Ghost Train

Recalibrating thread .... standby .... we get signal!

Yea, adding a layer of flat makes it much more appealing to the eye. In the case of the zaku though, I actually primed the gray parts, and also sprayed it with gray. I have yet to add a layer of flat onto this kit though.

I don't have a set system, but if I were to describe it: I normally build / paint subcomponents (head, torso, etc) as they are assembled. After a test-fit, if I feel I'm ready to paint, then I start airbrushing .So yea, I guess I paint as I build. The one thing I never do is paint straight on a runner, after you clip out the piece there will inevitably be missed spots, and touch-ups. ... Some super-skilled people with really good masking skills can literally build the whole thing and paint it right on the spot. I have yet to achieve that skill level.

The elite-Zaku takes shape:

I admit that there was probably some plan to make a coherent story. Now, don't get me wrong - I loved the original series, and in my rebellious teenage youth thought that the rampant usage of "religious" symbolism was kind of cool. As a consumer of average intelligence (master's degree, 3.8 GPA through college, 1310 SAT(old system) ... yea I have to mention this, cuz the next statement is going to be: u r dumb), I can't be blamed for not making sense of something that wasn't strung together in a logical enough manner to make sense. If you ask 5 people who have payed attention and watched the series over 20 times, each one will give you a different interpretation of the story... it is not possible to come up with 1 coherent explanation for everything as: 1) many elements were left purposely vague (i.e. to the "viewer's imagination"), and 2) they tried to do too much. Thus there is more then one interpretation of what's going on.

Well I didn't say it wasn't pervasive (nor that it is a bad thing) lol. /goes to undust figures.

what we dont do know wont affect us what we do know will affect us

I just got my Shin Matsunaga Zaku Custom yesterday... man, this box is fraking huge for a MG. I almost thought they sent me a PG 00 by accident. Pics in due time

For the original Eva series I don't feel there was a "point to get." Rather it was just a mix of pseudo-science, religion, and politics strung together with the crazy glue that is mass merchandising. (I have yet to see the Rebuild movies )

Gosh, all these hot chicks wanting to ride the YF-21? Don't they know that Guld is a convicted raepist?

I wish one day they reissue the Cobra Hurricane VTOL... it's an unful-filled childhood dream . There are always a few on e-bay, but either in horrible shape or costing an arm/leg (mostly what has stopped me is the poor condition).

They probably didn't need a whole jet to do it >_> . The final-boss of Season 2 was also a twin-drive unit and it didn't need a huge thing hanging from its back (well it did have stuff on the back, but not a jet ). Also... I was planning on getting the PG-OO for the holidays, but I think I've burned out from wanting to buy it by the insane proliferation of images on the web....

Titanic would have been better, if at the end there was this alien invasion, and Earth's top scientists secretly modified the wreck of the Titanic and have it fly into space and put some huge guns on it. Space Battle Ship Titanic raunch! .... It is powered by the old lady's magic amulet.

... And that's why I liek Sheryl more than Ranka!!!!

Now that it's been out for a while... can someone comment on the stability (floppiness, etc) of the YF-19 on battroid mode?

I thought Titanic was a decent flick .... /runs away from angry mob As for Avatar, I'm actually quite impressed by the CG quality in the previews. We've come a long way in the photo-realistic category since Final Fantasy: Spirits Within.

I would love to elaborate . Basically, quality-science is based on high-school statistics. So a picture is worth a thousand words: Machines, humans, and whatever manufacturing tools are used are not perfect - no 2 parts ever produced are exactly the same. The point is to keep these minor differences as small as possible and within an Upper & Lower Control Limit (Note that this is not the same as a Specification Limit). A SL is what the design says it is, a CL is your own "quality" standard of what the upper & lower bounds should be. So, anyways back to the graph, basically we can think of most manufacturing processes as being normally distributed (bell-curve), there are some weird instances where normal distribution need not apply, but 99% of all situations are normally distributed. The center (Mu) is the target. Say you want a part to be 150mm in length - which is Mu. Since machines / people aren't perfect, you will get a batch that is relatively close to 150mm, some might be 150.2mm, and gasp... you have one piece of crap that's 153mm. The rejection regions falls on either tail end of the curve. If you have low-standards, and your quality is defined as: -At +1 sigma (1 standard deviation away from mean), that means that a good 32% of your parts might be defective. -At +2 sigma (2 standard deviations), you have a defect rate of about 5%. Better, but still bad, 5 defects out of 100 units. -At +3 sigma (3 standard deviations), you have a defect rate of 0.26%. The vast majority of organizations are at this level. -At +6 sigma (6 standard deviations), you have a really really low rate (lol too lazy to look up exact %). Basically, you shift the bell curve to the right or left by 1.5 sigma to simulate some sort of environmental change (machine wear, employee training, 2012 cataclysm, zombies), and even with a shift, you still have 3.4 defects per million parts... then your organization is top-notch. Note that 6 sigma without a 1.5 shift is lower than 3.4 ppm... 3.4 is kind of like a "worse case scenario". It's really a percentage, even if you don't make 1,000,000 units you can still scale it appropriately to see where it falls. The point is that it's REALLY HARD to keep up a high standard. Even Toyota, long time quality gurus, are showing dents in their armor now they have displaced GM as the #1 automaker. The point about the guy sneezing in the antartic was really hyperbolic. What I meant was that there are just a lot of factors a company cannot control - Humidity / Temperature greatly affect a machine's performance, Stress / Emotions affect a human worker's performance, etc. In the case of Yamato, I used to think that they didn't give 2 cents about QA, but the current track record of valkyries (at least anecdotally) makes me think that I might have been wrong. Fanboys are no longer willing to eat up anything that looks "accurate" even if it's as fragile as a twig.

I have an ancient (3.5 years old) HP Pavilion dv2000. The surface is pretty badly scratched and "weathered," but still works like a charm. I take it everywhere and it has its good share of bumps, bruises, and accidental "kicks." Have had some performance problems lately, but that might coincide with the fact that it's running Vista and I have yet to upgrade. My next laptop will probably be a HP as well .

To add some "intellectual content" to this thread (which is seemingly about nothing). I'm taking a Total Quality Management course this semester and I was really tempted to write my term paper on "The Exploding Shoulder: Why Grown Men like valkyries." I have a greater respect now for anything that's mass-produced in any sort of factory because maintaining something at a specific quality standard - with 6 sigma deviation being the goal everyone wants (that's 3.4 defects per million.... lol Yamato has a bit ways to go ) - is truly a difficult undertaking. We're learning about Taguchi's Loss Function and Signal to Noise Ratio in manufacturing now, and basically in any sort of shop environment there will always be X amount of factors you cannot control "the noise." The idea is to create your product design and processes in a way to minimize the impact of the "noise." When your stated purpose is to create something that looks artistically beautiful on a CG, this can be somewhat challenging. Random variation is a nature of life. Even the butterfly effect can come into play. A guy sneezing in a remote observation post in Antartica can cause your valkyrie to magically implode.

Ultimate low-vis JP paint scheme concept:

William Wallace can do a 25 kill streak by one circular swing of that massive Claymore. And his tactical-operator callsign will be Whiskey-Whiskey.

Punctuation.... please >_<

Unfortunately no... Penerope:

I have this kit on the way: Been wanting to get it for over a year but kept postponing it. Hope it arrives before thanksgiving break so I can work on it over the vacation in between turkey.