The Ark Addendum - Darkwings' Extras

An Ark Addendum on a Wednesday?  What is the world coming to?

Actually, my colleague Bish wanted to get his UK comics review up yesterday, so I yielded the floor to him so he could finish out Prey.  I didn't think anyone would mind.  Now, though, it's time to return to The Ark Addendum.  As promised last week, we go back to Japan.  I figured I'd look at the Darkwing brothers some more.

In The Ark II, I had three pages of material on these guys.  I put the human and robot forms on one page each, then had a third page with all the jets, including the combined mode.  This was a bit awkward, but given the amount and quality of material I had available to me at the time I didn't have much choice.

By the time  Transformers: The Complete Ark  (order it today!)  rolled around, I had a good deal more, and the Darkwing Bros got 5 pages.  Each human got a full page, each robot/jet got a full page, and the combined version got a full page.  This was much more satisfying to me.

And yet.... there was still all this cool stuff I had to leave out, like alternate angles on the interior of the jets, specifically focusing on the seat.  There were drawings showing the jets from dead on with pilot, a rough transform for Buster, and some details on how Buster's mouth can open.  So, I gathered them together and present them here.  (I've got a polished Transform for Buster, and Hydra as well, so expect that to show up here at some point.)  They're neat designs, but I imagine you can see why I left them out rather than have a page like this or shrink all the other elements in the Darkwings section.  Hope you enjoy!  And, if you missed it, I've featured their weapons and the combination transform in the past.

The Ark Addendum - Darkwings' Weapons

One of the elements that I have available to me that didn't make it into any of the books is detailed views of the Masterforce weapons. Actually, I was almost always able to get the actual weapons in, though not always as large as I'd have liked them. But I typically had two views of each character, one holding their weapons, one without. And so, this week's Ark Addendum - the Darkwing brothers, carrying their weapons, as well as more detail on the guns themselves.

I'm a big fan of alternate views of the characters like this, but unfortunately I didn't have room for in The Complete Ark. Incidentally, while the AllSpark Almanac is doing great, The Complete Ark is dying in the Amazon.com reviews ... come on, Amazon reviewers, don't you know what an animation model is? And if you don't, why are you buying the book in the first place? Anyone who's read the book, a little review-juice would be much appreciated.

EDIT: As of 7:30 PM, PST 9/29/09, we're up to five reviews, three of them positive. I appreciate everyone who took the time to share their opinions. These things really help undecided people make an informed decision as to whether or not to purchase.

By the way, is there any interest in seeing Gobots animation models on this blog? I recently came into a few. Let me know!

Ark Addendum - Darkwings Combined

As usual, it's Tuesday and that means that it's time for some new character models. Since Ivan's Gallery yesterday featured Buster and Hydra Darkwing, I thought that today might be a good day to pull out the combination of those two into the Darkwings jet.

Masterforce is an interesting series. Like Headmasters, the toys are mostly the same as their American counterparts. Sure, some of them sport different color schemes, and some have different tooling. Still, the Japanese line of 1988 was substantially the same as the American line of 1988. Like Victory, the storyline for Masterforce varied greatly from the American storyline of 1988. Masterforce Pretenders walked among us, in suits and ties, working at jobs, driving in cars. The Headmasters were youthful participants in the war, with their own agendas and motivations. And the Godmasters were something special, tapping into ancient forces and powering Transtectors with their own will.

It functions as a kind of transition point, before the toys diverge but after the underlying mythology seriously diverged. The Darkwing brothers sort of function as both. As Godmasters, they represent one of the most important aspects of the Masterforce mythos, but they also feature the sort of extra combination-based transformation that permeated so much of Victory. Unlike the toys of Victory, the Darkwing combination is relatively simple, basically just smashing the two jets together. The animation model reflects this fairly accurately, though the motion lines and the sub-transformation of the human components jazzes it up a bit.

Iván's Gallery: Darkwings

Hope everyone had a great weekend. I certainly enjoyed a lazy summer weekend of reading and swimming and watching War of the Worlds. Now it's time for another edition of Ivan's Gallery. This week, Iván brings us the Darkwing brothers. Here's what the artist has to say about them:

Great characters, the intention of this Pin-up is clear... play with the duality of this brothers. Interestingly these characters appears in Marvel series... but a very uninteresting.

Buster (left) and Hydra (right) are repainted and darkwing of Dreadwing in Masterforce version, and like all human components has its power bracelets. Buster is a DJ, has a certain effeminate appearance, the very era of the eighties, reminds me a little of David Bowie in Labyrinth movie, I think it is the younger brother.

Both are German, Hydra, for his part is an actor, and uses this chip in occasions in the series to lay a trap to Autobots. Is the boss in the group.

They are Transtectors, are different to the rest, are not Headmasters, they are transformed into engines, so it is assumed that are more fearsome. And also could be combined in airplane mode and form a rare aircraft... very funny... It is not very clear, but it seems to have been adopted by Giga and Mega and have special training.

The figures, the prices are very high, and more at the Japanese version, and even more if we look for a pack showing both. I think around 500 dollars.

Why, despite that I like a lot, are two of the figures that I have not yet, and certainly make me more enthusiasm in its Japanese version, although I think the American version in its colors are better.

In any case, the picture we see the characters, the human form with armor, and some of his robot form. Then I played a little with the composition, to make the arms of both species together in a single body to display his mechanical gadgets as they do in the series.

Then got to finish the composition Decepticon logo. I enjoy with this picture that even I did a quick version to color, play with the color range of each.

Then I have done a better version of the brothers .. giving a more serious and realistic, which I hope soon you will see in a mosaic.