Proportions / Anatomy

MatX posted a very interesting article on his blog and I'm glad I read it.

As someone who's also dabbled in comic book art myself I'm very familiar with "anatomy" and "proportion" study.  I mean my other blog is almost all about anatomy.

Nobel ponders whilst holding the head of a Quel.

It may not be totally relevant to a lot of you but we do throw around words like; "posability" (which may or may not be a real word but I advocate that it should be henceforth) "proportion" and "articulation" in this hobby and a lot of that stems from our intuitive understanding of human anatomy.

Gundams are made in humans image (obviously) and it's hard to not notice that.  It might be one of the reasons why we like them so much.  Or why some prefer more non-humanoid, monster like mechs.

I guess that might be why I like the Nobel Gundam so much.  I always think of my Gundams as having "personalities" of their own after I build them but the Nobel Gundam's design allows it a certain level of "expression" that other Gundams just don't have.  It's for this reason that I will probably continue to feature her in many pictures for this blog.  She's just the best communicator in her class (1/144).

Of course her proportions aren't correct either (head to height is fine, as in human, but leg to torso is... haha) but this happens so often with women (models) that it's almost standard practice.  Models tend to have physical proportions that most normal females don't.  They'll even sometimes enlist the use of computers to assist in this... illusion.  I'll let you guess who "they" are.

MatX showed a good example of why we want better proportions in our mechs (at least in Gundams) occasionally. It actually affects the type of poses you can do with them.

Standard.

Modded.

Worth considering for future modders.

Beargguy LED Work... or perhaps LED work in general

From Gamera Baenre.  The Gunpla stuff is at the bottom of that link.

Like laser beams!

Honestly this guys LED work blows me away sometimes.  And he somehow switches it on with a magnet.  I've seen him do this before with his Gouf.  He was kind enough to put up a couple of tutorials and one of them deals specifically with LED work.

I actually bought some LED's a while ago just to test some of this stuff out and it didn't really work like how I'd hoped.  It could have been the fact that I didn't use a soldering iron.  Or maybe I messed up on the voltages/batteries or something but I could barely get a flicker out of my LED.

I've seen other guys like MatX, really blow their LED's up.  When I say that I mean they get a really bright, powerful light from them.  I want to do that too!

Look how strong that light is! Beautiful!

The only real LED experience I have (if you can even call it that) is working with PG's and with the GN Drive of the MG Exia (and even THAT one was pretty touchy).  I have 5 PG's all with LED's in their heads but all with dead batteries and/or weak LED power. I want some power damn it!  And I'm sure this isn't THAT hard to do...

I remember the first example I saw of this was when Danny Choo made a USB powered PG RX-178-2 Titans (back when he still did Gundam stuff... still feel kinda betrayed by what his site has become now but that guy is the reason I started blogging and he's done so ****ing well for himself.  I can't give him anything but props.)  

Damn I'm STILL jealous of that even so many years on!  Man that topcoat finish is just... damn...

It's just that... ugh... I need to study more I guess.  One day!  One day I swear you're going to see some amazing LED work from this blog!  I'm going to try!

Have any of you ever tried working with LED's?  Interested in trying?  I think I need to do this in order to take my modeling (and my general knowledge of basic modern technology) to the next level.

Finally I'm going to leave you with this video.  If you want to see the ULTIMATE combination of Gundam and LED work then just watch this!