kind of ugly...

 

What I think is very cool, is that the hands actually stow away in the robots but still they look like hands when transformed for the combined mode.

 

I moved the arms up and in, and think it looks great :

 

Does anyone think that Brawl's cannons can flip or turn the other way. If they can cover that purple skinny bit on the leg it will make the figure 100x's better. I also hope that the arms can compress more. I think that is likely because Blast Off looks very mistransformed in the elbow area.

EDIT* Actually looking at the pic more closely I will garuntee that Blastoffs arms is mistransformed. Look at the untouched stock pic. Vortex's arm is way higher than Blastoffs. In fact Blast Offs arm almost goes as far down as Vortex's arms WITH THE GUN.

I really get the feeling the final product will be a lot tighter than this first stock photo.

 

The actual barrels are on a hinge but that piece rests on another piece that looks like it may be able to spin 180. A man can hope cuz if it can do that and cover that little purple knee this figure will be amazing for a retail combiner.

I refuse to compare a Hasbro release to a 3rd party release. Hercules cost 6x+ more than this will and FP Bruticus was made with the sole purpose of making something bad good, so by nature it will be better (and it cost you $100 to upgrade a set that already sold for $50). You don't think if Hasbro put out a $150 combiner or a $200 combiner that it would not blow anything any 3rd party group could make away???

People really need to keep this release in perspective.

 

If it doesnt stand up any better then that pcc crap, I wont buy it.

 

Bruticus looks a little gorilla-armed, and I wish he had higher shoulders, but I'm still all over this guy when he comes out. I think he'll still be a blast when in-hand. And the individual bots all look pretty solid. Blast-Off in particular is a really unique design, he looks almost steampunk.

 

Definitely Photoshopped. Look at the bottom right corner. It should say "Game Informer", as that's where my source got the pics from; it's clearly edited over.

This is closer to what I hope he looks like. I'm hoping there's some mechanism to colapse part of the shoulder ports into the cavity they store in (a double hinge, basically). It definitely will look better if the shoulders are closer to the body.

& for those who want a reference for nabbing the pics, I'll quote my post (& repost the pics):

Blast Off

Vortex

new Concept Art

GIMP enlargement

Original Screen Capture


The only editing I did to the pics was to crop most of the screen captures, & combine Blast Off & Vortex's 2 each (& clean up the lines around the white a bit better as they were posted on the front page -- I did not modify ANY portion of the bots), for the sake of convenience. I still have all the original screen captures, if anyone would want me to post them.

 

For that matter, TFormers actually has hires versions of all the pictures you found, too.

 

I didn't find them. Another board member wishing to remain anonymous did & E-mailed them to me to post.

I might go looking for them to post the HiRes ones too, but after I eat... & if noone has beaten me to it once I catch up on the other thread.