Awesome man! Mine arrived in country today - hopefully I'll have a sweet little parcel waiting for me tomorrow morning when I get to work.
Try as I might, I'm simply unable to see any feminine looking differences on Road Rage vs Tracks. The thinner chin?...perhaps. Somebody mentioned something about the feet being different, waist maybe? She just looks like a red Tracks with a different face. Add in the ginormous gun and the name "Road Rage" and it further pushes me away from the whole argument she's a she, other than the marketing. I showed a few random friends the pictures and asked, what gender? None guessed woman. Not like it's a big deal, but when I compare RR to figures like Arcee or Blackarachnia, I find those figures hit the whole feminine thing a lot better. But I suppose it's because those are designed from the ground up to be females. A slightly retooled and repainted MP is going to have a tough time coming across as feminine, IMO. I know nothing of RR's history in fiction; is that where she became a female character? I'm assuming her red Diaclone version was just a red repaint. Did it happen in the IDW fiction? Just some thoughts. The toy looks great, IMO.
Thanks! No repainting - just weird photos. Fair enough, although of course female characters don't necessarily all have to be overtly 'feminine', in the same way that male characters don't need to be all big & butch. To be fair, I'm sure that wasn't exactly what you meant, but just trying to chip in as I think Road Rage as a figure does a great job at portraying a powerful robot that could be female, but doesn't go out of its way to try and be 'girly'. Equally, no reason that a female Autobot shouldn't have a big gun! Makes more sense on her than it would on a lot of male Autobot characters, IMO. She's a warrior! There are numerous differences to Tracks, including new head, waist piece, thighs, hands, biceps, and of course the gun. It's the most extensive retooling of a repainted mould that we've had on any carbot thus far.
Many more images in a little article I put together here: Square One: MP-26 Masterpiece Road Rage All the best Maz
To me that face and those thighs are very feminine. But if i didnt know already it was meant to be a female i might not have guessed it. BTW TFCC Slipstream was the 1st female MP figure
'A litte article' he calls it That's a great read, as usual, and your pictures are just sublime. I have such a soft spot for the Diaclone colors... Postman delivered my two Road Rage's from AE yesterday, but I was home late from so no time to open up a box to check her out. On the plus side, I'll be home early today and I'm having a little Transformers tea party, with Road Rage and the UW Constructicons as my special guests!
Cheers Joris! How do you like the grey background for the pics compared to usual whiteout? Also where's my party invite??? All the best Maz
TBH I slightly prefer the grey one... (but as long as your picture are so good, background is not a big deal).
If you can make it to the Netherlands around 3 p.m. today, I'll be able to pick you up from the airport! Plenty of tea is guaranteed! Actually, you're very welcome to come visit if you are ever in the Netherlands: I'm around 25 minutes from the airport and 45 minutes from Amsterdam. Now you mention it I do like the grey backdrop. It really is quite different from your previous pure white edited backgrounds. I took a little time comparing your MP-25 Tracks photo's with MP-26's photo's. It's strange but I find this grey background to especially be a little more flattering for the alt mode. I think perhaps because the white contrasts relatively harshly with the transformation panel gaps on the alt mode. Your 'bot mode photo's already looked good against the white. Obvious skills at work, in posing, lighting and general composition. The grey just ever so slightly seems to 'ground' the 'bot as a toy, more so than against the white, but that's not a criticism at all, just my neutral opinion.
Haha fantastic I shall take you up on this offer one day , I promise Most gracious of you, sir. That is great feedback on the grey, I much prefer using the grey at the moment because it saves me hours and days in editing compared to whiteout. Excellent Thank you so much! That's really greatly appreciated All the best Maz
Some info about the grey (gray?) background... I take mugshot-style photos (for research) that can be used for ingestion into facial recognition systems as part of my job. A '33%' neutral gray background is listed in the ASNI/NIST standards documents for mugshots since it minimizes the impact the automatic gain adjustments that all digital sensors perform when capturing images. In that sense, it should result in the truest color space from the perspective of the camera sensor, so the variation from face image to face image is caused only by the face itself, not the background or camera type. Of course, the choice of lighting (tungsten filament, LED, CF, etc.) will impact the color rendering index (CRI; how we perceive the colors) independent from the imaging sensor. We mainly use incandescent tungsten bulbs, but have played around with Fiilex LED units. They are nice, but not really bright enough to run at an aperture setting that gives a good depth of focus for all facial features to be in focus (think of the distance between the tip of the nose and earlobes in a frontal-pose photo) at an imaging distance of 2m (another ANSI/NIST spec that helps avoid the 'pincushion' effect, which is another lesson altogether). TL;DR: it's not surprising that the gray backgrounds produce nicer photos. Now if I could only apply my knowledge of portraiture to 'product photography' so I can hang with with the big guys like Maz, Sixo, TC, and the others in the appreciation thread. /thread derailment
WOW. That is some knowledge and a half. Amazing! I honestly never knew that. Thanks for sharing! You can hang out with us any time, buddy.
My pleasure Maz & Sixo. There are a lot more details that I glossed over (like white balance, that also plays a factor), but you get the idea. You'll find I'm a fountain of mostly useless information , but every now and then, I can contribute to society. Anyway, now you know, and knowing is half the battle! DA DA DA DUH DAAAAA! Sorry... wrong fandom.
