The New Era for RENDY'S BLOG, Yet Again!

"I'm sorry, the old RENDY'S BLOG can't come to the phone right now."

Ladies and gentlemen, after years of blogging, I present you the new RENDY'S BLOG, now with improved new look and better coloring, plus an additional feature to search for my posts! I know that I advertised this as "3.0." but looking back, I believe I am now at "4.1." - Super Falcon Punch was the 1.0., this blog was founded with this new url as the 2.0., then came GARAGE-R which made it 3.0., and finally the re-designed RENDY'S BLOG which made it 4.0., these changes vs. the first 4.0. justified the "4.1." in its name, which I would rather use than 5.0..

We Dig Giant Robots (Or We Didn't?)

A quick fan art I made for this post, from the screencaps of the actual video here, uploaded by MegaBots Inc.'s YouTube channel. All images featured here are screencaps from the same YT channel.

It's been a very long time I haven't had my post again here while I still actively post on my fandom blog. Prior to the last post, I've written my take on both Teen Choice Awards and Primetime Emmy Awards, two awfully different coins of award shows, as well as some SpoilerTV competitions. I was thinking about posting something related to SEGA's newly-announced game Sega World Drivers Championship which had its test event in June. The game is basically the arcade racer with a simcade feeling and Super GT license, featuring three GT500 race cars we know from Nissan, Honda, and Lexus, plus three different GT300 cars: two JAF-GT racers, namely the apr Prius GT300 and the Subaru BRZ GT300, and one Mother Chassis car the VivaC GT86. Unfortunately, as time passed and I focused on my final paper's proposal, I didn't have time, especially with the fact that my original intention was to showcase my new WIP TMUF skins of various GT500 cars available on the Carpark.

But finally I've found my light on the edge of the tunnel as I finished my proposal and having it accepted by both supervisors so that I could "green light" my topic by inputting all those stuffs in a computer system to have my supervision permit for my final paper (?) printed by Friday (in September) at the latest, allowing me to officially begin the endless sessions of revisions by the supervisors as soon as possible. This was just one step done, the next step would be harder as I only have six months to graduate from my college now. Right now, revisions are currently underway...

To "celebrate" it, I'm giving myself a go for a blog post here, with some kick of most recent offerings: giant robots. More particularly, a duel between giant robots. In case you missed it, a duel between USA's MegaBots and Japan's Suidobashi Heavy Industries took place days ago. It was quite a hype when MegaBots challenged Suidobashi's own Kuratas two years ago which took internet by storm, and now with all preparations were done, the wait is finally over.

Going Three-dimensional, Don't Care the Poly Count!

In the future, replaying a Turbo Sliders race will be much more exciting than before! (Image: Mike Nike)

Originally, this would be a post dedicated to one tool that sparked my new way of interest on Turbo Sliders after a long time: the 3D TSR Replayer created by Mike Nike. But with doing 3D model on the fly as well for use with that tool once it's released, I delved deep to there.

Actually, the low poly-style art in the 3D TSR Replayer triggered me for a couple of things; within the Eid al-Fitr festivity after observing a full month fasting of Ramadan, Steam Summer Sale commenced, and it ran until the 5th of July. Among the games sold with a nice discount, two got my attention, namely Mini Motor Racing EVO, which I bought first a couple of days after Eid while servicing my motorcycle, and Little Racers Street the next couple of days later. Both games were sold within the IDR 10,000 region (which is about three-quarter a buck in USD) and were the reason I had to buy Steam Wallet credits. I bought the former for the fact that it has a track editor which can be used to create stuffs you can think of, and the latter's reason was because of the art direction, but at the same time it started a fire in me to create some low-poly cars on Blender, the start of it all.

A Fandom's Path of Defiance

(Personal fan art created by yours truly)

Occasional ideas flow once again from the depths of Real Racing 3. I can't be more happier than this when I completed the final goal of the game's newest event "Path of Defiance" which pitted me to get one of the motorsports' icons: the Mazda 787B. Just what I needed to complete my race car collections. Right now, I've made my call to skip the XJR9 event in favor of the Porsche 962C one because I kinda want to make a Taisan Starcard 962C livery whenever possible. Back to the special event, the first days were normal until I reached the sixth day where things got intense in Catalunya. But, the last two days were more forgiving than the day in question despite having a far lower PR from the recommended number.

But knowing the event's name "Path of Defiance" reminds me of something that qualified as such. No, it's not something motorsport-related sadly, but this time it's related to fandoms: there was a story where a TV show nobody would heard of blazed its way to the victory in a fandom competition, going as far as defeating 63 of the "usual suspects" in process, even managed to topple the reigning champions. To embrace such a story, one has to flashback months ago where the mentioned miracle took place: the 2017 edition of E!Online's TV's Top Couple competition.

Le Mans' Bizarre Adventures

Image by Jayson Fong, part of the #24ofLM24 project. You can replay his live stream on these arts here, while you can support him by buying all the prints of this project on his site!

Just when I thought that this year's Le Mans would be as crazy as last year, the craziness level went to the roof this year, cranked up to eleven, maybe twelve? Yes, we have the same LMP1 winning: Porsche, which is effectively its third hattrick since its return in 2014, and yes, Toyota failed Le Mans again, but outside that, there's plenty of crazy for this year's race that's worth talking about here.

The 83rd running of 24 Hours of Le Mans featured Porsche and Toyota fighting head-to-head for the outright victory in the LMP1 category (poor ByKolles though), with the abundant entry of LMP2 featuring Orecas and friends with Gibson engines for everyone in contention for the win, five works teams with attitude in the GTE Pro class were ready to give their all, and then we have the GTE Am class. Throughout the span of 24 hours, going from the broad daylight to the darkness of night time and day again, teams combined not only speed, but consistency, clean racing, teamwork, and of course reliability to succeed.