Starscream
Rating: 10
baseq2/players/starscream
Intro
This is Starscream one of the first wave of Decepticon Jets from the Transformers television series and later movie. He's basically your everyday-scheming-evil-side-kick-to-the-evil-leader character. He was always whining and moaning and getting slapped down. He also had a set of cronies lieutenants who were the exact same robots except for the paint schemes. This made making toys and animating them quite easy and holds over for our purposes as the author has got the whole set here, via skin changes.
Originality
I always find it hard to discuss originality on models that are inspired by pop culture. This is not to say I dislike this, my own models fall into this category. I do tend to grade on the uniqueness of the choice and the appropriateness. Case in point, there's probably 20 people working on Klingon models right now. Pretty appropriate but not real unique. Starscream finds itself doing well in both categories. The evil robotic theme character obviously meshes well within the Q2 arena. A lot of the community can probably recognize this character, yet most probably had to scrape a few brain cells to get the full memories of the series to come back. This makes it a decent choice on originality.
The Model
The model is exceptional. There isn't a polygon that is wasted or extra. The only place that possibly could have used a bit of optimization is in the canopy on the models chest. However this is nit-picky and probably not fair. Especially since the model was done in Phillip Martin's Quake Modeler. This is an excellent program, which I use myself, but it can be difficult. The model has a high count, but as the community seems to be upping the benchmark to 800 polys, it falls comfortably under this count. The weapon model is the invisible variety. But as Starscream has guns included on his arms, I don't feel the lack of anything else detracts from the overall model. An excellent and efficient job of modeling the character, 5 stars.
Score: Ten
The Animations
The animations are a bit shaky, or "jerky" as the author states. He contributes this to the difficulties of his tools. In deathmatch they don't really come across as bad as they do in the tools to view it. Since this is really were it matters and the author states up front that they aren't the best, I only dock him a letter grade, 4 stars. [ The ability to objective critique your own work counts a lot in my book. ]
Score: Eight
The Skin
The skins offer a full selection of characters. Each is named for the different lieutenant it depicts. There's even two pain/damaged skins and a clan skin included. As these stared out as cartoons, the skins are somewhat simple, but they have a little more shading to them that helps set the model in the Q2 world. If only the original Starscream skin was included, I probably only would have given 4 stars, but the variety and overall professionalism of them, 5 stars.
Score: Ten
Sounds
No sounds are included as the author currently is running a contest for the sound pack. Once he has selected them, we'll review them. :)
Visible Weapons Support
N/A
Pack Inclusion
Starscream meets all the requirements for the pack. It will be included in the next pack. It is available for download separately, as well.
review by rogue13
author name Rikki Knight
tris.md2
Vertices 531
Mapping Vertices 696
Polygons 742
Skin size 416x200
Skin Wasted Space ?
weapon.md2
Vertices 3
Mapping Vertices 3
Polygons 1
Skin size 320x200
Skin Wasted Space ?
relevant links
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