Hello, my first post/thread here even though I've sulked about for a while. Normally I keep to myself and do custom action figure but I recently got an inspiration to try my hand at a Joe/TF crossover and purchased an oversized Optimus Prime that looks to be at a close 1/18th scale. The problem is that the joints are too weak to keep it in vehicle mode or to stand on it's own. It looks like I'm going to have to do a major overhaul to it and I was wondering if anyone has had experience with working with one of these? Right now I'm guessing I'll need to do a joint replacement and I have an old Unicron figure I was going to cannibalize but before I do I wanted to know if I'm over-complicating the process? I've looked through the custom threads the past few days and have gotten some good ideas on how to tackle it but since this is my first TF custom I was hoping for someone here might have done something similar especially with the oversized figures? Thanks for the help in advance, J
Hi! And welcome! I wish you luck on your first TF custom. To help you with your custom idea, it might help to know which Optimus Prime toy it is. Can you post any pix, or a link to one? Good luck!
First off, welcome. . You should post some of your work. I'm sure people will love seeing it. I haven't seen that figure itself but for loose joints my first impulse is to grab floor polish or super glue to tighten them. I'm not sure how well that may work on larger scales but it is definitely easier. I might also look at adding some strips of plastic inside a joint if necessary or perhaps using a bit of green stuff depending on the thing. But I'm far from an expert.
I was gonna mention superglue. But depending on the quality of the knockoff, it may not work or make things worse. The plastic might be really cheap, and super glue may make it brittle or stress it too much & snap it. Or, the plastic may not hold the glue well & gum it up. Or it might work great. You never know with KOs. I had 2 knockoff Classics Megatron nerf mode figures. One was pretty hearty but didn't have the proper joints. it didn't have any ratchet joints. The other toy had the proper joints but was so brittle it snapped in pieces everywhere. It's all about what they use & decide to copy from the original figure.
Thank you all for responding, I wasn't expecting this many replies so quickly so lets see if I can clarify the situation... I've been looking over the forum agreement to make sure I'm not going to break any rules and while I have not found anything that's not to say I'm going to, so, sorry in advance to the mods. The figure was bought from Sirtoys and he is a 50cm oversized ROTF Prime, here is the link... Optimus Prime Oversized 50cm - TF-Movie - SirToys.com He seems to be an enlarged version of the smaller public release and predominantly made from ABS plastics, which is good if I want to glue any styrene sheets/gubbinz to it but for joint tension its a little iffy. The only ratchet joints I can find on it so far are the hips, everything else are hinge-based. It does literally fall out of shape when I pick it up (truck form) its as if the weight of the limbs are too much for the clips and such to hold it in place. The more I look at this the more I think that I've bitten off more then I can chew. I haven't started taking it apart yet as I wanted a good plan of attack before I began disassembling the figure so nothing to show off but it was intended to be a nothing more then a repaint of the figure which is starting to look more like a heavy joint refit; a lot of hinges and ball-sockets replacements to add tension to hold a form. And to Rexidus; Sorry, but nothing too impressive to show off with the figure customs, I kinda thought that if it wasn't TF related it would be rude to post them here. But if you are interested you can check out my sculpting blog for stuff that I do for a living... MONSTER 0 Not exactly what you were asking about but about as close as I can get at this time. Thanks to everyone for their input so far! J
Wow. A movie prime. LOTS of detail on those. But after checking out your AWESOME sculpt work, details seem to be a specialty of yours! You'll be fine repainting him. As for the joints, how hearty does the plastic feel? Does it feel soft and rubbery? Cheap & brittle? Or like "hasbro-grade" plastic? He looks pretty well constructed(and considering the toy he's KOed from, it'll need to be with such a complex transformation), so superglue may work fine. Try some on a joint someplace & just wiggle it back & forth till it dries. If it gets tighter, then huzzah!
Heh! Yeah, movie Prime. To do the custom I want it had to be the long nosed semi rig. And yes; tons of little swivels on load-bearing supports which is going to be the issue. After looking it over the knees and waist are going to be the weakest points in robot mode and just generally keeping all the panels locked into place is a problem in vehicle mode. Also the legs keep wanting to fold out from under him while he's a truck so I may have to work out some way to fix that. The non painted plastic (grey) feels pretty close to a straight-up ABS plastic maybe somewhere between cheap and Hasbro grade. I think the super glue trick might work on the hinges and he's got plenty of those to give it a try on. Thanks for the compliment on the sculpts but since I work in such tiny proportions something of this Prime's magnitude seems a bit daunting, I got a feeling this is going to take a while. Thank you again for the assistance! J
OK, I'm getting ready to take this mother on, I'm just waiting for some 1/60 articulated hands to come in and the disassembling and repainting will begin. fingers crossed.
im actually working on something like this too, collaborating with someone (actually i commissioned someone to repaint it and then i add extra touches and detail myself afterwards) the guy i commissioned is a gundam model kit painting expert, and we evaluated articulated hands for prime, and decided that 1/60 gun-pla MG hands are abit too small for this KO size. i instead went for a pair of TFC hercules hands and worked great in terms of proportions here's a WIP (well, 90% done anyways) pic
Dammit! I knew I was taking a risk buying those. *Sigh* Oh well, maybe for another project. Thank you for the info, I mentioned in my first post that I've got an Armada Unicron I was going to cannibalize that still has it's hands. I haven't dug him up yet because I thought they were going to be too large but sounds like they will be closer to size then the 1/60th. By the way, is there a place to get just the Hercules hands? Thank you for the info!
if you do some research and look around google for any other KO oversized rotf prime customs that have articulated hands, most of them use 1/60 MG hands but all of them look abit small and thin compared to the rest of the figure i also thought about unicron hands (and primus) too but in the end went for hercules because of the claw-y fingertips do not look right on prime i did it the hard way, bought an extra set or hercules arm members, stole the hands and connector, and sold the bots incomplete. luckily someone took them you may wanna try perfect effect's combiner wars hands too. and other similar sized 3rd party combiners and see if there are KO versions released
after reading your first posts, i can answer a few questions for you in terms of joints and stability, since i have the toy and have dissected him myself too - there are double ratchet joints on the hips, for raising the leg and doing partial splits - shoulder has double ratchet joints as well - the armpit connection allows for a bit of a backward shoulderblade action - elbows are hinged for swivel and ratcheted for raising forearm up - original toy has knee joints but for the KO version the joint is fused into one big long leg piece without any knee joints. most likely because the oversizing of the toy causes it to be too top heavy and even ratcheted knee joints will not hold the toy up so they give up on knee articulation in the first place - ankle is on ball joint - head rotates left and right but keep in mind that there are a crap load of wires inside the head. my wiring doesnt work for some reason after the custom is done so i just painted his eyes metallic blue so granted that the knee is fused into one big piece, i have a hard time understand why you said the toy has trouble standing. if the ball joints are too loose on the ankles, take the ball joint socket out (unscrew the feet from the side), apply some nail polish on the ball joint and pop everything back in here's a pic i took a couple of days ago, with the arms totally disassembled, and legs by themselves (can be broken down)
The ankle is a huge problem with his left foot, the cup for the ankle is squirting the ball socket out and it just falls off. I'm pretty sure that by taking the two halves of the foot apart and re seating the cup I should get it to stay. This is also the part that when in truck form he kinda begins to fall apart, that whole section of the undercarriage nearly ejects itself and he kinda crumbles. Some of the other problems are the shoulders (in robot form) do not want to lock into the cab/chest. Initially I thought that the pincers that grab the tabs in the shoulders were too loose but it's the opposite; they are too tight and they keep squeezing the tab out. I think if I maybe shave just a fraction of plastic off on either the tab or pincers they will grab and hold. It was kind of a spectacular domino effect when I transformed him into robot and stood him up for the first time; the shoulders almost simultaneously ejected themselves from the chest which popped the waist peg loose and because of the weak ankle he just sorta tumbled off the table. I think he just needs some attention to a couple of key points and he should be solid again but since I spent a bit of money on him I wasn't comfortable with just cleaving into it and hoping for the best so I really appreciate everyone's help with this, makes me feel better about just cleaving into it and hoping for the best. HA! I'm checking out the hands you suggested, thank you for the info.
...Irritated. Just got in my "articulated" 1/60 hands. Seems I have a drastically different idea of what that term means then G-Systems does. Looks as if to keep the cost down I'm going to have to make my own. Luckily there are threads on how to do that here.
Yup, too small. At a rough guess I think they are about 20-25% smaller then the hands Prime came with so when you and your friend guessed that 1/60 hands wouldn't fit he bill you were most correct. But what got me was that the only articulation these new hands I ordered have is a ball-and-socket where the finger meets the palm and that's it. I wrongly assumed that there would be pivot joints in the fingers themselves so they could grip things, point or form a fist. Not sure what the G-System's hands are supposed to accomplish with wiggly, straight fingers. Grrr. Oh well, I'll figure something out.
try these Perfect Effet - PC-01 Perfect Combiner Upgrade Set - Black Version i cannot vouch for the size since i dont have one myself yet (though i do i have a set shipping but dunno when it will arrive) but if it doesnt work out im sure someone on this bbs will take it off your hands
Thanks! I have been looking at those since you suggested then a few posts back and I'm trying to sell myself on the round fingers.
