Spotlight: Jazz

finally finished with him, and on the day we get leaks of the new generations Jazz as well. woot! looking forward to 2011!

and with working Lightpiping:

Thanks for looking!

little blue dude.

when i bought this little dude in the store i kinda fell in love with him. 

from the Hunt For the Decepticons line of transformers toys comes this little dude named breacher who transforms into a tiny blue APC:

seriously, i know why i bought this, it's because he looks a little like Roller--that little car thing that came with G1 Optimus Prime. a really pleasant surprise!

from now on you shall be roller!

vehicle-mode wise he's pretty good and detailed, with a lot of layered surfaces on him like hatches, windows, and panels he's pretty visually interesting. plus, turn him over and the robot is pretty well hidden in this mode. 

transformation wise-- there's a lot of unfolding with this little guy, at first the transformation from bot to vehicle  will be frustrating with parts that only snap in place thanks to opposing push and pull forces coming from parts that don't seem to fit but actually have the right kind of elasticity to them to clip together. to put it into perspective, drop him from any height and he might split open like an egg... and that would take care of half the transformation you'd need to do to turn him into a robot.

speaking of which he's a handsome robot, mostly blue with white parts to break the monotony what i love about him is he's more classic looking than movie influenced in this mode, most particularly on his face which i'll touch on later.

from the side he still looks a little solid, having a good amount of bulk in all the right places, but

look at him from the back and he seems to be missing a huge chunk of armor. it's honestly ugly in my opinion.

going back to his whole "looks more classic" deal, it's most visible in the face. a clear, humanoid, anime-ish face with a nose a complete pair of eyes ans a scowling mouth. he reminds me of a certain transformer but the name escapes me. 

when it comes to articulation he's a lot better off than most scouts, and even some deluxes. i'd swear he was meant for a bigger pricepoint. and he comes with a weapon! unlike other scouts from recent years.

has a nice solid center of gravity, though balance is still a little off in some places.but damn, he can pull off a pose! and his joints are tight, a little too tight even. i'm a little afraid too much strain on his joints could cause them to warp and tear off, as the joints are made from a softer ABS than the rest of the body

overall i'd give this figure a 8 out of 10 in regards to a scout class toy, surprisingly good figure and well worth the money i shelled out. 

--Eisen 2010

moar work

okay, so i'm excited. can you blame me? :P just need to finish off the knees then paint em and the small details like the rims and exhausts and he's done. i actially love him better than my 2.0 version :D

getting there.

almost done with him! just a little more filling in and smoothing out at this point. then painting for next week. 

botmode pics:

altmode pics:

head's up!

managed to work on the head a bit more (note the black is not the final black) here you can see it mounted on one of many spare prowls that i got (dunno why people insist on giving it to me as a gift) managed to retain the light piping on the head, so hooray for that.

the fit is tight, had to mod the cavity a bit (both for this one and the jazz body)

more updates

got a bit more work done on Jazz, also took my G1 jazz out of the bin to have a look. G1's been through some rough storage, he has some chips on his paint but it's cool.

here's a close-up of the somewhat finished hood. man i've forgotten how many layers of primer and sheets of 300 grit sandpaper have gone into smoothening this out.

and started work on the head as well. took some inspiration from Symon AKA Tcracker from Sector70 and Radicons, and went with a modded sideswipe head.

 what to do with the now headless sideswipe i do not know. i plan to give him a clear plastic visor and retain the light-piping of the original head as well. 

that's all for now i guess. 

thanks for looking

EDIT:

 a little more work. added the needed bulk to the head, now just need to sand it down flush and clean up the details. the clear visor has already been cut from transparent plastic. and tinted blue so i don't lose the tiny thing. like the headlights it will probably be put on last.

slooooow WIP

okay. christ. how long has it been? seven months? anyway here's progress on a WIP Jazz custom i'm doing, he won't be G1 looking but rather a street racer type of car:

i'd say i'm 50% done with the build, i just need to locate a Botcon Jazz headcast to use for him then it's off for painting. since then i've scrapped the idea of using decals on this guy.

Iron Man 2 Comic series Advanced and Arctic armor review

a month or so back i mentioned that the marvel universe Iron Man Extremis armor was my favorite 1:18 iteration of the shellhead... well i just got these guys at Toys 'R' us and boy, they're giving him a run for his money:

fresh comic series armors have come to shore and these guys are the first ones i nab from the shelves. now i don't normally buy remolds unless they're A. twins or B. different enough from each other. the best example of this personal dogma is my TF classics Sunstreaker and sideswipe. i had to have them, since they are in fiction twins and they looked different enough. but why buy the arctic armor of this mold when the Advanced (IE: the Tin Man) armor is rockin enough on it's own?

well that's because the arctic armor is outwardly Extremis. 

i'm not kidding. there are enough design clues to show. from the lines of the face, to the shoulder armor to the hands, all of them have similar qualities that constitute the Extremis motif.

 i really would not mind seeing him in red and gold. in fact i may consider repainting a spare into just that.

now moving on to the quality of the mold, the sculpting is just excellent, kudos to whoever is in charge with this line, you've done nothing but please the fanboy in me with your comic offerings.

 the Advanced armor is just so accurate it's crazy. while yes this armor has varied in look depending on the artist, this figure is a fairly good meshing of all the designs, drawing heavily on the Marvel legends counterpart and surpassing it in execution:

but here's the kicker, articulation-wise the mold has it's good points and somewhat meh moments.

the head is on a swivel/ball joint and hinged neck which means it can look straight up no problem and can even move sideways. the arms though are on a swivel-hinge like the rest of the line but once you come to the elbow it's just a hinge. you can't move it sideways which kinda bums me out as it limits the arm poses he can do convincingly. the wrists are on a swivel. the chest pivot is unobstructed on both molds and the thighs have this new, bigger ball-swivel/hinge joints like what you see on Titanium man, which would be cool had not the thighs be so tightened with paint. i had to subject both figures to hot water to loosen it up a bit, but that's all. it seems to be common in the mold. from the thigh down it's the same as the rest of the line: double hinged knees and swivel/hinge feet.

paintwise i had to go through for of the Advanced armor to find a fairly good one that didn't need too much retouching. the colors on the Arctic armor though makes the flaws less noticeable so i just snatched the first one i saw with no fuss.

bottomline: the sculpts are great for comic armors and very good interpretations of the contemporary hardware Tony sported a few years back, and the arctic armor, while sorta left-field has potential for an extremis repaint.  while there are some subtractions in articulation and problems with the joints, these two are recommended additions to any fan's mini-armory. 

7 out of 10 for both.

back.

thought i might need some practice getting back to my Transformers stuff:

WERK IN PROWGRASS

Britain's Greatest Action Figure!

guess what i've been reading.

here's to Paul Grist! Britain's Greatest Cartoonist!

recipe:
Head- ROC Flash
Torso- Comic Snake Eyes
Upper arms- Para-Viper
Lower Arms- ROC Deep Six
Hands- Commando Snake Eyes
Upper Legs- Crimson Guardsman
Lower legs- Commando Snake Eyes