The Bigness of Smaller Things

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toysdream
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Re: The Bigness of Smaller Things

I hadn't made a study of the Brawbro yet. But thanks to Amuro's penchant for flying up and sticking a beam saber in the sides of enemy objects, we do have at least one animated scale comparison to refer to:

http://www.ultimatemark.com/gundam/imag ... awbro2.jpg

This makes the Brawbro look a bit more than 3 times as long as the Gundam is tall, which supports the consensus length of 60 meters. Main body is about 5/3 as tall as the Gundam, or 30 meters. And the line art suggests that the overall height is a bit more than twice that of the main body, which nicely matches the official overall height of 62.4 meters. So based on this animation still and the original line art, our current official specs seem to be right on the money.

Wow, that was easy! I should add that one to the chart.


The Big Zam is a different story - I'll need to study the animation a bit for supplemental evidence.


Meanwhile, I've made a couple of updates to my comparison chart:

http://www.ultimatemark.com/gundam/imag ... arison.jpg

As you requested, I've added the Skiure, whose cannon seems like it should just about fit inside the length of the Bygro's body. And after consulting the TV animation, I've reluctantly concluded that the standard figure of 25 meters actually does seem like it should be the Zakrello's overall length, making its height a mere 15 meters or so. I think this is pretty clear from the animation scenes where it's grappling with the Guntank...

http://www.ultimatemark.com/gundam/imag ... rello2.jpg
http://www.ultimatemark.com/gundam/imag ... rello3.jpg

So the Zakrello is just an extremely tiny mobile armor, and a disproportionately heavy one at that. At 185 tons, it's more comparable to the 740-ton Grublo - and maybe the Brawbro and Big Zam - than it is to the lightweight Bygro, Elmeth, and Val Walo.

As a consolation prize, please enjoy this nice panning shot of the Grublo and a bunch of Z'Goks in the Mad Angler's hangar bay!

http://www.ultimatemark.com/gundam/imag ... lo_pan.jpg

-- Mark
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Gelgoog Jager
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Re: The Bigness of Smaller Things

The Zakrello's rather small dimensions could indicate the intention of loading it into regular warships such as the Musai and the Chivvay. I'm not sure if its width would allow it to do so though.
toysdream
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Re: The Bigness of Smaller Things

Hm, that would make sense. As we're about to see when we look at the Elmeth, the limiting factor on most MA is the size of the Zanzibar's hatch, but they could never fit aboard a regular cruiser.

By the way, I added the Brawbro to the chart as well. I think, when we look at the Zakrello compared to the Grublo, and the Grublo compared to the Brawbro, the relation of size and weight seems very sensible; each of these is about four times heavier than the previous one. It's really the Bigro, Elmeth, and Val Walo that seem like outliers.

-- Mark
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Gelgoog Jager
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Re: The Bigness of Smaller Things

toysdream wrote:By the way, I added the Brawbro to the chart as well. I think, when we look at the Zakrello compared to the Grublo, and the Grublo compared to the Brawbro, the relation of size and weight seems very sensible; each of these is about four times heavier than the previous one. It's really the Bigro, Elmeth, and Val Walo that seem like outliers.

-- Mark
I would be of the idea that the Zakrello, Grublo and Braw Bro are all prototypes that are not particularly focused on speed, but rather are proof of concept machines. On the other hand, the Bygro, Val Varo and Elmeth do are known for being fast MAs. My guess is that Zeon took the lessons learned from the earlier and then proceeded to refine their technologies in order to build high mobility versions of them, which among other changes would also go through a significant weight reduction.

While this might be trickier to imagine with the Zakrello -> Byrgo/Val Varo relationship, since the Bygro in particular would ahve to through some major weight reduction, in the case of the Elmeth it could also have helped that the later's remote terminals not only are not connected by an extremely large amount of cables, but also the bits themselves are probably not even considered towards its empty weight, unlike the Braw Bro's guns.

Finally, I have a rather odd request Mark: could you tell me if the Zakrello used for creating the Zakurello is a regular size unit?

Zakurello 1
Zakurello 2
Zakurello 3
toysdream
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Re: The Bigness of Smaller Things

I really can't see the logic of having the Bygro, one of the very first mobile armors, be less than half the density of newer models like the Brawbro and Big Zam. I'd be inclined to just say the weight specs of the Bygro, Elmeth, and Val Walo are kind of bogus, and move on to worthier topics. :-)

As for the Zakurello, the portion of the Zaku that protrudes from its "mouth" is about 8 meters high. The mobile armor appears to be three times higher than that, so... 25 meters, which would be our discarded "big" scenario.

-- Mark
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MythSearcher
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Re: The Bigness of Smaller Things

toysdream wrote:I really can't see the logic of having the Bygro, one of the very first mobile armors, be less than half the density of newer models like the Brawbro and Big Zam. I'd be inclined to just say the weight specs of the Bygro, Elmeth, and Val Walo are kind of bogus, and move on to worthier topics. :-)

As for the Zakurello, the portion of the Zaku that protrudes from its "mouth" is about 8 meters high. The mobile armor appears to be three times higher than that, so... 25 meters, which would be our discarded "big" scenario.

-- Mark
Well, the Bigro and the Big Zam is not from the same design line, so I guess is doesn't matter that much, they got really different concepts.
On the other hand, the Bigro design line does include the Elmeth and Brawbro, so...
From what I know, this design line is the purest line of MAs, starting from MIP-X1, the MA-04, MA-05, MA-06, MAM-07 are all from this line.
MAN-03 and MAN-08 are based on this line and added psycommu weapons.


For the Gunpla Builder scene, I think that is derived from the old models scale, the Zakurello seems to be using different scaled models, since it does not have a 1/144 or 1/100 one.
toysdream
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Re: The Bigness of Smaller Things

Well, the old model kit included two scales - a 1/250 kit, and a 1/550 kit which is really tiny compared to the other mobile armors. If they were "mixing scales" to put the 1/250 kit in a 1/550 scenario, then it would be a lot bigger. It looks like, from the animation, they're simply assuming the Zakrello is about 25 meters high.

And I'm sorry, but those weights for the Bygro and Elmeth are just ridiculous, especially once we see them all in a same-scale lineup. Fortunately, for purposes of this thread I really don't care about the weights - I'm just trying to figure out how big they are. :-)

-- Mark
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Re: The Bigness of Smaller Things

Okay, here's our next one. Exactly how big is the Big Zam? (Or Big Zam, if you prefer?)

Well, pretty darned big! We never really see its full body in the same shot with a regular mobile suit, as if to underscore how huge it is. But the two major claims are the current 59.6 meters, and the older figure of 80 meters from some of the mid-'80s sources. Since we never see the entire thing next to a normal mobile suit, we're going to have to do this in pieces and then scale our measurements up proportionally. So let's start with some proportions:

http://www.ultimatemark.com/gundam/imag ... ygzam2.jpg

These proportions seem to hold pretty well for the old 1/550 kit and the more recent Gundam Collection one. Most representations of the Big Zam have the ball joint of the hip extending lower than the bottom of the main body, so it does depend where we're measuring from. In the 1/550 kit, the main body is shorter (37% of head height, 40% including hip joint), but head to bottom of knee joint is the same 66% shown here. In the Gundam Collection kit, main body is 42% of head height, or 45% including hip joint, but head to bottom of knee joint is only 63%. In both cases, the legs (from hip joint to ankle) are about 50% of head height.

What about the MS in Action toy? Pretty similar - the body is about 45% of head height, head to bottom of knee joint is about 65%, leg from hip joint to ankle is about 48%.

All in all, then, there seems to be general agreement about the Big Zam's proportions. Let's go with the line art measurements and say the main body is about 43.5% of head height, head to bottom of knee joint is about 65%, leg from hip to ankle is about 50%.


Now, bring on the anime evidence! We have here a combination of stills and collages from episode 36 of the TV series, and the new animation from the Gundam III movie.

http://www.ultimatemark.com/gundam/imag ... ygzam1.jpg
http://www.ultimatemark.com/gundam/imag ... ygzam2.jpg
http://www.ultimatemark.com/gundam/imag ... m_pan1.jpg
http://www.ultimatemark.com/gundam/imag ... m_pan2.jpg
http://www.ultimatemark.com/gundam/imag ... igzam7.jpg
http://www.ultimatemark.com/gundam/imag ... igzam9.jpg

Let's mark those up and compare them to the nearby mobile suits. Bear in mind that, in each case, the mobile suit is closer to us and will thus appear bigger. In other words, whatever we calculate from this will make the Big Zam look smaller than it really is, so these will be minimum estimates.

http://www.ultimatemark.com/gundam/imag ... gzam1a.jpg
http://www.ultimatemark.com/gundam/imag ... gzam2a.jpg
http://www.ultimatemark.com/gundam/imag ... _pan1a.jpg
http://www.ultimatemark.com/gundam/imag ... _pan2a.jpg

The first one, in which the Big Zam's leg appears to be about 28 meters long, is the only one that supports the current official spec. On the other hand, the GM is also a bit closer to us than the Big Zam.

The second one indicates that the Big Zam's main body is about 29 meters high. That puts its head height about 65 meters, and roughly 70 meters overall. (This is actually what's suggested by Tomino's original rough sketch of the Big Zam, in which it's about 3.5 times taller than the Gundam, so the animators may have used Tomino's drawing as a guide.)

In the movie scene of the Big Zam leaving Solomon, the foreground Rick Dom is a bit foreshortened, but it's also closer to us, so I've assumed these factors roughly cancel each other out. Because the Big Zam is tilted upwards, the best reference point is probably head to bottom of knee joint, which would be (very approximately) 50 meters - suggesting a head height of about 75 meters.

Lastly, we have a panoramic shot of the Gundam flying up the Big Zam's height. The Gundam gets progressively smaller as it approaches the Big Zam's head, and there's some perspective exaggeration applied to the mobile armor's lower body, so I feel like the top part - where the Gundam is right in front of the Big Zam's main body - is probably the best reference point. This suggests a body height of about 33 meters, a little more than the equivalent scene in the TV series, and a head height of about 75 meters again.


Conclusions? Well, based on our proportion breakdown, the Big Zam's main body would be about 40% of its overall height (including antennas). So a sixty-meter Big Zam would have a main body about 24 meters high, while an 80-meter Big Zam would have a main body that was about 32 meters high. The anime shots of the Gundam attacking the Big Zam's head definitely support the latter scenario, and in general they make it look like the main body is about 30 meters high.

In this case, the old figure of 80m overall height (and thus about 75m at head) definitely seems more accurate to the animation. This also helps justify the Big Zam's immense weight, which is about three-quarters that of the colossal Brawbro. If the regular laws of physics applied to Gundam specs (hah!) then a 60-meter Big Zam would weigh barely 40% as much as an 80-meter one, so if you prefer the smaller spec, then perhaps you could imagine this machine as weighing about 800 tons?

Regardless of the animation, the 59.6-meter spec is pretty well established now, so I'm honestly not sure which option to favor. Perhaps I'll put them both in my lineup, along with the 76-meter Neue Ziel, so you can judge for yourselves. :-)

-- Mark
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AmuroNT1
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Re: The Bigness of Smaller Things

Regarding the Big Zam, IIRC the Encounters in Space PS2 game has an animated cutscene depicting Sleggar's suicidal charge between Dozle's legs (sorry, couldn't resist :P). I'll go and check, but could that be of any use in this comparison?
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toysdream
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Re: The Bigness of Smaller Things

Well, the dimensions of the Core Booster are also controversial. I have a theory on that too, but it's a separate digression, and we can't use an unknown to measure an unknown. :-)

-- Mark
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Re: The Bigness of Smaller Things

toysdream wrote:Okay, here's our next one. Exactly how big is the Big Zam? (Or Big Zam, if you prefer?)

Well, pretty darned big! We never really see its full body in the same shot with a regular mobile suit, as if to underscore how huge it is. But the two major claims are the current 59.6 meters, and the older figure of 80 meters from some of the mid-'80s sources. Since we never see the entire thing next to a normal mobile suit, we're going to have to do this in pieces and then scale our measurements up proportionally. So let's start with some proportions:

http://www.ultimatemark.com/gundam/imag ... ygzam2.jpg

These proportions seem to hold pretty well for the old 1/550 kit and the more recent Gundam Collection one. Most representations of the Big Zam have the ball joint of the hip extending lower than the bottom of the main body, so it does depend where we're measuring from. In the 1/550 kit, the main body is shorter (37% of head height, 40% including hip joint), but head to bottom of knee joint is the same 66% shown here. In the Gundam Collection kit, main body is 42% of head height, or 45% including hip joint, but head to bottom of knee joint is only 63%. In both cases, the legs (from hip joint to ankle) are about 50% of head height.

What about the MS in Action toy? Pretty similar - the body is about 45% of head height, head to bottom of knee joint is about 65%, leg from hip joint to ankle is about 48%.

All in all, then, there seems to be general agreement about the Big Zam's proportions. Let's go with the line art measurements and say the main body is about 43.5% of head height, head to bottom of knee joint is about 65%, leg from hip to ankle is about 50%.


Now, bring on the anime evidence! We have here a combination of stills and collages from episode 36 of the TV series, and the new animation from the Gundam III movie.

http://www.ultimatemark.com/gundam/imag ... ygzam1.jpg
http://www.ultimatemark.com/gundam/imag ... ygzam2.jpg
http://www.ultimatemark.com/gundam/imag ... m_pan1.jpg
http://www.ultimatemark.com/gundam/imag ... m_pan2.jpg
http://www.ultimatemark.com/gundam/imag ... igzam7.jpg
http://www.ultimatemark.com/gundam/imag ... igzam9.jpg

Let's mark those up and compare them to the nearby mobile suits. Bear in mind that, in each case, the mobile suit is closer to us and will thus appear bigger. In other words, whatever we calculate from this will make the Big Zam look smaller than it really is, so these will be minimum estimates.

http://www.ultimatemark.com/gundam/imag ... gzam1a.jpg
http://www.ultimatemark.com/gundam/imag ... gzam2a.jpg
http://www.ultimatemark.com/gundam/imag ... _pan1a.jpg
http://www.ultimatemark.com/gundam/imag ... _pan2a.jpg

The first one, in which the Big Zam's leg appears to be about 28 meters long, is the only one that supports the current official spec. On the other hand, the GM is also a bit closer to us than the Big Zam.

The second one indicates that the Big Zam's main body is about 29 meters high. That puts its head height about 65 meters, and roughly 70 meters overall. (This is actually what's suggested by Tomino's original rough sketch of the Big Zam, in which it's about 3.5 times taller than the Gundam, so the animators may have used Tomino's drawing as a guide.)

In the movie scene of the Big Zam leaving Solomon, the foreground Rick Dom is a bit foreshortened, but it's also closer to us, so I've assumed these factors roughly cancel each other out. Because the Big Zam is tilted upwards, the best reference point is probably head to bottom of knee joint, which would be (very approximately) 50 meters - suggesting a head height of about 75 meters.

Lastly, we have a panoramic shot of the Gundam flying up the Big Zam's height. The Gundam gets progressively smaller as it approaches the Big Zam's head, and there's some perspective exaggeration applied to the mobile armor's lower body, so I feel like the top part - where the Gundam is right in front of the Big Zam's main body - is probably the best reference point. This suggests a body height of about 33 meters, a little more than the equivalent scene in the TV series, and a head height of about 75 meters again.


Conclusions? Well, based on our proportion breakdown, the Big Zam's main body would be about 40% of its overall height (including antennas). So a sixty-meter Big Zam would have a main body about 24 meters high, while an 80-meter Big Zam would have a main body that was about 32 meters high. The anime shots of the Gundam attacking the Big Zam's head definitely support the latter scenario, and in general they make it look like the main body is about 30 meters high.

In this case, the old figure of 80m overall height (and thus about 75m at head) definitely seems more accurate to the animation. This also helps justify the Big Zam's immense weight, which is about three-quarters that of the colossal Brawbro. If the regular laws of physics applied to Gundam specs (hah!) then a 60-meter Big Zam would weigh barely 40% as much as an 80-meter one, so if you prefer the smaller spec, then perhaps you could imagine this machine as weighing about 800 tons?

Regardless of the animation, the 59.6-meter spec is pretty well established now, so I'm honestly not sure which option to favor. Perhaps I'll put them both in my lineup, along with the 76-meter Neue Ziel, so you can judge for yourselves. :-)

-- Mark
No matter what official specs are for the Big Zam, I will always think of it as this size, in the lower right hand corner:
http://j122412441.myweb.hinet.net/big-zeong-zam.jpg

What had been seen cannot be unseen...

BTW, back to business, the Gundam Collection 1/400 Big Zam is approximately 150mm tall according to 1999:
http://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10044624
don't know if it is with or without the base.
If it is without the base, the GC marks the Big Zam at about 60m tall.

Don't know if Gundam Archive pay any respect to Kunio's original design numbers, but it does state 59.6m next to the design line art.
toysdream wrote:Well, the dimensions of the Core Booster are also controversial. I have a theory on that too, but it's a separate digression, and we can't use an unknown to measure an unknown. :-)

-- Mark
The problem of the Core Booster will always suffer from the movies' scenes where they need to use it to cover the G-fighter, and when the RX-78-2 is on the G-Fighter, the core fighter from the core booster will always be larger than the core fighter that's supposed to be inside the RX-78-2's body.
This is one thing that we cannot rely on the anime source, since they intentionally ignore any reasoning process.

BTW, anyone got the picture that they place the cells in the wrong order, and rendered a Dopp much larger than the others and even seemed bigger than the Gaw in the back? (It should be in the front but someone made a mistake and place the back row to the front so it looks like a really big one flying behind a group of smaller ones) Anyone want to estimate the size of that Dopp?
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Gelgoog Jager
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Re: The Bigness of Smaller Things

I could swear I have read somewhere that the Big Zam could be loaded into a Musai just like an HLV...
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Re: The Bigness of Smaller Things

MythSearcher wrote:BTW, back to business, the Gundam Collection 1/400 Big Zam is approximately 150mm tall according to 1999:
http://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10044624
don't know if it is with or without the base.
If it is without the base, the GC marks the Big Zam at about 60m tall.
Yep, and so does the MS in Action figure, which is 350mm tall at roughly 1/170 scale. It seems like every toy and model produced in the last 10-15 years has standardized on that 59.6 meter height, which is more than you can say for any of the other mobile armors. :-)
Don't know if Gundam Archive pay any respect to Kunio's original design numbers, but it does state 59.6m next to the design line art.
They're just going with the current official specs, so this isn't really evidence one way or the other; we already know those specs are official, but this doesn't help us decide whether they make sense. :-)

The problem of the Core Booster will always suffer from the movies' scenes where they need to use it to cover the G-fighter, and when the RX-78-2 is on the G-Fighter, the core fighter from the core booster will always be larger than the core fighter that's supposed to be inside the RX-78-2's body.
This is one thing that we cannot rely on the anime source, since they intentionally ignore any reasoning process.
Sure, there are some weirdnesses in the animation. Sometimes they're consistent (as we've just seen with the Zakrello and Big Zam), sometimes they're really not, and sometimes they screw up and put the cels in the wrong order. :-)

On the other hand, the published sources aren't always based on any "reasoning process" either. In compiling Gundam Officials, Minakawa dug up the vehicle specs from the old Roman Album books and recycled them verbatim; then every subsequent publication did likewise, and so every modern source insists that the Core Fighter is 8.6 meters long and the Core Booster is only 13.8 meters. In that case, the Core Booster would have to look something like this:

http://www.ultimatemark.com/gundam/imag ... ooster.jpg

So if the animation is unreliable and the publications have settled on a claim that's unbelievable, then what's our alternative? Well, we could start by looking at the schematics in the original model sheet:

http://www.ultimatemark.com/gundam/imag ... ooster.jpg

...and supplement them by looking at some of the toy and model versions, which presumably have to be physically plausible. Then we just use our common sense, which Minakawa and the Roman Album staff apparently didn't. :-)


Actually, it seems like this has been attempted by at least one Japanese source. If you look at that side-view schematic, divide the overall length of the Core Booster by what we can see of the Core Fighter, and multiply that by the length of the Core Fighter, you get roughly 2.55 x 8.6 = 21.9 meters. Lo and behold, the Suntory Gundam Glass series - a set of collectible glasses with mecha specs printed on them, if you can believe it! - listed the Core Booster with a length of 21.97 meters.

http://www.shoi.org/pramo/others/g13_gt3/index4.html

I don't think that's quite accurate, since the booster overlaps the end of the Core Fighter a little bit, and the Core Fighter's tail fin is folded up. As a result, the visible portion of the Core Fighter would be less than its full length, so we'd be multiplying 2.55 x some smaller figure = a smaller overall length. By my best guess, it should actually be around 20 to 20.5 meters long, but so far those stupid collectible glasses have come the closest to presenting us with a plausible figure!

-- Mark
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Re: The Bigness of Smaller Things

toysdream wrote: Sure, there are some weirdnesses in the animation. Sometimes they're consistent (as we've just seen with the Zakrello and Big Zam), sometimes they're really not, and sometimes they screw up and put the cels in the wrong order. :-)

On the other hand, the published sources aren't always based on any "reasoning process" either. In compiling Gundam Officials, Minakawa dug up the vehicle specs from the old Roman Album books and recycled them verbatim; then every subsequent publication did likewise, and so every modern source insists that the Core Fighter is 8.6 meters long and the Core Booster is only 13.8 meters. In that case, the Core Booster would have to look something like this:

http://www.ultimatemark.com/gundam/imag ... ooster.jpg

So if the animation is unreliable and the publications have settled on a claim that's unbelievable, then what's our alternative? Well, we could start by looking at the schematics in the original model sheet:

http://www.ultimatemark.com/gundam/imag ... ooster.jpg

...and supplement them by looking at some of the toy and model versions, which presumably have to be physically plausible. Then we just use our common sense, which Minakawa and the Roman Album staff apparently didn't. :-)


Actually, it seems like this has been attempted by at least one Japanese source. If you look at that side-view schematic, divide the overall length of the Core Booster by what we can see of the Core Fighter, and multiply that by the length of the Core Fighter, you get roughly 2.55 x 8.6 = 21.9 meters. Lo and behold, the Suntory Gundam Glass series - a set of collectible glasses with mecha specs printed on them, if you can believe it! - listed the Core Booster with a length of 21.97 meters.

http://www.shoi.org/pramo/others/g13_gt3/index4.html

I don't think that's quite accurate, since the booster overlaps the end of the Core Fighter a little bit, and the Core Fighter's tail fin is folded up. As a result, the visible portion of the Core Fighter would be less than its full length, so we'd be multiplying 2.55 x some smaller figure = a smaller overall length. By my best guess, it should actually be around 20 to 20.5 meters long, but so far those stupid collectible glasses have come the closest to presenting us with a plausible figure!

-- Mark
Well, even if it doesn't make sense, its canon, but we are all free to say it is not reasonable, right? XD

Anyway, have you tried using the official numbers and assume the length of the core booster only applies to the booster addon, and not the whole thing? if we add 8.6 to 13.8, we get 22.4, which seems to be a closer and more reasonable guess? I guess I will try to make that picture later.
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Re: The Bigness of Smaller Things

MythSearcher wrote:Well, even if it doesn't make sense, its canon, but we are all free to say it is not reasonable, right? XD
I wouldn't say it's "canon". There isn't really an equivalent term for that in Japanese - normally they just talk about what's "official", and that's determined by Sunrise. The whole reason why the Gundam Officials book is called that is because it's Sunrise-approved, and because Sunrise says it's official, all the other publications since then have used it as a reference source.

That said, there's a lot of dubious decision-making in Gundam Officials. The main one we've been running into in these recent threads is that Minakawa took all the vehicle specs directly from the old Roman Albums, disregarding any other sources, including all the Sunrise productions that had come out in the intervening 20 years. That's why, for example, Gundam Officials says the Magellan is 265 meters long and the Gwazine is 294 meters long - even though every Sunrise production before or since, such as Gundam 0083 and MS Igloo, features 327-meter Magellans and 440-meter Gwazines.

This brings us to the other issue with Gundam Officials. Having given the book its "official" blessing, Sunrise seems to have largely ignored it. The animated works have kept right on depicting the sizes of vehicles, etc, according to Sunrise's own views of how big everything is. As we've been seeing, after you get past the original TV series, these tend to be amazingly consistent. And they have nothing to do with the wacky numbers published in the Roman Albums 30 years ago, which had been pretty much forgotten until Minakawa revived them.

Anyway, have you tried using the official numbers and assume the length of the core booster only applies to the booster addon, and not the whole thing? if we add 8.6 to 13.8, we get 22.4, which seems to be a closer and more reasonable guess? I guess I will try to make that picture later.
Yes, we could do that, but then we end up with a very long Core Booster (and one with very tiny wings, thanks to the Roman Album's small wingspan spec). Rather than making up a new nonsense number by mixing and matching the old nonsense numbers, we could always try using our brains for a change. :-)

Since we're on the subject, I went through and tried this novel approach, and concluded that the Core Booster actually appears to be exactly 20.0 meters long. That's a nice round number; here's how I arrived at it...

http://www.ultimatemark.com/gundam/imag ... arison.jpg

As I noted above, the original model sheet includes a nice side view schematic which lets us compare the overall length of the Core Booster to the Core Fighter module. This gives us a ratio of roughly 2.55:1, and as we've seen, whoever came up with the length spec for the Suntory Gundam Glass series appears to have precision-measured it as 2.555:1. The problem is, they then multiplied this by the overall length of the entire Core Fighter. In fact, the Core Fighter's tail fin is retracted in this form, and the Core Booster slightly overlaps the end of its main body. So how much of the Core Fighter are we really seeing in this side view?


First, let's subtract out the tail fin. In the original model sheet schematics for the Core Fighter, the tail fin doesn't extend past the main body. But the latest, most precise schematics would be those from the U.C. Hard Graph kit. As you can see from my comparison graphic, the Hard Graph schematics are almost identical to the original model sheet, but the tail fin sticks out a bit more. As a result, if the overall length including tail fin is 8.60 meters, then the main body without tail fin would be 8.20 meters.

As it happens, this is also the exact length of the Core Fighter in the old 1/144 Core Booster kit. Here, the tail fin doesn't stick out past the main body, so the main body is 57mm = 8.2 meters. In its booster-equipped form, the exposed portion of the Core Fighter is a little shorter; specifically, 54.5mm, or 7.85 meters.

Looking at the comparison chart, we can see that the booster in the model kit is a bit shorter than the original line art indicated. To be precise, the line art shows the booster as being 5% longer than the model kit version. If we take that exposed length of 7.85 meters and multiply it by 2.55 (as per the line art), we get an overall Core Booster length of 20.0 meters.


In the comparison graphic, I've thrown in a few different versions of the Core Fighter and Core Booster. The Core Fighters are all scaled to a main body length of 8.2 meters, as per the old 1/144 kit and the U.C. Hard Graph schematics; when docked to a booster, the exposed portion of the Core Fighter is scaled at 7.85 meters, as per the old 1/144 kit.

The overall length of the Jet Core Booster from 08th MS Team is 16.0 meters, as per the 08th MS Team comparison charts and the EX Model kit.

As for the Core Booster II from MS Igloo, it comes to about 21.3 meters overall, but I note that if you ignore the extra boosters added to the sides, the length at the central main engines - the part that's carried over from the original Core Booster - is also exactly 20 meters.

I think, when you put all of these side by side, it seems like Bandai and Sunrise actually do know what they're doing. The basic Core Fighter length of 8.6 meters, and the overall lengths of the various model kits and such, all mesh together in a very nice and consistent way that indicates the original Core Booster is exactly 20 meters long.

-- Mark
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Re: The Bigness of Smaller Things

toysdream wrote:
I think, when you put all of these side by side, it seems like Bandai and Sunrise actually do know what they're doing. The basic Core Fighter length of 8.6 meters, and the overall lengths of the various model kits and such, all mesh together in a very nice and consistent way that indicates the original Core Booster is exactly 20 meters long.

-- Mark
I'd imagine Bandai know what they are doing, because they got all the numbers for the models, and they are likely to reuse them over and over.

The problem here might be the same over here, is that if their numbers are not consistent with the animation, they simply don't care as long as the model looks nice, especially in the older models, they did not have a computer assisted environment, and relied on hand crafting, so the scale might not be exactly the same as what they want. As an example, I remember seeing the GK company G-System's 1/35 Ex-S production notes, and they said they had the head a little bit bigger and chose to ignore it while scaling the rest of the body to that size, and ended up with something like a 1/26~28 scale. They are not official(or legal), but the idea is the same, in modeling, when they made a part slightly bigger or larger, they just stick with it, instead of changing it since it might require much more work and budget.(Bandai was a relatively small company back then)
The 0083 crew was mainly from the Sentinel crew, who were mainly working in the modeling industry, and thus are familiar to that industry's scaling, thus they stuck with those numbers.

Looking at everything before 0083, they don't seem to care about the size too much, you got colossal RX-78, way too large Gwadan(about double the size of Dorgosse Giar and 4 times of Argama), super big Sazabi cockpit block in Nu's hands, a not wide enough Tivvay hatch, etc.
Actually, they even just stop giving size numbers for the warships in F91.
I guess they didn't learn about caring for the size until 0083, 0080 already did a pretty good job, but they still got strange things going on.(Tomino also pointed out that colony should not have a clear sky but the other side of the colony.)
I think Sunrise ignore everything just for better looking scenes, and unless it is a production like MS Igloo where it is actually harder to not stick with the numbers. A friend of mine whose more familiar with the old animation making process(and was in the industry) said that it is better to deform things in animation, human eyes are designed that way.

That is why I usually highly doubt the animation correctness.


Anyway, back to the core booster, its seems like 20m is reasonable, but what about compared with the RX-78-2?
http://space.uwants.com/attachments/201 ... 01H6rB.jpg
This is scaling of the RX-78-2 to fit the core fighter, from different model line art and on the right, the approximately scaled 18m tall Kunio, GFF and Katoki versions.
The left line arts make them seem like 20m or so units, notice they are not standing straight, but their legs are at some angle apart,
These no way we can fit a 8.2m long core fighter into these, they are just too slim around their waist, good diet, I guess?
So I think we need to take into account the size of RX-78-2 and resize the core fighter to be a little bit small than 8.2m, or it would be too wide even for the fatter Kunio RX-78-2.
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Re: The Bigness of Smaller Things

On the one hand, sometimes-unreliable animation; on the other hand, numbers made up by a magazine intern on a late-night deadline 30 years ago... what are you gonna do? :-)

Incidentally, the Gundam 0083 numbers aren't the same as the dimensions of the old model kits. Sunrise changed them for that production, and they stayed changed. At this point, I think I've demonstrated that in a lot of cases, Sunrise is surprisingly consistent with the sizes of things in the animation - even allowing for the usual exaggeration and distortion.

As for the Core Fighter, it's true that an 8.6-meter Core Fighter is a very tight fit, and pretty much every time Bandai actually has to fit one inside an actual toy or model they end up shrinking it. The transforming Core Fighters that come with the MG and PG kits are usually scaled to just over 7 meters. But the notion of an 8.6-meter Core Fighter is one of the few things that every source has always agreed on - well, except for the U.C. Hard Graph specs, which are still too big for the MG and PG size. Once you call that into question, there's really no consensus left at all!

-- Mark
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Re: The Bigness of Smaller Things

toysdream wrote:On the one hand, sometimes-unreliable animation; on the other hand, numbers made up by a magazine intern on a late-night deadline 30 years ago... what are you gonna do? :-)

Incidentally, the Gundam 0083 numbers aren't the same as the dimensions of the old model kits. Sunrise changed them for that production, and they stayed changed. At this point, I think I've demonstrated that in a lot of cases, Sunrise is surprisingly consistent with the sizes of things in the animation - even allowing for the usual exaggeration and distortion.

As for the Core Fighter, it's true that an 8.6-meter Core Fighter is a very tight fit, and pretty much every time Bandai actually has to fit one inside an actual toy or model they end up shrinking it. The transforming Core Fighters that come with the MG and PG kits are usually scaled to just over 7 meters. But the notion of an 8.6-meter Core Fighter is one of the few things that every source has always agreed on - well, except for the U.C. Hard Graph specs, which are still too big for the MG and PG size. Once you call that into question, there's really no consensus left at all!

-- Mark
I'll say, let's have fun picking out the bugs? XD

Since the MSs are the main character of the show, I'd say stick with the RX-78-2 spec and keep it at that, so a 7m core fighter will make a 17m core booster.
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Re: The Bigness of Smaller Things

Okay, but let's see if we can make that math more nerd-precise! I vote we measure out the MG and PG Core Fighter schematics, and see whether or not they're actually a consistent size. :-)

Starting with the PG version: The kit manual doesn't show the Core Fighter and Gundam next to each other in the same scale, so I just measured it with a ruler. I get a main body length of 115mm; then, based on the schematics in the manual, I get an overall length of 122mm including tail fin, main body width of 45mm, wingspan of 85mm. In 1/60 scale, that comes to an overall length of 7.3m, main body length of 6.9m, main body width of 2.7m, wingspan of 5.1m.

That's 85% of the official length, which does indeed scale to a 17.0m Core Booster. And perhaps we need to scale down the Jet Core Booster as well, to 13.6m - hey, that's close enough to the old Roman Album spec that we could maybe say they were listing specs for the Jet Core Booster by mistake.

Interesting. Next! :-)

-- Mark
Last edited by toysdream on Mon Feb 25, 2013 3:02 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: The Bigness of Smaller Things

Just out of curiosity with the core fighters, would a RG core fighter measurement help at all? Or at least be relevant? I've still got mine. If it would happen to help at all I could measure it once I got home from classes. I don't know if the proportions for it would be any better than any other model, but yeah.
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