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Destructor!!!

Member Since 28 Nov 2010
Offline Last Active Mar 19 2024 07:07 AM
*****

#98063 Here we go again... Playmates is back in the Trek business!

Posted by Destructor!!! on 15 October 2023 - 06:56 AM

The D disassembled for light blocking.

 

Nice one Alteran! A couple more things baffle me now:
 - there's no pressing need for the deflector to be so deformed. I thought maybe the internals of the stardrive forced it to be misshapen.

 - Why did they put so few window holes in the saucer? There's acres of empty space in there, they could have punched out a number of other windows to really boost the effect of the windows.

 

How difficult was it to disassemble Alteran? The '90s one was glued and snapped up the wing-wang, it was a blood-curdling experience to take it apart.

 

A couple of YT reviews are up:
 

 




#98053 Here we go again... Playmates is back in the Trek business!

Posted by Destructor!!! on 06 October 2023 - 05:28 AM

And the phaser array is found by the Veridian IV natives in a couple of centuries, leading to a hybridisation of them and the phaser array, leading to the techno-tentacle monsters from the future or whatever at the end of season 1 of Picard!

Well done Bgiles! You've rescued season 1 from the crap pile!




#98016 Here we go again... Playmates is back in the Trek business!

Posted by Destructor!!! on 26 September 2023 - 06:13 PM

We have box images!
 
81D8pLirVBL._AC_SL1500_.jpg
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LOL at the tag saying "Linear Phaser Array" pointing at nothing.
 
It looks like I may have been wrong about the wonky deflector being a photoshop snafu. And while the play buttons are rectangular on the prototype inside the box versus round on the one from the previous photos, you can see that the one in the box has no main impulse engine either.
 
Gods, this is such a swing and a miss for me. People on Twitter seem to like it though.

EDIT:

Oh, forgot to say, I got those images from the Amazon listing, where it's up for pre-order.

 

EDIT EDIT: Aaaaaaand, it's out of stock.




#97991 Here we go again... Playmates is back in the Trek business!

Posted by Destructor!!! on 08 August 2023 - 02:48 PM

 

Another update with some more angles. It looks like this prototype is only partially painted, as the phaser array on the upper saucer is present and painted an incorrect brownish red colour.

 

Once again, a baffling combination of great and poor sculpt details. Really weird. As the guys point out in the video there, the windows that are accessible to the paint tooling are painted on, but the ones that are not are sculpted... a weird combo.

 

The main impulse engine on the secondary hull is missing, but it looks like there's a slot and tab there for it to slot into. No indication of a light or wiring channel though, so I wouldn't expect it to light up.

 

Now, the elephant in the room - that saucer-separation feature. This may be the ugliest implementation I've ever seen. The secondary hull head has no detail and is the wrong shape, but the saucer is what really suffers. Those pegs break the sillhouette badly. Nobody is going to display this separated with them sticking out, and kids playing with it will snap them day-one...

 

Images via Toy News International:

 

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TNG-Enterprise%203__scaled_800.jpg

 

That shot with the hand makes this thing look MASSIVE, bigger than the huge DST-D. Man, those buttons are chunky. They were an eyesore on the TOS ship and they are here too. Also the secondary hull rim shows evidence of mould shortcomings and totally lacks the lateral sensor strips.

 

Ok, positives: There's a ton more sculpt detail and shape accuracy on the neck and aft torpedo launcher raceway than on the '93 release. The indistinct details on the underside of the nacelle pylon fantail from the earlier image are clearer here, and again the sculpt detail is good. I see transporter emitters and phaser arrays present and correct.

 

If PM can clean up the deflector, find the inserts for the lower saucer phaser array and the main impulse engine, and massively overhaul the paint app, this could be a handsome (if slightly "chonk") rendition of the Big D. I don't think there's any fixing that separation feature at this point though...




#97971 Here we go again... Playmates is back in the Trek business!

Posted by Destructor!!! on 02 August 2023 - 11:19 AM

The villain ship from a 1982 film (even a classic) is probably quite a hard sell to retailers, who by-and-large are filthy, disgusting casuals.

 

But a Cerritos, that Protostar they're probably not going to make now, a Discovery I wouldn't buy, or even a SNW Enterprise would be the obvious money makers. "Sell the thing from the currently active property!" they can say to the drooling, nose-picking retailers.

 

That said, I do wish DST would take their finger out of their arses and get their Reliant out the door. Given the style and finish of the new PM ships line, I doubt there are any ships I'd really want from them.




#97965 Here we go again... Playmates is back in the Trek business!

Posted by Destructor!!! on 01 August 2023 - 03:57 PM

The communicator is, like the phaser last year, a retool or recreation of the original sculpt from the 90's line - or they're just using a picture of that one as a placeholder.

The D is a brand new sculpt. There's a nice hi-res image of it on Playmates' site.


home_StarTrek_NextGenEnterprise_ver2-608

To be honest, I kind of hated it at first glance. On closer inspection, this is (I hope) an early prototype.

- The dish part of the deflector looks photoshopped in - there's even a blemish where a clone tool went awry, and the perspective is wonky on the dish - which actually throws the whole model off.

- The deflector is (once again) seemingly unlit. This was a simple mod to do to my own 1993 PM D, so I can't fathom why they left it out of the new design.

- Similarly, the saucer impulse engines seem to once again be cast in translucent red plastic. This was silly on the '93 D, and it's silly here.

- There are no phaser strips on the primary hull. This might be a good idea, though - the line of screws are where the phaser strip should be. Maybe they intend to attach a separate moulding of a phaser strip as an integrated screw-holes-cover. That could even be cast in phaser strip coloured plastic. That said, if they intend to do that, it should have been in place for the promo image.

- More worryingly, the photon torpedo launch bay and umbilical docking port cut-in is missing. It's the dark recessed strip just above the deflector at the narrowest point of the neck. It's not something you can plant on later, as it's a negative space in the hull. Its omission from the sculpt at this point - especially with the apparent maturity of the sculpt in other areas - is very concerning.

- The paint job... or lack thereof. There are phaser strips on the secondary hull, but they're not super apparent because they're unpainted. Unfortunately, that tracks: The paintjob on the TOS Enterprise was patchy, gawdy, and very lacking. This ship line seems to have a weird Fischer Price vibe that I'm really not ok with. I realise it's likely not the final paint design, and things are probably going to change.

Overall, the fact that they released this as the promo image smacks of a lack of care or of some level of incompetence at least in the marketing department. I could easily do a better job on photoshopping the deflector's dish on there. It looks like an amateur with no real image manipulation experience did it.

 

In fact, I spent an hour in photoshop and made this:

 

kTfrl28.jpg

 

The phaser arrays being painted (and included on the saucer) and the deflector being lit and properly proportioned, and the torpedo bay being included allow me to appraise what is, overall, a pretty good sculpt. There's a lot of nice detail. Some strange seration on the lifeboat hatches, but whatever.




#97692 Here we go again... Playmates is back in the Trek business!

Posted by Destructor!!! on 08 September 2022 - 07:23 PM

Found this spin-video of the Enterprise:

 

Uh... looks like a pile of junk to me, honestly. Wonky nacelles, awful sculpt and paint choices, obtrusive buttons, and am I seeing transparent plastic on the impulse deck?!

 

Just dreadful. In the day and age when we have super-high-res reference material provided by the Smithsonian, there's no excuse for this ugly mess. Even if accuracy isn't high on your agenda, this is just an unattractive object.

 

Compared to the '90s version, the new one looks incredibly bad. Here's the '90s version for comparison:




#97689 Here we go again... Playmates is back in the Trek business!

Posted by Destructor!!! on 29 August 2022 - 06:09 PM

I feel like Discovery was the enabler of this whole new swathe of Star Trek content, but it's so bad everything else tries to distance itself from it.




#97684 Here we go again... Playmates is back in the Trek business!

Posted by Destructor!!! on 28 August 2022 - 07:23 PM

Updated the mockup in the previous post because I kept working on it because why?!?

Also made a wallpaper version of the background image because I think it's pretty!

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#97680 Here we go again... Playmates is back in the Trek business!

Posted by Destructor!!! on 26 August 2022 - 08:31 PM

I mocked up a modern version of the same idea because I wanted to.

Older version
k8SXXGf.jpg

 




#97617 WIP USS Defiant 3D-print build.

Posted by Destructor!!! on 24 May 2022 - 07:28 AM

LHIvOAO.png

 

I printed up the dark blue paint masks for the top hull.

 

 

jLjMi80.png

 

Unfortunately, even where they conform well to this model's hull, the definition isn't what I would have liked.

 

 

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The aft end cloudiness is to be expected given the changes to the source files since this prototype was printed (a friggin' YEAR ago!?), but the forward end has had minimal changes, so the mask conforms well. It seems you just can't match the precision of tape, which is sad because I had hoped to avoid all the tape-fu necessary for the hull markings with the printed masks.

 

bzH2BNg.png

 

 

The colour choice for the dark blue looks pretty spot on in these photos, I think, but in person it seems a touch too dark and bold. You be the judge please.

 

EDIT: Actually, I think the dark blue is quite right for the nacelles, but the majority of the dark blue panels are a bit lighter than that.




#97574 WIP USS Defiant 3D-print build.

Posted by Destructor!!! on 17 March 2022 - 05:38 PM

FOeryjY.png

 

The weather is a little better here now, so painting time!

I thought I had a better match for the hull colour, but it has come out looking a little too warm. This only really became apparent to me after I masked and sprayed the light-blue hull segments. I've been dithering, but I think I will wash these layers back and try to find a slighty darker light grey than I used first time (see several posts ago) and start again.

 

lqlMnRn.jpg

 

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In spite of the off-ness of the base colour, I had to see how she looked with the new panels painted and the lights on. Overall, I'm pleased - but d'oh! I forgot to primer the nose and bridge pieces and I neglected to update the hull colour on the torpedo launcher chevrons - although that last part is a positive now that I'm aiming to go back to a more monochrome base colour - one less layer of paint to kill the light bleed.




#97435 Here we go again... Playmates is back in the Trek business!

Posted by Destructor!!! on 02 January 2022 - 12:06 PM

I think the DST BOP might be at least partially based on AMT molds - the torpedo launcher is missing the little greebly pod thing (which in TSFS I think actually *was* the torpedo) and there's a mounting hole for it. I suspect if I were to source that pod part from an AMT model it would fit.

 

I have practically no source for this theory aside from a size comparison I remember seeing where the scale and detailing matched up well. Even if it is so, obviously the wings and guns are very different.




#97385 WIP USS Defiant 3D-print build.

Posted by Destructor!!! on 02 October 2021 - 11:01 AM

I have wired up the FX lighting. Remember some of these will be painted over the reduce the light bleed. This is Quantum Torpedoes - it turned out incredibly bright.

 

oMQtNUI.png

 

This is Photon Torpedoes.

NtjtpQM.png

I may remove the resistors on these LEDs, or replace them with weaker resistors as these are quite dim compared to the Quantums. That said, the photo makes it look worse than it is.

 

I struggled to get a decent picture of the Pulse Phasers firing, so this will have to do.

1kUbRky.png

I would like them to be brighter, but they're working nicely. Threading the fibre optic filaments down the conduits I printed for them was pretty difficult, especially for the lower pair as they're quite embedded below the "deck" of the interior, and the conduit has to snake around a little. The print tolerance was also a bit tight, so I had to stick a pin in and wiggle to loosen the passage a bit or the fibre optic would not fit.
The cannon snapped off one of them in the process, but I was able to thread it along the fibre optic line and glue it back on like nothing happened.

 

Nazt5ke.png

 

I was feeling so satisfied with my fibre optic running lights on the nacelles. Then I remembered they're supposed to be red and green for port and starboard!

D'oh! I guess I'll see if just markering them after they're snipped does the job.

 

Anyway, I have procrastinated on doing the audio board and am working on painting. I have been held up by no-doubt-Brexit-related supplier delays. I'm waiting on a pair of new Airbrushes from England. I came up with the idea of 3D printing the paint masks for them, so I'm carving out the various hull markings into extruded plant-ons that should limit the various colours to their rightful locations... given a bit of skill in the paint app... hmmm...

 

Impatient, I primed the upper shell and hit it with some metallic spray paint. That didn't look right at all, so I hit that with white, which also looks wrong. When the airbrushes arrive, I'll see what I can do to walk it back.

 

Do you guys have any advice on paint colours/techniques to use?




#97371 WIP USS Defiant 3D-print build.

Posted by Destructor!!! on 10 September 2021 - 10:57 PM

Great work Dilithium1! I particularly love the mechanical element to it. You should make your own thread, go into detail about the design and thought processes behind it - I'd be fascinated to read it.
 
As for me, I have fit-checked the other chips. The blinker chip has been in place for a while and aside from some overzealous clips, it fit perfectly. The Sound FX chip and the amplifier chip didn't sit as well, so I had to take a hot soldering iron to the plastic to fit them. They're snug now.
sMcOhQH.png
 
If you look closely, you can see fiber optic filaments running from the forward window LEDs to the outer wall of the nacelles, where they power formation lights.
 
W7GslUn.png
 
 
The previously forgotton plasma vent LEDs are present and illuminated now. You can see the fibre optic filaments sticking out of the nacelle. They'll be trimmed down once the paint job is complete. I also have a filament running out of the nose blinker, top and bottom, as the effect wasn't quite right there with just the light pipe. Incidentally, it's quite obvious where I re-used the forward plasma vent button on the starboard side from my test print: that was a different batch of printer filament, and boy does it transmit light differently!
 
uP7mn2Z.png
 
With the flash off, you can see how well the light transmits through the fibre optics (the blinkies are between blinks right now).

Tried to wire up the buttons, but I ordered 18 AWG wire thinking it would be thinner than the 22 AWG wire I have... the AWG scale is fookin' bass-ackwards. 18 AWG is thick and stiff. (no jokes, please)
Apparently, the AWG scale is based on how many passes through the stretching machine the wire does, getting thinner each time. Frakking dumb scale imho. Just gimme the diameter in mm, ya phoox.