Bandai release schedule

Not really a model kit but if you're into customizing toys the scale may be up your alley

1/72 AT-AT Multi-Stand + Snowspeeder

http://p-bandai.jp/item/item-1000106276/

atat.png
 
Toadmeister said:
...I've also been modeling for decades and yes I did most the old MPC kits in the day. With some sweat they can turn out OK. But Bandai blows them out of the water...
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The MPC/AMT/Ertl Star Wars kits had one major advantage over the Fine Molds and Bandai kits--they forced you to improve your modeling skills if you wanted the end results to look like the filming models. Learning how to assemble ill-fitting parts, puttying, sanding, correcting details, scratch building from raw stock...well, you get the idea. I like a well engineered kit as much as anyone else, but Bandai is almost making it too easy to build their kits. I'm sure there are "beginner" modelers out there who are happy to have kits molded in different colors that they can snap together and have something that's a damn good replication of what they see on-screen, but they aren't learning much about building models by doing that.
 
Well, I kinda agree. I have a similar MPC/Airfix history, but my skills + a lack of reference material never got me models that looked close enough to the filming models for my taste. With the Fine Molds and Bandai kits I became much happier with my end results. Sure the learning and toiling away is the hobby too, but Youtube made the learning a lot easier too. I only got an airbrush a couple of years ago, and YouTube tutorials made learning how to use it for great results a breeze. So for people who get into this hobby now, if they want to there are so many resources available (like the RPF) that you can learn so much from other fans and get up to speed quickly. Just different times I guess.
 
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I agree totally @ Zombie_61,...I've been building kits since I was a kid,....had all the MPC kits way back then,...Remember walking through Belfast after buying the Millennium Falcon from Leisure World,....going to have lunch & having to put that huge box under the table.....that would be the first of about 5 attempts at that kit

I got back into modelling when my two kids grew up a bit.....thats when I joined up here....The kit I was building was the MPC Falcon......Lots of serious modifications,....what a joy,....problem solving,...moulding & casting.....scratch building etc

When Bandai eventually released the 1/144 TFA Falcon after loads of beautiful, accurate X,Y, AT-ST's etc,.....it really dismayed me that folks here, on YouTube, & Facebook were dissatisfied, saying that Bandai had dropped the ball with this kit because of some inaccuracies, prompting the need for 3d printed parts to fix this kit

It's a great time to be a Star Wars model builder

J
 
Zombie_61 said:
The MPC/AMT/Ertl Star Wars kits had one major advantage over the Fine Molds and Bandai kits--they forced you to improve your modeling skills if you wanted the end results to look like the filming models. Learning how to assemble ill-fitting parts, puttying, sanding, correcting details, scratch building from raw stock...well, you get the idea. I like a well engineered kit as much as anyone else, but Bandai is almost making it too easy to build their kits. I'm sure there are "beginner" modelers out there who are happy to have kits molded in different colors that they can snap together and have something that's a damn good replication of what they see on-screen, but they aren't learning much about building models by doing that.
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6/10 "Back in my day" rant. Young wipper-snappers have it too easy.

Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk
 
While I see the point, and in some ways agree with it, I think the opposite can also be true: Bandai's more accurate kits are improving people's skills as much, if not more, than having to wrestle with inaccurate kits. Like Jaitea, I got a MPC Falcon kit back in 1979 and have attempted to build subsequent purchases of the kit five or so times since them. I never finished any of them. Trying to make that model screen accurate was an exercise in futility. There's just so much to fix, so much to toss out and re-make from scratch that inevitably I'd get frustrated and move on to something else. It's like that dream where you're running toward something in the distance and you never seem to get any closer. Building Bandai's PG, however, allowed me to move past the major surgery and scratch building part and actually focus on making the model screen accurate. I've been able to look at every hull plate, every greeblie, and make it look as close to the original as possible. Painting has always been my Achilles Heel when it comes to modeling, but making the PG has improved my skills more than anything I've done in 30 years. Thanks to guys like Lab and dozens others, I've made several changes that bring the model even closer to perfect. I've made modifications (of course) of my choosing rather than because the kit was wildly wrong. Instead of spending my time fixing other people's mistakes, I'm transforming the kit according to my whims and desires. It's creativity born of excitement rather than ongoing frustration. And the bonus is that I now actually have FINISHED kits that look like the subject intended. That is immensely satisfying. So am I nostalgic for the old MPC kits? Nope. Not even a little. I want to move on.
 
In my Other Life I build 1/48 aircraft, usually less common subjects and kits that aren't shake 'n' bake. Add chronic AMS (aftermarket syndrome), and my ac builds are usually ridiculously epic year-long wrestling matches.

Bandai SW kits are a blissful break from all that madness, where I can just concentrate on how dirty I want the ship to look, and not if the fuselage halves will go together without ten different steps appearing in the seams. I love 'em.
 
I love the fact that Bandai kits appeal to a huge market. They evangelize the hobby at different levels. And I think it's in part where the American makers failed.

Obviously a big reason that the US commercial kit makers have basically all died is because of demographic changes, and the way US kids are instructed that making models is uncool. That's not the case in Asia. In recent years that may have changed a bit, with the rise of the "maker" movement and the huge business for geeks that is ComiCon. But it's too late for mass market American model kits.

Anyway. The fact that the US-made kits tended to be such garbage in terms of accuracy and quality of design and manufacture dooms them to the kids market only. Whereas Bandai sells Star Wars kits successfully to a wide range of interests and skill sets. If you're a child starting out, then snap-together is easy! If you're learning how to paint and improve your kit, then you've got a simple thing to start with. If you're an older model-maker then you have the satisfaction of producing a kit that's surprisingly accurate to the original prototype. And if you're advanced then you've got a great starting point for making a truly perfect model.

Sure, there's tough guy appeal to rebuilding 1/3 of the hopelessly inaccurate MPC Falcon and ending up with something that's pretty good looking. Or rebuilding the thick wedding-cake slab of a Revell Falcon. That's totally awesome if that's your thing, and I respect people who want to do it. But how many people are going to want to? Dozens maybe. Compare that to the sales of Bandai's kits!
 
Yes, love the Bandai that I can concentrate on the painting, weathering and finish instead of fixing things.
Attirex said:
In my Other Life I build 1/48 aircraft, usually less common subjects and kits that aren't shake 'n' bake. Add chronic AMS (aftermarket syndrome), and my ac builds are usually ridiculously epic year-long wrestling matches.

Bandai SW kits are a blissful break from all that madness, where I can just concentrate on how dirty I want the ship to look, and not if the fuselage halves will go together without ten different steps appearing in the seams. I love 'em.
Click to expand...

Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk
 
IMO it was a lot less stressful to build models before the Internet. When you got a model kit you just sort of assumed it was accurate since, by golly, a real big company made it for us. The only references were Starlog and a few 'technical manuals', sometimes some Bubblegum cards. I had no idea how terrible the kits were
- that the B-C deck of the Enterprise was wonky or the X-Wing had poor proportions. If fitting parts was just part of the building since just about all kits were that way.

I still consider today to be the golden age of model building. There continues to be released grail kits, there multiple scales of a lot of popular kits and between the aftermarket and Shapeways you can enhance any kit to insane levels. The Internet provides both references and experiences by others you can use to guide your projects and there is always that wonderful Japanese kid who shows the world the impossible.

It was simple and fun "in the old days" but I much prefer the 21st century golden age myself...
 
There is also the point that as model artists -- and we should consider ourselves artists -- we should want the hobby/artform to advance. Materials should improve, quality should improve, accuracy should improve -- the art should move forward. Because when it does, it's not like we reach a brick wall of creativity that cannot be surpassed. We move forward into unexplored realms of the art. 3D printing is just one example. It's a new new tool that has inspired artists who might otherwise turn to different outlets of expression. Right now, I'm working on the Moebius Discovery. It's a good, fun kit, but it only takes a cursory look at reference photos to realize the details on the command sphere are wrong. Panel lines are in the wrong places, it adds detail where it shouldn't be and omits it where it should be. When they were making the patterns, they surely had references. It took me all of 15 minutes to find mine on the Internet. Yet, many of the details are just sort of randomly thrown on in a "it's close enough" fashion. Now, I never expected a 100% faithful kit, or Bandai-level quality. But with the references easily available to anyone, it's just as easy to mold a panel line in the right place as it is to put it in the wrong place. It just takes trying. So instead of spending time focusing on the paint job, I'm filling and re-scribing panel lines. I don't want to spend time fixing mistakes, carelessness, or indifference.
 
See, for me, the Bandai kits are still just an ever-nicer foundation to work from. I still get the Green Strawberry PE sets (not all elements of which I use), I painstakingly and with much cussing recreate those details neither of those adequately capture, and there's no end of more-obscure subjects that haven't been tackled yet (if they ever will). I've got the conversion kit and have nearly finished turning one of my Bandai TIEs into the droid fighter. I found a lovely second life for my FM TIE Interceptor (unfinished as I worked on superdetailing the cockpit) wings and wing panels, drastically re-cut, and with scratch-built mounts, as the winglets on the Royal Guard TIE Interceptor from Galaxies. I took the cockpit cone, corridor, back wall, floor, and pilots' seats from my cutaway Falcon and the unused clear-plastic viewport from that droid fighter conversion and they're (with alterations already underway) forming the basis for my TIE Sentinel build (aka the non-cloaked base for the Phantom project).

I kinda feel like, because I have to spend less time fighting to get things to just fit, correcting soft/wrong/inadequate detail everywhere, etc., I can spend that time and effort, rather than getting a travesty up to acceptable, getting something that's actually decent stock up to gorgeous. And I agree with the sentiments a page back: I still have all my old Star Wars toys, going back to my 1978 Kenner action figures (alas, only fifteen of the original twenty, plus the very-non-rocket-firing Boba Fett I mailed away for), and I still collect the Republic/Imperial forces, Mandalorians, and astromechs.

...But all that's largely just an exercise in nostalgia. Up until recently, the only Star Wars models I had were the old MPC Falcon and X-Wing, the Snowspeeder, Slave I, and the ROTJ snap-kits of the TIE Interceptor, X-Wing, A-Wing, and B-Wing (was never able to find the Y-Wing locally). I've been drastically inspired by jake88's build of that Slave I and have busted ageing glue joints to have a newer go at it. The Snowspeeder got re-purposed as a Space Marine hover-tank back in the First Edition of 40K. And all the others ended up getting cannibalized for parts -- I was just never satisfied with them as their subject matter, past the initial rush when you open the box. FineMolds' offerings were nice, but after getting the TIE Interceptor, I couldn't shake the feeling that there were... issues. Others have since enumerated them, so I don't need to here. But Bandai, now... I'm excited and inspired in ways I haven't been with any Star Wars kits prior.

It's funny. On the one hand, I'm seeing everyone posting their wish lists, and I'm like, "Guys -- they just released that 1:72 B-Wing you/we have been clamoring for... A little gratitude? Impatient much?" But at the same time, I recognize the excitement of having truly quality kits to work with for largely the first time ever (barring some high-end and seriously $$$ offerings), and it's like a dam has broken -- yes, this is awesome, now we want more.
 
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Agreed, for the most part. I've loved kits all my life. Back in 1980, I made a four foot Stardestroyer (I was 13!) in my garden shed. It was terrible. (I'll post post pictures!). I've been back in the game because of a shot of Dorobou's Bandai 350 scale Falcon, and now I'm going for it. But I only really (a few exceptions) want to do what somebody else hasn't. Every time I see a build that I was planning, I groan and abandon it.

Or, figure out a way to do it better...
 
Britcinescribe, I know that feel. I recognize that I'm essentially the poster boy for over-engineering. Costumes, models, props... What lights me up most is making this or that whatever as perfect as I possibly can -- especially if most people don't or no one has. Or depicting something never before depicted (or, worse, depicted wrong -- why do none of the Royal Guard TIE Interceptors released have the winglets or have horribly inaccurate winglets?). Or using it as an opportunity to make things work better in an in-universe context. Like my Star Trek projects, one of which is doing a series of Romulan ships all with patinaed-copper hulls (yes, including the TOS BoP and Stormbird), and correcting the TNG Klingon ships to bronze rather than green, because that's the Romulan ship color, dammit, etc. So in-universe perfect. Romulans, that warrior race, paint their ships blood-green. How metal is that?!

So now I'm antsy for anyone to make 1:72 kits or conversion kits for the Inquisitor's TIE, early and late versions of the TIE Advanced/Avenger, the TIE Bomber (I could rework a couple of those into the Shuttle and Boarding Craft, if necessary), the TIE Reaper, etc. What can I say -- I'm a completist. :p
 
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