So this was a last-minute commissioned B-day gift started earlier this week, for a local fellow Transformers-fan and Facebook-friend that had to be done by today. I totally cut, bent, drilled, riveted & painted everything by hand. Materials are roughly 98% aluminum-flatbar & angle, with the teeth and eye cut from styrene plastic-sheeting. He was initially intended to hang on the wall, but I got lucky and the fulcrum on the underside of his neck enabled him to be balanced enough to just sit on the shelf instead if you wanted to! I simply used a 60-grit sandpaper to give the aluminum a brushed-metal look which worked perfectly for his head, and finished-off the neck with a coat of translucent-orange acrylic to give it that gold-look like the toy had. Overall-measurements are around 14" wide by 9" tall. I was initially conflicted about the size I would make him, but I knew I didn't want to make him too big & bulky, plus my aluminum-stock on-hand was limited, so I picked something that fit within the frame of my pc-monitor. What I did at that point was, I actually used the original template of the head for my previous Abstract/minimal Grimlock figure and blew-up the head-portion of that sketch til I had it the size I wanted it on the screen. I then just traced over the head-profile outline on the screen with a piece of printing-paper and I had my template to go by and instantly had all the exact-measurements I needed. The B-day party is currently underway as I speak, so I'm now awaiting an unboxing & reaction-video of the Birthday-girl!
That is cool! I love the optical illusion you've got going there, like abstract art that actually makes sense.
Thanks for that, I appreciate it! Just gotta have a lot of different pliers, a good vice and be able to cut & bend the flatbar without damaging it. I've learned to be very careful when it comes to bending aluminum in a vice, it's strong but very soft and it's extremely easy to leave plier & vice-teeth marks in the surface, and their hard to sand-out if they're too deep. Yep, I love the simplicity of this minimal-style! I agree! haha I love this perspective, that's what really got me going with the Abstract TF-line that I started a few years ago. Bare-minimal representations of the character in sometimes exaggerated features. No matter what angle you look at it from, you will always get both a full and empty-perspective of half the piece at all times. Thanks so much, glad you like! Hmmm, we'll see how this one does, ya just never know. It could be a one-off kinda thing or I may never do another again, depends on the overall-reception I get from it. Nevertheless, I really enjoyed building it, LOVE this style of expression.