeups of Y-Wings. I've only ever seen one large scaled X-Wing that survived that movie, and it appears to the one used for Luke (though it may have been used for a couple of the Wedge closeups, I'll have to watch again). It's also VERY different from the original models, and about twice as big. At that size, they couldn't use the same kitbashing techniques, so a lot of the details changed drastically. Funny, since Endor was so huge, ILM actually turned to the original MPC kits to make the bulk of the cannon fodder ships. And I'm pretty sure some of those models survived for a while... if you look closely at the X-Wings during the Star Tours ride at Disneyland, it's easy to recognize a few particular features of the MPC/ERTL kits.

Well, letting go of the controls worked back in the day when you didn't have any choice but to make aircraft stable.. no computers and such to get you out of a jam. Some planes were still unstable in certain areas, but for the most part planes had to be designed stable before they would build them. Course, I think only static stability is a requirement, not dynamic stability (whole mess of aerodynamics in this area, and the math gets very ugly, very quick). Nowadays, letting go of the controls works, but only because the computer will fix the plane for you. That's really what planes like the F-14 needed from the start.. God only knows why, but the F-14 was designed with an inherent instability in the yaw axis. There's literally a "OMG! FLAT SPIN! EJECT!" type warning in the flight manual... Get the yaw rate up too high, and a giant arrow in the direction of the yaw appears over all the cockpit displays. I'd have to read it again, but I think it says if you don't correct it within a few seconds, you should just eject.

Yeah, except they may have completely screwed over the people counting on profits from those episodes. Sure, the fan rage is funny. But unless they come up with some way to fit all 8 episodes on one dvd release, AND keep it the same price as the others, the sales for those episodes are going to tank. People will likely buy the beginning and end episodes, but depending on how the dvds are organized, 2-3 discs might be largely ignored by all but completists.

I love how that one looks like someone basically made a mech out of F-16 parts. I wonder what other armored core parts they have though.. just finished playing through AC:FA, and now I'm wondering how much you'd have to spend to get a decent sized set of parts to customize.

Yeah.. lack of any sense storywise, and an utter lack of aircraft variety made it pretty mediocre, in spite of the pretty pictures. Well, that, and they gave the uberplane what essentially amounted to an Itano Circus launcher. Fun in single player for a few laughs and achievements, but it completely borked multiplayer to the point where the plane isn't even allowed.

I'm not exactly sure, but I think the model name is 504x Scorpion EXO 900, or something close (it's in the image name). No idea who makes it.

Speaking of playtesting.. I'd say HAWX falls under the "Play-test? What is play-test?" category, especially the pc version. "Please press the ESC key to continue..."

I would say doubtful, since the wheels fold up similar to the VF-1, but since this one still seems to use the oversized main gear bays from the 1/72, it might be possible.. Even though they're inaccurate, with bays that deep the wheels don't need to pivot to fold up, and can just fold straight back. Personally, I think the gear were the weakest point on the 1/72 kit. The front gear already look a bit better from that pic, but the main gear needed a complete rebuild.

Nice, looks like they gave it a bit of a surface detail makeover. Lots more panel lines on this than the 1/72, and that cockpit looks awesome. Even got the internal sensors modeled into the nose lenses.

I know it's from a while ago.. but it just now hit me what this reminds me of. All we need is a wilted christmas tree, and a black and white beagle. On that note, I should have a fitting edit coming shortly along these lines.

I realize this may be a bit off topic (not pictures of finished cosplay anyway), but those of you looking for a good base for a TV style helmet you can actually use... you might want to check this out. Would take a bit of work, but it's an actual helmet, and even has the retractable visor built in.

Actually.. that pic is interesting. I could be wrong, but it looks like they beefed up the gullet a bit. Not to 1/60 levels, but the area ahead of the arms on the underside looks a bit beefier. As slick as it was, that actually was one of the most obvious variations on the Hasegawa 1/72 when compared with the lineart. You know that sharp edge along the side of the fuselage that blends between the nose and the hip area? The 1/72 kit has that area completely flat underneath, making it more wing-like on the edge. I don't have the pic available right now, but the lineart shows that area very clearly angled downwards, dropping the gear area down a bit. Also, from the looks of it, they're building in the internal details on the leg missile bays. Whether they'll be fully molded, or you'll have to option to fill them with missiles has yet to be seen though.

Big possible problem I see with a 1/18th transforming valk is weight. True with something that size, you gain a lot of interior space for joints/hinges etc, but all that mechanism will get heavy on some valks. If you could manage to make the structure light enough, give it massively strong and versatile joints, and still give it enough weight to be sturdy, you'd probably be past that problem. Then you're just left with where to put it. On the plus side though, Valks are very modular, due to their transformation. Make the major assemblies separate, and you're golden. You just assemble it when you want it out, then it collapses into a nice flat box under the bed. The Lego one I tried was about 1/18, and fighter mode was about 3 feet long. I dunno how tall it would've been, but if you just scale up a 1/48, battroid is a bit shorter than the fighter length, so it would probably only get to about 2 and 1/2 feet tall.

Anyone make out the price on that masterpiece Skywarp? I live in the middle of nowhere, but if one of those pops up at the local walmart, I won't be able to resist. I'm also curious to see what that Ramjet looks like in fighter mode... it looks like he stole Jetfire's colors!