Hero Factory 2012

[Rocketbilly]

Odd... I thought the Hero Recon Creator was being closed? Maybe it's being left up for designing and not buying? Or am I missing something? I did just browse through the text.

Yeah, they're keeping the Recon Team builder online, with some more pieces for us to play around with. No ordering them though, of course.

Edited March 27, 2012 by Rocketbilly

[Masta' Blasta']

Yeah, they're keeping the Recon Team builder online, with some more pieces for us to play around with. No ordering them though, of course.

Okay, I figured as much.

[Shakar]

Hero Recon Team being no longer buyable makes me a bit sad, but the new version of the program could prove to be really fun. The current version, for fairly obvious reasons, allows for limited possibilities (for example, all Heroes having wide torsos, long lower arms and Stormer 2.0/Rocka 3.0 lower legs).

With the "buy an IRL model" option removed, I hope they make more frames/bones choices available: choosing between wide/narrow torsos, "standard" lower legs/long lower legs, long lower arms/shorter lower arms (as seen in Surge, Evo, Stormer in their 2.0 forms and Stringer 3.0's right arm, along all 9 Euro Breakout Heroes). And of course, the option to choose between building a 9 Euro Hero or a 13 Euro one (although, well, that still depends on bone choices).

I know there's LDD for this stuff, but Hero Recon Team's building system is so simple, intuitive and fun. It just needs a higher customizability.

[Masta' Blasta']

I know there's LDD for this stuff, but Hero Recon Team's building system is so simple, intuitive and fun. It just needs a higher customizability.

[/b]

I'm personally hoping for a Hero Factory and BIONICLE section in LDD. Thought this likely won't happen, it would be quite awesome. This seems like a fair way to get more BIONICLE pieces into LDD...

[Front]

Had to test how to use live view on my new camera, to set a proper tilt action on my special camera lens. Both heads are more or less in focus.

Hope you like it.

[Shakar]

That looks really nice, Front. I never was a huge fan of Waspix, but two of them together look cool, and of course the shot is great.

Anyway, I noticed something about Speeda Demon- the bike, on the saddle area, has a ball socket that attachs to SD's "crotch ball joint", securely connecting him to the bike. Nothing too mind blowing, but it is something they've never done, so I thought it was worth pointing out.

[xxlrocka]

Had to test how to use live view on my new camera, to set a proper tilt action on my special camera lens. Both heads are more or less in focus.

Hope you like it.

That looks awesome. Now make a picture of furno battling waspix.

[Rocketbilly]

That looks really nice, Front. I never was a huge fan of Waspix, but two of them together look cool, and of course the shot is great.

Agreed on the photograph opinion. I was never a huge fan of Waspix either, until I bought a cheap one for parts. I built it out of curiosity and liked it so much I ended up buying a second one for parts because I couldn't bring myself to break it up. Now it is one of my favourite figures - albeit with Gorast wings instead of the standard long transparent yellow armour pieces - that's the only drawback to the figure in my opinion. A great set all told.

Edited March 30, 2012 by Rocketbilly

[xxlrocka]

albeit with Gorast wings instead of the standard long transparent yellow armour pieces

To make it look like a real wasp.

[Shakar]

Maybe it's because he's the sole Winter hero I'm missing, but Furno is really growing on me lately. The white used to bother me, but not so much anymore. The most annoying things actually are those pesky dark bley bones (although I may keep them on Stringer) and the tr. orange shell. Replacing them with black and red respectively creates a surprisingly well thought out colour scheme: red/white armour, neon green eyes and a silver armoured arm.

He totally needs something in the back, however. I'm giving him a silver foot for now, but the best thing IMO would really be a silver MTIS like on the show, as it gives the idea of a backpack fairly well.

On a side note, yesterday I got my Bricklink order which contained the pieces I was missing to build the Furno Bike. Man, that thing is awesome. Stormer 2.0 is riding it for now, but I want to downsize Stormer XL quite a bit, so he may become thr new rider. Either way, the bike was always meant for Stormer, so I changed some of the red/orange/tr flame orange pieces to blue ones. And since it is built from scratch, many light bley beams from the original set have been replaced by black ones. Overall, it's not a fully faithful replica of the original set, but I like it better this way. I may post some pics later in the day.

[Omicron Squad Leader]

Some of you may have already seen this, but I thought I'd post it here as it's pretty darn cool.

My Marvel Ultrabuild figures arrived today, and this was an ad featured in all three of their instruction booklets.

[Jouster]

Some of you may have already seen this, but I thought I'd post it here as it's pretty darn cool.

My Marvel Ultrabuild figures arrived today, and this was an ad featured in all three of their instruction booklets.

Core Hunter is pretty badass. :3

[dviddy]

Oh yeah I kept forgetting to post that.

[Cirkit]

Core Hunter is pretty badass. :3

That pretty much sums it up there, mate. :)

Don't you just love how much Stringer's tool looks like a guitar? Even in this ad it looks awesome.

Voltix keeps growing on me. He looks better in this pose here, but that tentacle still bugs me. Is it meant to be a whip?

And Bulk looks great too. Those guns.. ahh..

Does anyone notice that Bulk and CH's heads look a darker shade of red than usual? I wonder..

I am even more excited now for these guys..

[Dorek]

Core Hunter still looks horribly generic, but I'm hoping the color layering and overall feel will help up his appeal. Bulk is definitely growing on me, and Voltix looks wintastic as usual. Stringer looks cool enough with the theme, but being a small Hero is still putting me off a little bit.

[Cirkit]

'Wintastic'. Nice.

Stringer's size is a little disappointing, but look at Evo, or Surge. Size didn't stop them being great Heroes.

I imagine if the issue was addressed in the story line, they (or Stringer) would say that he's already cool enough at the size he's at, kind of like in Savage Planet with the animal upgrades.

[MontanaVista]

That is an awesome ad for the upcoming sets!! Stringer looks amazing, and Core Hunter is must get. But, if I didnt know any better, Bulk could pass as a villian.. Remove the Hero Core and cuffs and I would confuse him as a villain.. I think that some of the Hero designs are a real stretch in this wave.

Cheers

[Kalhiki]

With them being revealed like that, it gives me hopes that they'll have an earlier release. Don't know if summer sets have appeared in instruction booklets at earlier times in the past before, though.

Anyway, all the pictures look fantastic. Voltix will probably be one of my first purchases. Core Hunter and Stringer look nice too. Still not really interested in Bulk, though. Shame since Bulk is one of my favorite Heroes...

But Nex is a medic, and I'm a sucker for medic characters.

Kalhiki

[Studs Not On Top]

Adding more silver wold make Bulk look heroic, but it's a nice color transition from head to toe.

If I had the parts I'd make all of my heroes villain-sized.

Core Hunter looks great! The only thing I'd add would be hero cores to that ammo belt.

Great to see more pictures! I hope the finalized CGI comes out soon.

[xxlrocka]

Voltix keeps growing on me. He looks better in this pose here, but that tentacle still bugs me. Is it meant to be a whip?

The tentacle is meant to be a whip. Oh, and core hunter looks freakin' awesome in that picture. The way his eyes are glowing....though I think I've already seen the picture before. But I was not able to get all the details in it as I saw it in a review and it came and went quickly. Thanks for the picture!

[Shakar]

The sets are posed in the exact way they were in the first leaked pictures we had, in the catalogue which revealed Speeda Demon and on the packaging at Toy Fair. So I guess those poses are going to be the ones featured in the final box art. I looove the Bulk/CH background, by the way- red sky makes every fight epic. Red sky!Makuhero City is probably my favourite battle background this year, actually.

I agree on Bulk not having enough silver, personally I'm going to switch the titanium metallic 5M shells with silver ones.

On the issue of the 9 Euro heroes quartet- I like the decision from an economic point of view, if all heroes (minus

Stormer, I mean) were 13 euro sets it would have been way too expensive.

But I do think that the new Breakout torso plate looks better on the 13 Euro heroes, and since I prefer all Heroes to be at roughly the same size, my aim is making Nex and Stringer taller, like I already did with Surge and Evo.

It's mostly about changing the leg bones and cladding: the arms length can remain unchanged if you use the Stormer 2.0 lower legs.

But enough talking- I'm going to post some Evo and Surge pics later in the day. Should I make another topic? I don't want to flood this one with my stuff.

[Aanchir]

Core Hunter still looks horribly generic, but I'm hoping the color layering and overall feel will help up his appeal. Bulk is definitely growing on me, and Voltix looks wintastic as usual. Stringer looks cool enough with the theme, but being a small Hero is still putting me off a little bit.

I'm thinking Stringer's size might be partially to ensure that his guitar is an adequate size next to him. Not sure how much of a difference it makes, but when I built the guitar on LDD it looked better (to me, anyway) next to a 21-module hero than next to a 24-module hero.

By the way, I also did some graph paper doodles (yes, I am a nerd) and realized that Stormer XL's proportions are actually pretty good, at least as much as the 24-module heroes. Like the 24-module heroes, he could potentially be a couple modules shorter, and his arms could potentially be a module or so longer, but overall his physique looks pretty decent. His proportions are certainly better than the extremely long legs and comparably short torso of Fire Lord style sets. By the way, he's about 30 modules tall by my reckoning, so about two heads taller than a 24-module Hero (10 heads high). Not too shabby IMO.

I still think I might end up modding my 24-module heroes a module or two shorter so that the legs are more in proportion to the body, but since I'm so impressed overall with Stormer XL I might decide against it. I wouldn't want him to tower over all his teammates by such a huge margin.

Speaking of Stormer XL, one irony I observed recently-- looking back, wouldn't Lucas Valor technically have been the first XL hero we saw?

[Cirkit]

Great Lhikan, you're right!

But as his bio doesn't really mention anything about being bigger than the other Heroes, I'd assume he's a big build with an average in-story size, if you get my meaning. Still, it's something that I was surprised that was overlooked.

[CabooseBM]

Great Lhikan, you're right!

But as his bio doesn't really mention anything about being bigger than the other Heroes, I'd assume he's a big build with an average in-story size, if you get my meaning. Still, it's something that I was surprised that was overlooked.

Well, it's not uncommon for plastic toys to be of unrealistic size, if you catch my meaning.

[optimus99]

I don't know if someone said this already but the breakout show is coming on in the US at 8:00 eastern time on Easter sunday.

Edited April 7, 2012 by optimus99