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[ 2020.05.16, 14:16 PM ]


Dai-X Junction [ 2020.05.18 | 21:27 ]

I had some other images of the StarDart (along with its carrier vessel), which I added to the sketchbook.
I enjoyed getting the ships to fire at eachother in the last one.

I seem to have a few of these outlines of this space station that I drew when I was at school, but I'm pretty sure this is the last.
The original PNG file can be grabbed from here, plus there's another version with a darker background:
http://www.xbomber.co.uk/?dir=Other%2FSketchbook

This week's Star Fleet Saturday got slightly pre-empted when one of the Star Fleet groups posted a photo of the same jigsaw that came in my fromjapan care package the other week.
One suggestion in the comments was to scan the box to get a proper image of the illustration but sadly, these Showa jigsaws have no box; only a transparent sleeve.

It may be possible to use a layer with some colour matching and darker-colour blending to eradicate at least some of the edges between the pieces.

For now, I scanned all four corners of it (it's quite a bit bigger than A4) and hit it with Photomerge to build up a composite image.

Watching the 'New' CGI Captain Scarlet, something about those Angel aircraft reminded me that I had an old outline of a streamlined little ship, that I found when moving house, last year.

The idea was for an anti-piracy vessel that got from where it was to wherever it needed to be in the shortest possible time.
The ship has a powerful but not particularly diversified weapons loadout.
This can be expanded with mission-specific underwing pods.

The Gerry Anderson store had a sale on a while ago, with about 20-30% off.
Of course, the Captain Scarlet blu-ray that I thought about getting was already cleaned out, right at the start.
Anyway, for £20, you got the entire series, a couple of weeks later, and we watched that through over the course of about a fortnight.

It's a really enjoyable show and it gets better as it goes along.

Clearly, whoever made the show had a real passion for combat aircraft.  The episode with the Lancaster bomber was clever and the designs and workings of the Angel aircraft were so good that it gave the show an extra boost.

The show has a scene very reminiscent of those from FireStorm where the Angels attack a Mysteron UFO; as opposed to the Thunderbolts attacking a 'Black Orchid' UFO.
Anyway, that bit features a truly excellent sequence where the Angels return to Cloudbase to re-arm, and the aircraft is carried through the interior of the hangar on hydraulic arms.
You see the refuelling ports go in and the ammunition feeds reloading the missile magazines on the plane, and lastly, it even goes through a carwash phase, where the canopy is cleaned and polished.
The whole process was done in about 15 seconds for each plane.
I almost had a double-take when I watched that.  It was absolutely great.

I used Xilisoft (and AnyDVD HD to handle the decryption) to generate a mighty deluge of screenshots, which people might enjoy:
http://www.xbomber.co.uk/?dir=Other%2FTV+Shows+-+New+Captain+Scarlet%2FScreenshots+1-1

For Star Fleet Saturday ...

Since the Rinkya bidding proxy service suddenly bombed out a few months ago, I started using FromJapan, which is more convenient, if not any cheaper.

So, on there, I came across a Star Fleet-related item that I'd never seen.
This looks to relate to the release of the Japanese soundtrack in 1993 on vinyl.
It has some good images and is, overall, a nice, glossy A4 double-sided flyer/poster about the series.

I scanned each side 4 times and photomerged the bitmaps to get the best output.

http://xbomber.co.uk/?dir=Star+Fleet%2FSoundtrack+-+X+Bomber

I've been working on the interior of the space fortress; adding a lot of alien symbols and graphics.
At first, I had a bit of difficulty setting that up the way I wanted but it's working great now.

I see that my shipment from Japan, which contains one or two items pertaining to Star Fleet, is showing as: "Item held at delivery depot/delivery office".
I infer from that, that they're going to stick me with some import duty charges.

Anyway, here's a Japanese toy catalogue from December 1980, uploaded by twitter user ShowaRainbow, containing some items that some may find familiar ...

Happy week-middle!
For X-Bomber the Game, I did quite a lot of work on the player special weapons.
The gunboys, lock-on-lightning and plasma grenade launchers all received attention in different ways.

I also made the last outstanding special weapon; the arc sabre, for the Dai-X.
I noticed that Multimedia Fusion seemed to have some new expressions which made the geometry and formulas amazingly quick and easy.

The game's onboard screenshot engine has yet to capture a really good image, illustrating it, but I'm very happy with it.

In the meantime, here's a doodle that I did ages ago, of the minelayer ship that I will need to sprite for the last level.
I also added an image of WingBlade to the website quite some time ago but it was never announced on the front page.

Please don't hesitate to get in touch. I'll be glad to hear from you and I'll reply as quickly as I can.

Email me at:
... or contact me via the SFXB Forum contact page.

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