No Love for Southern Cross?

[CoryHolmes]

8 hours ago, Podtastic said:

That's acid. Are you still going to buy a copy of the RPG?

It's going to have at least a little Bioroid vs Invid art in it.😉

 

Damn skippy I'm gonna buy the book!  I've gotten every single Robotech RPG book ever printed; Imma not gonna tap out now!

[Podtastic]

Some more of Francisco Etchart's art commissioned by Scott R. Taylor. 

Edited December 15, 2021 by Podtastic

[tekering]

Wow, that's a very interesting piece.  Thanks for sharing. 🙂

[Podtastic]

2 hours ago, tekering said:

Wow, that's a very interesting piece.  Thanks for sharing. 🙂

Its his second piece for his Savage Worlds campaign. Here's the accompanying story byte from which we can easily identify the names of the characters:

August 8th 2031; Northwest Wastes, Ghana Sector, Africa:

 Vitalli turned his Alpha sideways against the massive leg of the Mac II, blasting out rounds from his gunpod as an incoming shock trooper crested the hill.  His burst pierced the things armored carapace, and green fluid splashed upward in a gooey spray.
 Below his feet, Suvage, in only his Desert Squad armor, downed a scout with his sniper rifle.  The shot took the enemy in the sensor eye, and Prion, the Terminator, was attempting a less refined approach by hosing the ridge with his Tiresian carbine nearby.
 “What’s the status, Penelope?” Vitalli asked.
 The teen’s face appeared on one of his internal monitors, and she was smiling, even as sweat ran down her forehead.
 “Almost in position, and going for the lock now,” she replied.
 “Does Hatan have a laser targeting lock from the base?” the voice of Suvage broke into the line.
 “Roger that,” Sabine replied.
 “My micronian friends, this situation is very quickly becoming critical,” Illrum’s strange and modulated voice offered.  Even as the clone pilot said this, a new flight of scouts blazed in over a dune, their annihilation discs raining down close to the red bioroid’s position next to the Mac II’s other leg.  The former Robotech Master returned fire, his shots lighting the growing dark of early evening.
 I thought we’d have more time…
 “Lock in 10, 9, 8,” Fawn, their faux Muse and current Mac II officer, began the countdown.
 Somewhere beyond the gloomy horizon, the newly built Invid hive tower had to now be buzzing with activity, the brain scrambling more of the Regis’s children to confront the massive protoculture heat bloom that was the lumbering Mac II.  Below that structure, human slaves had already been working the flower of life farms for months, the pollen from the alien plant slowly poisoning them. 
 The meant Vitalli’s rebel cell was running out of time, and while he’d have given anything to save the huge destroid for a later attack, perhaps to help free the planet, the lives of the former Butler Base citizens wouldn’t last until Hunter’s return.
 More Invid shock troopers were cresting the hill to the west, and Vitalli opened the shoulder bay doors of his veritech, priming the missiles within.
 “6, 5, 4,” Fawn continued the count.
 “After you fire, get out of there!” Vitalli ordered.
 He said a prayer that Nhar, Hatan, Yeve, and the rest of the small strike team was already evacuating slaves from beneath the hive, because in about seven seconds it would be too late.
 Flipping the firing trigger, Vitalli initiated his attack, a handful of short range missiles rocketing away from his shoulders.
 Above him, the quadruple Viggers M-400 barrels let loose a salvo and the earth shook all around the area, some Invid spinning out of control that were too close to the unfettered blasts.  Twenty miles away, hell was about to rain on the hive, but now wasn’t the time to celebrate.  Vitalli still had to get his trio of pilots out of that monster, and then deploy their escape plan.  With any luck, the Invid would remain focused on the Mac II as the rest of the party fled, and it would be too late for their enemy once they realized the destroid’s engine had been wired to be a massive bomb.
 So was the task of the freedom fighter.  Attack and fade away, but at least it was something his team was getting very good at.

I'm hoping there's more to come.

Anyway its given me some ideas for my own piece. I think I might like to align the colour of my Tirolian energy blasts to look like what he has done here. Those annihilation discs already look like what I had in mind.

[jenius]

On 12/14/2021 at 12:55 PM, Podtastic said:

Some more of Francisco Etchart's art commissioned by Scott R. Taylor. 

That is super fun art and I love it. 

[Podtastic]

Some pics of Bioroid 3D prints posted by Ignacio Mendiburu Eliçabe on Artstation.

[tekering]

4 hours ago, Podtastic said:

See, this is why we're so lucky to have Captain America on our side.  The proportions on this thing remind me of an Inorganic...

[Podtastic]

34 minutes ago, tekering said:

remind me of an Inorganic...

I wouldn't mind getting an Odeon one day.

But the Hellcat is more interesting.

From their vid last night it looks MEP toy's Hellcat is coming along nicely, albeit the Scout and Shocktrooper had to be delayed to next tear to make necessary improvements.

Edited December 20, 2021 by Podtastic

[Convectuoso]

The anorexic Bioroid

[mechaban]

On 10/27/2021 at 4:10 AM, Podtastic said:

This KS has now reached over 10X the set goal.

Decided to chose a single page for art commission as well.🙂

And in other news, all Bioroids coloured by Steve Lyons: https://m.facebook.com/steven.lyons.735?groupid=1456468031274584&ref=m_notif&notif_t=feedback_reaction_generic

Oh hey, this is me.

[Podtastic]

6 hours ago, mechaban said:

Oh hey, this is me.

Excellent work sir.😊

[CoryHolmes]

Wow, wow, wow!  Not quite the image I had in mind if I could've bought one, but close enough!

 

I love seeing all 3 generations of mecha and forces get involved!

[captain america]

On 12/20/2021 at 4:12 AM, tekering said:

See, this is why we're so lucky to have Captain America on our side.  The proportions on this thing remind me of an Inorganic...

 

Which is ironic, because they "borrowed" a lot of design elements from my kits, and yet managed to do... That. 

[CoryHolmes]

43 minutes ago, captain america said:

Which is ironic, because they "borrowed" a lot of design elements from my kits, and yet managed to do... That. 

Which just proves to me how hard what you do is!  Anyone can model a mecha, but not just anyone can model it like it's supposed to be.

[Big s]

12 hours ago, captain america said:

Which is ironic, because they "borrowed" a lot of design elements from my kits, and yet managed to do... That. 

I kinda noticed that a while back. The knee joints and elbows and those hip armor parts  were kinda like how you designed your versions. I could see how someone might come up with the rest accidentally, but those other parts mentioned above are like a signature to how yours were made. Then they oddly enough didn’t copy the better proportions. I really did feel like these were a knock off of your hard work 

[pengbuzz]

18 hours ago, captain america said:

Which is ironic, because they "borrowed" a lot of design elements from my kits, and yet managed to do... That. 

They stole the design and still managed to screw it up. Cheap....

[davidwhangchoi]

https://www.cbr.com/southern-cross-robotech-season-flop/
Why Was Southern Cross' 'Robotech' Season Such a Flop?

[Podtastic]

2 hours ago, davidwhangchoi said:

Was Southern Cross' 'Robotech' Season Such a Flop?

"...a lack of Toys."

Say no more.

[Seto Kaiba]

4 hours ago, davidwhangchoi said:

https://www.cbr.com/southern-cross-robotech-season-flop/
Why Was Southern Cross' 'Robotech' Season Such a Flop?

Ech... perhaps because the author of this article seems to have single-sourced his research from a three year old YouTube video, they miss some pretty important points.

Most of what the article - and the YouTube video it's copying from - list are the symptoms of the underlying condition that ensured failure was the only option:  Southern Cross was a low-effort cash grab.  Tatsunoko Production wanted a piece of the booming real robot genre and they wanted to get it in a way that would let the monopolize the profits.  So they rushed the series through development, keeping costs down by recycling as much as they could from previously-rejected series concepts and having in-house staff do as much of the work as possible even if they lacked the necessary skills to do the work they were being assigned.  Naturally, what they ended up with was a complete mess so heavily and so transparently derivative of Gundam and Macross and so rife with bad ideas that it flopped miserably despite a great time slot and the popularity of the genre as a whole.

 

2 hours ago, Podtastic said:

"...a lack of Toys."

Say no more.

Oh my, no.

Southern Cross was a ratings disaster.  No amount of toys were going to pull the series out of that death spiral.

(Toys and such were delayed by the late freeze of production designs for the series, but most of the planned merchandise was ultimately cancelled precisely becuase the show's ratings weren't so much in the toilet as halfway to the wastewater treatment plant.  Toy and model kit companies decided it was less painful to take a loss on the license fee and move on than risk even greater losses rolling out product for a show nobody was watching.)

[Podtastic]

This assertion is just utter garbage.

Southern Cross having some outright horrid-looking giant robots. Given that it was, in fact, a mecha series, these unflattering designs  

[jenius]

Well, the vehicle called a Logan sure was uninspired...

[Seto Kaiba]

2 hours ago, Podtastic said:

This assertion is just utter garbage.

Southern Cross having some outright horrid-looking giant robots. Given that it was, in fact, a mecha series, these unflattering designs  

Far from it.

In fact, that Southern Cross's mechanical designs are so ugly and so obviously ill-conceived even in-setting is a VERY strong contender for the #1 complaint about the series thanks to the Robotech adaptation sparing its viewers from most of its "original" story.  The view that the Southern Cross mechanical designs were blatantly flawed and extremely unlovely was so widely held among Robotech fans during the franchise's brief renaissance in the early 2000s that it ascended to canonical status, with the official Robotech setting making it official that they were badly designed in-universe too.  They're held in such low esteem that the series that is easily responsible for 99.9% of Southern Cross's total viewers made them into hard evidence of corruption and incompetence on the part of the military operating them.

One of the most frequently revisited topics about the "Masters Saga" is how stupid the Spartas's design is, it being a frontline tank that inexplicably leaves its operator exposed to battlefield hazards from every side including the front (AKA "the end that faces the enemy and the direction of incoming fire") and that it seems to also be missing any means of keeping its operator from being violently and unintentionally ejected in the event of a crash.  The cheap shots, of course, are always taken at the Logan's robot mode being short and topheavy and the Auroran being a "space helicopter" despite the helicopter mode not actually being used in space.

[jenius]

I like the LOOK of the Auroran but, like the rest of Southern Cross, it felt clunky. Even in space mode it still looks like a futuristic helicopter so it's got that "three modes by slightly changing the second mode instead of three unique modes" thing going on for it and leaves the door wide open for that "helicopter in space" bashing. Following up on the use of the VF-1's guardian mode, the utility of an attack helicopter also felt greatly diminished and I'm not sure the show even features the Auroran operating in helicopter mode. IIRC, Robotech's butchering of the original show even has the Auroran fighting a few times before it is put into production. 

Didn't the humans also have some samurai bot destroids that just.... kinda did nothing?

The alien designs were derivative but I'd give them higher marks than the human ones. 

[Big s]

2 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Far from it.

In fact, that Southern Cross's mechanical designs are so ugly and so obviously ill-conceived even in-setting is a VERY strong contender for the #1 complaint about the series thanks to the Robotech adaptation sparing its viewers from most of its "original" story.  The view that the Southern Cross mechanical designs were blatantly flawed and extremely unlovely was so widely held among Robotech fans during the franchise's brief renaissance in the early 2000s that it ascended to canonical status, with the official Robotech setting making it official that they were badly designed in-universe too.  They're held in such low esteem that the series that is easily responsible for 99.9% of Southern Cross's total viewers made them into hard evidence of corruption and incompetence on the part of the military operating them.

One of the most frequently revisited topics about the "Masters Saga" is how stupid the Spartas's design is, it being a frontline tank that inexplicably leaves its operator exposed to battlefield hazards from every side including the front (AKA "the end that faces the enemy and the direction of incoming fire") and that it seems to also be missing any means of keeping its operator from being violently and unintentionally ejected in the event of a crash.  The cheap shots, of course, are always taken at the Logan's robot mode being short and topheavy and the Auroran being a "space helicopter" despite the helicopter mode not actually being used in space.

That’s why they wore absolutely awesome armor. Say what you will about the mecha, but the armor was beautiful even the ones the bad guys were wearing 

[captain america]

40 minutes ago, Big s said:

That’s why they wore absolutely awesome armor. Say what you will about the mecha, but the armor was beautiful even the ones the bad guys were wearing 

I actually think a lot of the Southern Cross mecha designs are nice. Most of them are an engineering nightmare, mostly due to the under-developed line-art, but still aesthetically pleasing. Except for the Logan, which I have unceremoniously dubbed the chode fighter. For obvious reasons.

[Seto Kaiba]

2 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

The Logan is a flying death-trap, with a cockpit guaranteed to kill its' pilot in 3 missions or less.

The horrible part is that this is basically canonical for both Robotech and the original Southern Cross.  Even the promotional materials for Southern Cross describe the Logan as an ineffectual, if not downright useless, fighter.

 

2 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

And the Auroran "space helicopter"? Unless you're playing "Learn 2 Fly" on Kongregate and get the Omegacopter, you ain't doing jack squat with a chopper in space!

That's why I took care to note that the Auroran's helicopter mode is not actually used in space at any point.

The Auroran's a spacefuture Sikorsky S-72 "X-Wing".  VTOL and low-altitude, low-speed flight like a heli.  High-altitude, high-speed flight like a jet.  In space, it does all its business in its jet or robot forms.  It's been a while since my last watch-thru of the series, but I don't recall the helicopter mode ever actually being used.

 

1 hour ago, jenius said:

Didn't the humans also have some samurai bot destroids that just.... kinda did nothing?

90% of the mechanical designs for this series just kinda did nothing... except run towards each other in the OP.  Most of them don't even appear in the animation proper, and all but a few were so minor they didn't even get named.

 

1 hour ago, jenius said:

The alien designs were derivative but I'd give them higher marks than the human ones. 

Part of me wants to be incredibly pedantic (business as usual) and note that since the Zor are mutated humans, there technically aren't any alien designs in the series...

But hey, shamelessly knocking off iconic designs that've remained iconic for over 40 years probably has higher odds of success than a semi-original design done by someone who really didn't have the design chops for transformables.

(If anything, I feel bad for Ammonite.  They were in so far over their heads on this one their feet were sticking out the other side.)

 

51 minutes ago, Big s said:

That’s why they wore absolutely awesome armor. Say what you will about the mecha, but the armor was beautiful even the ones the bad guys were wearing 

Would've been better if they'd just done Science Fiction Sengoku Saga and used all that armor in its original context where it could shine as a main design.

[Big s]

I kinda get the feeling that the mecha really was mainly designed for riots rather than all out war. Maybe since the planet was so far from earth and really seems to only have one major city, they didn’t worry about other nations or worlds that would start a war with them. The light Logan may have just been a patrol vehicle and spartas may not have worried about heavy protection in two of the modes since they didn’t expect much more than small arms fire. The personal armor probably was designed to take those shots and of need be it could transform into the more protective robot mode in case things got out of hand. The auron seemed to be developed out of necessity after realizing they needed more than just patrol and riot vehicles

[Seto Kaiba]

1 hour ago, pengbuzz said:

They could probably just remove the "helicopter" part then. It's pretty pointless (much like the series).

Presumably they had planned to make use of the helicopter mode later on in the story... the half of the story that never made it to production thanks to the show's cancellation.

 

1 hour ago, pengbuzz said:

So if we see a pair of feet sticking out of the ocean somewhere, that was the Southern Cross animation group?

Either that or I fell into another Dearborn pothole.

 

1 hour ago, pengbuzz said:

Evidence that half-measures and compromise usually don't work to make a good product.

There's acceptable kinds of process optimization and cost-cutting... and then there's what Tatsunoko did.

Of course, The Price of Smiles is kind of proof positive that Tatsunoko learned NOTHING in the thirty-five years since Southern Cross.

[Podtastic]

14 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Far from it.

In fact, that Southern Cross's mechanical designs are so ugly and so obviously ill-conceived even in-setting is a VERY strong contender for the #1 complaint about the series thanks to the Robotech adaptation sparing its viewers from most of its "original" story.  The view that the Southern Cross mechanical designs were blatantly flawed and extremely unlovely was so widely held among Robotech fans during the franchise's brief renaissance in the early 2000s that it ascended to canonical status, with the official Robotech setting making it official that they were badly designed in-universe too.  They're held in such low esteem that the series that is easily responsible for 99.9% of Southern Cross's total viewers made them into hard evidence of corruption and incompetence on the part of the military operating them.

One of the most frequently revisited topics about the "Masters Saga" is how stupid the Spartas's design is, it being a frontline tank that inexplicably leaves its operator exposed to battlefield hazards from every side including the front (AKA "the end that faces the enemy and the direction of incoming fire") and that it seems to also be missing any means of keeping its operator from being violently and unintentionally ejected in the event of a crash.  The cheap shots, of course, are always taken at the Logan's robot mode being short and topheavy and the Auroran being a "space helicopter" despite the helicopter mode not actually being used in space.

If its referring to the giant human made stuff, who cares? Although the Sylphid, the Auroran and the hovertank in vehicular mode look good (for human made designs).

The Bioroids are awesome though. And the Bioroid Assault Craft is my definite fave.

11 hours ago, Big s said:

That’s why they wore absolutely awesome armor. Say what you will about the mecha, but the armor was beautiful even the ones the bad guys were wearing 

True. I would certainly collect them if they made decent SC figures.

11 hours ago, captain america said:

actually think a lot of the Southern Cross mecha designs are nice. Most of them are an engineering nightmare, mostly due to the under-developed line-art, but still aesthetically pleasing. Except for the Logan, which I have unceremoniously dubbed the chode fighter. For obvious reasons.

I don't like the Logan either. It does seem to have fans though.

10 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

But hey, shamelessly knocking off iconic designs that've remained iconic for over 40 years

Well I like the Zaku. But its never been a must have like the Bioroids.

In fact, as much as I enjoy Gundam (if only Macross was more like it) I've never felt the need to pick up ANY of their mecha.

[Seto Kaiba]

7 hours ago, Podtastic said:

If its referring to the giant human made stuff, who cares?

You do realize that Southern Cross's story was about the human characters of the Southern Cross Army, right?

Who cared about the human mecha?  Almost nobody cared, and that was the problem that got the show cancelled.

If you're making a mecha anime series and your audience hates your main characters and finds your main character mecha designs hideously unappealing, you're screwed.

The one Japanese fan this show had is all about the Auroran.  Nobody gives a toss about the Bioroids.

 

7 hours ago, Podtastic said:

In fact, as much as I enjoy Gundam (if only Macross was more like it) I've never felt the need to pick up ANY of their mecha.

As we've noted, your tastes are more or less completely at odds with practically everyone's.

The things you dismiss so ready are usually the main selling points for a given series.

 

6 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

Oh, you mean the part where the story actually makes sense?

No, wait: that part was never in the story!

Now that's unfair.  The story of Southern Cross makes sense.  It's just incredibly derivative and badly executed.

 

6 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

Scuba-gear not included, from what I hear...

Journey to the Center of the Earth... whether you like it or not.

 

6 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

Yeah, there is. I consider half-measures and compromise to be the opposite: stuff done out of desperation and resignation.

I'd call that unfair.  Compromises can lead to highly desirable end results as long as everyone is working towards the same end.

Star Trek would've been an unwatchable mess if Gene Roddenberry hadn't been forced to compromise on his vision for it by D.C. Fontana, Gene Coon, and others.  Same for Star Wars and George Lucas.  

Southern Cross wasn't a victim of compromise, it was a victim of uncaring laziness.

[Seto Kaiba]

1 hour ago, pengbuzz said:

I think they compromised the whole thing by being lazy.

That much is probably fair... though the issues with the designs would probably fall more under "miserly" since they didn't want to hire an outside design studio and risk having to share profits from the series and ended up with the mess they got because the perfectly competent artists they had in-house just were not up to the extraordinary demands of an interesting and aesthetically pleasing transforming robot.

There's a reason so few series indulge in them as liberally as Macross... they are hard to design in general, and REALLY hard to make look good.  Designers who can pull that off reliably are a rare and valuable commodity.

[Big s]

I still gotta say that I would watch southern cross over the majority of the dull anime we get these days. In fact maybe I’ll start rewatching soon

[CoryHolmes]

My love for the Logan knows no bounds; partly fueled by the irrational hatred it gets from the internet!

 

In my head-canon, the Logan was designed exclusively to deal with the last few pockets of rogue Zentradi still around.  Given that their mecha are poorly maintained and very cheaply made, the Logan didn't need a lot of firepower.  It just needed speed and flexibility, which it had in spades while still being a relatively cheap mecha to produce.  Small, simple, and best suited for picking on targets that can't fight back as well.  It's just too bad that the Masters bioroids aren't as easily beaten

 

As for the Hovertank, I've head-canoned that as being put into production before all the fancy 3D cockpits (a la YF-19) were finished.  Much like how the F-35 got put into production before that helmet was finished.  As a major assault mecha on a hopefully peaceful planet, getting that last kink straightened out seemed like a "we'll get to it" thing.  Remember the REF was supposed to neutralize threats before they got to Earth.  Again, the Masters kinda screwed that plan up

 

To sum up: SUCK IT, HATERS!  I love these maligned designs and you can pry them from my cold, dead hands.

[CoryHolmes]

25 minutes ago, pengbuzz said:

You're fired.

[Podtastic]

17 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Nobody gives a toss about the Bioroids.

You actually mean the Japanese audience doesn't give a toss.

Globally your statement isn't true. Its still a minority, but its not "nobody."

17 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

You do realize that Southern Cross's story was about the human characters of the Southern Cross Army, right?

And so?

Star Wars was all about the Redemption of Anakin Skywalker and the defeat of the Galactic Empire by the Rebellion. That doesn't mean that the rebels have to be our favourites in the franchise.

But I get the gist. Sadly there's too much obsession with earth humans in all of sci-fi fandom. By this I don't just mean the stories, I mean even when it comes to merchandise. Even if the alien figure comes with really stylish armour and the human only has a dirty sweatshirt, they still want the human.

17 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

As we've noted, your tastes are more or less completely at odds with practically everyone's.

I'm happy not to be a clone.😆

17 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Southern Cross wasn't a victim of compromise, it was a victim of uncaring laziness.

And yet I still get a kick out of watching many of the combat scenes. I don't feel like I'm watching some bastard offspring of Biobooster Armour Guyver and Spartacus and the Sun Beneath the Sea, as I did when slogging painfully through M7.