Minor/Repaint: Art Feather Bumblebee mods

Discussion in 'Radicons Customs' started by OptimusTimelord, Jan 9, 2013.

  1. Alucard77

    Alucard77 Kaon Gladiator Champion

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    I hope not, I think he is pretty good as is, and even better with this mod. I rather see a Cliff Jumper, Wheeljack, and so on.
     
  2. OptimusTimelord

    OptimusTimelord Masterpiece Reanimator

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    Cliffy yeah, and other unlikely MPs like Blaster/Skyfire/Dinobots... but I think it's still early days for 3rd parties to be doing Wheeljack and the standard Autobot cars. Let's give TT a chance to do them properly first! I'm fairly confident they wouldn't have tackled Sideswipe without knowing they could follow up with most of the others :thumbs2: 
     
  3. Alucard77

    Alucard77 Kaon Gladiator Champion

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    Quick question on this. I am doing this now and all I need to do is the hinge now.

    I am looking at the shoulders and noticing they are too low. How do you make them higher? Did you need to slide the pin up in the wheel area? My pin won't move at all, and I cannot flip the arms so the shoulders are higher as the pin sticks out too much on one side.

    I don't know if this is something on the v2 version of this mold.

    Hope this makes sense.
     
  4. OptimusTimelord

    OptimusTimelord Masterpiece Reanimator

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    I'm not 100% sure what you mean here. You don't need to remove the pins to swap the arms over (but it makes no difference if you do, since both pins are the same). When you swap arms, are you also inverting the revolving black parts so that the shoulder ball joint is at the opposite end? (i.e nearer the rear of the car than front). That's what raises the shoulders.

    Also remember that the top half of the bot is no longer held together at the shoulders in bot mode after you do this mod, so nothing will be exactly the same height/position as the stock bot mode. As long as your floating chest and head end up in the right position (so the highest part is equal or lower than the rear bumper), the arms should be in the right area, proportionately.
     
  5. Alucard77

    Alucard77 Kaon Gladiator Champion

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    Yeah, this is kind of hard to explain, so here is the pic. First off, I am not sure if your AF BB is the same since you have V1. V1 had problems rolling which I think was due to the pin in the pic below. In V2, you can see how long that pin is.

    [​IMG]

    The hole for the long pin is in the top section (yellow section). When I try to flip this, so the ball joint could be higher, it won't fit. As you can see the long pin now faces the chromed area. If I try to force it, it won't go because the chrome area doesn't have enough give for the pin to push it down.

    [​IMG]

    My 2 options, are to try to slide the pin (and that pin is not budging at all!), or to drill through the chromed area (and I kinda don't want to do that.)

    Does yours look the same on your AF BB?

    As for the project, I finally finished it today. You know, I had respect for you before, but trying to mimick your work, I have a new found respect. I think this mod took me close to 9 hours to complete! I am not sure if that is good or bad for my first mod. LOL.

    The spine was definitely tricky to do. I actually took styrene and filled the spine with it, then I used a metal pin.

    Being a beginner, the hardest part was drilling, and making sure the hole wasn't crooked. It was. It is hard to drill straight in such a tight space!

    Then I made the joints exactly how you made them. That was actually really easy to do and interesting. He came out looking great!

    But then my son asked me to transform him. The dimension you gave, didn't really work for me. The neck area was too long and not letting the figure transform all the way. The neck area was stoping the transformation. So I cut it down a bit and transformed it. Then while it was transformed, I looked carefully, put the piece in the proper place and crazy glued it in place.

    IT WORKED!

    Unfortunately, that took me like 3 hours to figure out. I wasn't sure where the transformation was messing up. I shaved the hell out of the joints. Then I realized where it was rubbing and why it didn't work. Then fixed it. Now the bad boy not only looks good, but also transforms.

    Here is a shit pic of him. It's 4AM now, or I would be whipping out the light box.

    [​IMG]

    I am debating on painting the chairs or just removing them at this point.

    BTW, this mod is ingenious. The way you envisioned this turning and the hinges are just so creative. While I was doing it, I was thinking, "how the fuck did he figure this out". Just really amazing stuff. Like I said, I really have a new found respect for your work.

    Once you do it, you actually see the magic in it.
     
  6. OptimusTimelord

    OptimusTimelord Masterpiece Reanimator

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    Ah, I think I see the problem. The holes into which the pin fits are not equal depth (one end goes all the way through the yellow plastic, while the other end just rests in a cup in the chrome), so since you are removing the whole pin and part together you do need to slide that black part along the pin. The pins on mine stayed embedded in the yellow when I took him apart, so I just slid the black parts off, flipped and swapped. Yours seems to be wedged on the pin, right? Try standing the pin upright on a hard surface and pushing down on the plastic part. If it's really stubborn you might have to resort to heating it or something.

    I only have v1 so I can't comment on if yours is different, it does look the same but there might be a variation.
    Thanks for the kind words mate, I'm really glad you managed to get this mod working for you! :thumb  Yeah my measurements for the joint are really for distance between hinge points; how you attach the head and how much excess styrene you may have to carve off here and there are not taken into account. But you did exactly the right thing, just keep transforming and refining until it all comes into place. For your first project you did pretty good, mine took longer overall because I was doing it all trial and error!

    The chairs on the legs really stand out and hamper his proportions for me, they at least need to be black. You might even find, as I did, that with not much encouragement the pins can slide out so you can see how he looks without.

    Figuring the mod out did take a bit of brain time; just holding AF BB, transforming him, looking for any way I could possibly see to rearrange his parts. It became clear that the only way to move the hunchback at all was to cut the spine, and even though I tried to visualise what the result would be, and kept looking at him from all angles to get an idea, I was taking a big gamble when I cut the spine. Guess I figured if it didn't work I could always rejoin it somehow, but luckily it did work, better than I hoped!
     
  7. Alucard77

    Alucard77 Kaon Gladiator Champion

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    I think I am just going to leave the pins where they are. I realized that if I move them, he won't roll and the position isn't horrible on it, so I don't mind.

    I also just used my hole punch to get rid of the chrome seats and now he is perfect. Really an MP version of BB. I really have no need for another MP at this point.

    So yet again, I wanted to give you respect on this. Really great stuff, I am loving it.

    Next up, MP reflector. Now to find some Jazz's at a reasonable price.
     
  8. OptimusTimelord

    OptimusTimelord Masterpiece Reanimator

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    No probs! :thumb  Does this mean you won't be able to get the shoulder ball joint into the high position? Even on mine I still think the shoulders hang a fraction low, and that's with the ball top and forward.

    Could be something for others to look out for if there is indeed a difference in molding between v1 and v2.
     
  9. Alucard77

    Alucard77 Kaon Gladiator Champion

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    Yeah, I am going to have to leave the ball joints where they are. While they do hang low a bit, I am ok with it. He still looks MP, he still transforms and he still rolls. So if I have to sacrafice that one thing I am okay with it.

    As for V1 and V2, I guess I would recommend getting V1 for this mod, then you can get everything.

    Now here is the finalized pics of this guy. Really not that bad with the shoulders unless you really focus on it:

    [​IMG]
    [​IMG]

    EDIT: I actually just looked at the pic, and I think I can bring the ball joint to the right place. I just need to heat those pins. I am not sure if I want to do that yet or not. Maybe I will.
     
  10. tfwmongrel

    tfwmongrel Plastic Crack Addict

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    I wish there was a way to tell the Art Feather folks that if they retooled these changes, I'd buy the thing in a heartbeat. Of course since Hasbro got the Lambo license, they'll probably get the VW one too (same parent). Eventually we should get a true MP Bee, but I doubt it could look much better than this.
     
  11. Alucard77

    Alucard77 Kaon Gladiator Champion

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    I doubt the Art Feather people will do this because he becomes a parts former, and that is looked down upon here. Granted there is a way to make this fully tranform without parts forming, but I think it will lose some of it's awesome look.
     
  12. Skywarp181

    Skywarp181 Well-Known Member

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    Alucard,
    How did u attach the roof to the body?
     
  13. Alucard77

    Alucard77 Kaon Gladiator Champion

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    I glued it to the head piece area. So where the head tabs on the roof. Those are now 1 part.
     
  14. OptimusTimelord

    OptimusTimelord Masterpiece Reanimator

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    Nice pics! :thumb 
     
  15. pumpkingonzo

    pumpkingonzo Stunticon lover!

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    I know I'm late here OptimusTimelord, but fantastic work!
    I'm so happy I've got this figure. Looks stunning in alt mode, you made the bot mode look perfect:) 
     
  16. OptimusTimelord

    OptimusTimelord Masterpiece Reanimator

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    Thanks man, glad you like it :thumb 
     
  17. Modified Ninja

    Modified Ninja Well-Known Member

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    I wish there was a YouTube how to on this :( 
     
  18. OptimusTimelord

    OptimusTimelord Masterpiece Reanimator

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    You do need to scratch build a multi-joint section, which is probably too much for a vid...

    I'm waiting til we see the rumoured new 3rd party Bumblebee that's supposed to be coming soon (not the iGear derphead fat kid one). If the new Bumblebee turns out to be the wrong scale, or wrong alt mode, or wrong bot aesthetics etc etc and there is still demand for my Art Feather mod, I may end up revisiting this as a Shapeways kit/add-on. Thanks to Master Blaster (see my Hench Radicon thread) I think we might have a good little team thing going; he's got the skills to translate my rough 'n' ready handmade custom designs into CG renders, so lots of things may be possible...! :) 
     
  19. TigerBlade

    TigerBlade Prepare for extermination

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    This sounds awesome, I'd be up for getting this :D 
     
  20. Modified Ninja

    Modified Ninja Well-Known Member

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    I did my own version without cutting or modding art feather. It just consisted of pulling various pins, unscrewing 3 screws, and rearranging parts. The only fabrication I did was a hinge for the head and chest plates to attach to via the screw right behind his head. Thanks to my 07 movie old school camaro BB! I took one of the hinges off his hood for the makeshift hinge. He won't transform without pulling some pins and 3 screws but he looks good and will usually be kept in bot mode in my display case!
     

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