Chronocidal

*looks at shot of Grievous with lightsaber* Hmm. Looks like Anakin wasn't the only jedi to make his lightsaber out of a flashbulb handle.

Hehe.. if the old symbol had 7 branches, and the empire's has six, I'd bet the missing branch is the Jedi. But actually, I thought the old symbol had 8 spikes? It was printed on the AOTC ships. Or maybe that was just a jedi symbol?

Hmm.. whoa.. k, that's interesting. Look at the symbol poking out under the edge of the pilot's hoses. Or am I just seeing things?

Here's a shot of the new low-vis markings I'm making for it... I'm thinking this'll have probably between 6 and 10 skins, depending on how much I get done with finals coming up

Heheh.. I love how the pilot looks like a tie-pilot with the face cut out to add an X-Wing-ish visor...although I never knew what good a yellow visor would do. The clone troopers are getting similar treatment as well... notice how the t-shaped visor has been subtley replaced by a wide goggle-shaped visor, wth a dark stripe painted down the center.... plus, they've got the classic stormtrooper vents now. About that scene of the fight they showed... I honestly don't think that was from the actual Obi vs Anakin battle. I could be wrong, but it looked like that took place in a big room, kind of like a training chamber.. and given the fact that in all that swinging their lightsabers only actually connected once, I think it was more of a training exercise, or maybe friendly competition/practice on control. This may lead up to the final duel, but I get the feeling it's an early shot meant to emphasize how powerful Anakin's getting. What I'm really noticing is all the ship design lineage...I'm looking forward to seeing a brand-spanking-new Corellian Corvette (aka Blockade Runner), and how it plays in here. Looks like we're also gonna get to see an early lambda-class shuttle, among other things... I honestly half expected to see early Y-Wings in this movie, or maybe Z-95 Headhunters... I mean, they're already old in ANH, the Rebels would've been using Y-wings exclusively if the X-Wing design team hadn't defected with all the prototypes. I may have to get that fighter, even if it is a toy.. it'll go nice next to my ultra-huge Trilogy X-Wing. I just hope they come up with a decent reason for the split wings.. with the X-Wing, it was supposedly for better weapons coverage in combat, and maneuverability by spreading the engines further apart... with this thing, it looks like all they'd do is make a bigger target. Edit: K, I just noticed something... in the description about the pilot clones on that scanned page, it mentions two types of craft.. the ARC-170s, and something else.. it looks like Y-Wings, but I think it may be V-Wings... can anyone tell for certain? And if it is V-Wings, what are those? I know the EU has their own version, but that was an atmospheric craft, and developed long after Endor.

Alrighty, time for a serious bump.. this thing was on the back burner while I fixed up my computer, but it's back in full swing again. I've got about 6 sets of markings which are mostly done, and I'm just working out the flying bugs. Here it is in one of the sets of test markings that got released for the model kit.

glad you all like it.. I hope to be putting it up for download for FS2004 pretty soon, just need to work out the control programming a little more. Dat... wow.. that's really come a long way. And I thought it looked good the first time. I've got a question about rendering for all you here... what do you all do to make the renders look more photo realistic? I've never really been concerned with it before, since I make models that usually wind up in games, but what kinds of plugins and settings do you use?

K, here we go, quick low-vis repaint

HOLY COW ON A STICK! *hugs his cube* (just watched it, it was loading while I typed the last comment) You know, a lot of that trailer looks like it's from the same storyline as Ocarina of Time, simply from the areas and characters. Hyrule Field looks like it's back, and a lot of those enemies look familiar. The graveyard's in there, albeit more creepy, and it even looks like the area under the well is in there too... *shudders* uggghhh...that place was nasty, even with N64 graphics.

Actually... if you read ALL of the main Zelda storylines, ie, the ones involving Zelda, I think they do connect somehow, even Windwaker.. they have a lot of similarities, and I think the games weren't written in order. For instance, I think that Ocarina of Time is actually a prequel to one of the original NES Zelda games, but I'm not sure which one... and I could be wrong. But they do have connections.

K, do you actually need the box, writing and all, or are you just looking for the cover art? Cause I have a few background sized images of a few of the boxes, mainly the VF-1 series of kits. They aren't in huge resolution, but I think they're all about 1280*1024.

LOL.. you beat me to it, I was thinking the exact same thing.

Hmmm.. I worked with X-Wing Alliance for a long time, and I don't think I ever saw one made... I could be wrong though. I have all the stuff to compile the opt files, but I don't think my MS Flight Sim YF-19 model would work.. way too high a polycount for XWA. It's a pretty old game, and had some serious limits on model detail. I'll ask around and see if anyone has one though.

Hehe.. well, it's not nearly the same render quality, but I had some fun this weekend with textures.. I'll be posting this thing soon, it's finally almost done.. lost a lot of work in a hard drive malfunction, and had to redo most of the textures.

LOL... nah, I mean, the pieces literally don't exist. The thing weighs about 10 lbs, and there's no lego joint on earth that'd support the knees and hips. The legs are probably gonna have to be solid. Sad too, as the arms are super-posable.

I dunno, but every time legos come up, it makes me sad that the pieces don't exist to make this baby work....

Lol you think that's a reference.. you didn't see the one where Starfire randomly sprouted a very familiar looking growth from her forehead. I think that's the only episode I actually watched all of, hoping they would take it more the FLCL route, but alas, the horn was the extent of it. Other than that, I rarely have watched the show.

Something interesting to note about those tubes... The fronts of them aren't exposed in the original lineart, at least not in fighter mode. Hasegawa changed the lines of the forward fuselage when they made the model, and those tubes got uncovered. Where the model's lower fuselage has a thin fuselage around the front landing gear, with small flat portions to either side, the original fuselage was rounded all the way across, and covered the fronts of those tubes. So, they can't be guns, at least not in fighter mode.

Holy crap... TISINC wants $250 for a plain Roy -1S.. I've been happy with my -1J fastpack set, I just feel like I need Roy's as well.. not really for any reason other than for the Jolly Roger markings. Maybe I'll get a set of strike packs if I find one, but I just love the yellow-black scheme.

You know, given the nature of that pic, I wouldn't think it's really a spoiler. That look like it could be a maternity bed to anyone else? If that's considered a spoiler, I think we need to redefine the word spoiler, but I'll edit that out if anyone asks. Remember, non-spoiler here, if you've seen ROTJ.. Leia remembered her real mother somewhat. Memories kick in somewhere around age 2-3, I think, so unless they do a huge flash forward, that's not what it looks like. I could be entirely wrong, but I personally don't think there is enough to that picture to tell whether it's a spoiler or not. Just my opinion though, and keeping any possible spoilers separate is probably a good idea.

Yeah, they really REALLY need a new X-Wing game.. like, redone.. with graphics that look like X-Wings, not the hideous boxes and stuff. See, what's odd, is that the X-Wing series of books was based on the X-Wing games.. now, I want a game based on those books. They were just awesome. And a good storyline wouldn't hurt either. Do you know the last sim I played with a branching storyline? Wing Commander III. Yeah. the one with Mark Hamil from 10+ years ago. Somehow, the idea of a good story is lost upon the sim community. Of course, no X-Wing game will ever live up the my expectations.. I'm an X-Wing maniac at heart.. see, I'd want the IL-2 or CFS3 equivalent of X-Wing- complete with plotting hyperspace jumps manually, actual landing sequences (where you land manually), atmospheric missions, etc.. maybe giving support to ground troops? I dunno, I've got more model X-Wings than I can count, it's the only model I have more of than Tomcats. Oh yeah, and the graphics better look even better than this pic. If I can make that on my home PC, there's no reason they can't do better. The graphics in X-Wing Alliance blew chunks. Don't do that again, LucasFarts. Ok, yeah, so dreaming of X-Wing 4.0 over now...Back to your regularly scheduled topic. But I really hope they can come up with a good battle this time... I think what made the AOTC battle so unbelieveable was the fact that it was land based.. CG works better in space, I think.. you don't have to worry about the landscape, and can just go nuts with the craft details.

What's really kind of depressing about all the CG is that nothing seems believable anymore.. I mean, I get sick of the overuse of CG, when a man-made prop would more than suffice, and actually probably be more effective than a CG one, even if it's less glamorous and fantastic. Granted the robots would be hard to do.. but then again... the walkers in ESB were stop motion, and that worked fine. Yes, it's tedious. But it looks REAL. Same for the space battles. Real models have something about them that CG can't duplicate no matter how hard it tries.... plus, there's the invevitable copy-paste errors that become obvious in CG, ie, you see half a dozen droids with EXACTLY the same pattern of wear on them. Or, in the case of ANH, suddenly, every X-wing pilot got a duplicate of R2-D2. I'd take the entirely man-made battle in the original ROTJ over anything in the prequels... it was more hectic, more detailed, and better looking than anything I've yet seen with CG. Same can be said for sets... I dunno, I just tend to think of CG as a cheap way out of doing work that could end up looking better if a real model was used. LOTR is a perfect example of this... Minas Tirith was a handcrafted model, pasted into the landscape. And it blew the crap out of anything CG'd for Coruscant. Granted, CG troops are handy when you need hundreds of troops marching without hiring hundreds of extras... but then again, hey... LOTR did it. After seeing all the work that was put into LOTR, anything CG'd for EpIII is gonna look like a lousy cop-out by comparison. Now, I don't really know to what extent CG was used in LOTR, I'm assuming a great deal. But I think Lucas needs to take a lesson from Peter Jackson. Whatever LOTR did right with CG, the SW prequels have so far gotten wrong. CG should be like whipped cream.. a good topping to enhance the appearance and flavor, not the first and most important ingredient in everything you make. Without CG, LOTR would've still been doable, just on a much smaller scale. The prequels, on the other hand, wouldn't have a leg to stand on. K, sorry, ranting over now. Sheesh, I start typing like I'm talking, and before you know it I've written an essay.

Heheh... those raptors looked good to me, my tv has brightess problems so they were clear as day. Couldn't really tell if if they were super hornets, but I think I saw the outline of the rear stabs, and it looked angled. Most of what I could see was outline, but it was pretty distinct. But what really impressed me was what they did before that.. that had to be the best pre-game show I've ever seen, as well as the best performance of the national anthem I can remember hearing at any sports event in my life... the salute to the veterans really got to my family in particular. One of my grandfathers was with the group on Iwo Jima that they mentioned, and according to my mom, he may have been there to see it when the flag was raised.

I've got a blank sideview as well, if you want it. I did it the hard way though, I retraced the Hasegawa directions line by line. Lots more work.

You're right... it's ridiculous... considering that it's likely that neither plane was ever manufactured under the Boeing name, and it's very likely that no one who worked on those planes ever worked for Boeing at all. They probably all retired (or passed away) before Boeing even came into the picture. Half of me really wants to think this is all exaggerated ridiculously. The other half thinks this is a ploy by Grumman to recoup their losses on the Tomcat... think about it.. they went nearly bankrupt on that plane, because the contract for it was a fixed price-per-unit deal.. inflation nearly ruined em. Now that it's going out of service, and Tomcat memorabilia is sure to abound, they've gotta be dying for a piece of that action.