Wanted to do a bit of modifying to a Cheetor to get his backpack to fold correctly as in the show...Ended up changing a looooot more than that to fix a loooot of minor problems the toy had...And then I made it Tigatron. - Raised the neck up so that his view isn't blocked by the tiger head. Also carved out part of the inside of the Tiger head so that it doesn't block transformation or scratch paint. - Removed the beast mode front legs entirely and replaced them with a pair of rear legs/robot legs and the top half of the beast front legs for shoulder bulk. Articulated and manuevered via three balljoints. No more cheetah front legs while having proper tiger backlegs, that's just silly. - Extended the waist joint for added height over Deluxe Cheetor. - Seperated the ankles from the legs and added ball joints for better articulation in beast&robot modes along with adding more height. - Shaved the head's crest down for accuraccy. - Replaced the gut cannon with a BW Waspinator gun. This makes it somewhat more show-accurate-looking than the original gun. It can still fire a waspinator missile if you have one. Obviously the gun has a modified handle so that Tigatron can hold it. This also resulted in a twist-tie band behind the Robot mode's back, holding the gun in place via friction very nicely. - Finally covered a lot of areas in contour putty to seal up and smooth out the appearance overall. I'm really happy with how this came out. He's distinct from Cheetor now in both Robot and Beast mode, overally bulkier and much taller. The only reason I'm selling him is that I couldn't stretch him out to Masterpiece scale like I wanted. I've got a few ideas for a MP-scaled Tigatron, but this one didn't quite make it. Also note : I do not own a clean gut cannon to show Cheetor using. But you get the idea.
Wow, part of me was expecting a Masterpiece repaint/retool, but you went all-out on the original mould and managed to improve it drastically. Well done! I'm impressed.
I had actually considered that before it was released, but once I got my MP cheetor in-hand I realized that any attempts to modify it into Tigatron would be clunky and disproportionate. Tigatron should actually be almost as tall as Dinobot going by the show-models, meaning taller than MP Primal...Whereas MP Cheetor is about Voyager sized.
Very nice work ! Especially since white paint is not an easy kind of thing usually. Striking kind of look with the metallic teal.
How did you make it so the front legs can swing to the back in robot mode like that? I have a Cheetor with a broken off front leg that I would like to do that mod to. Looks great!
1. Remove the front legs entirely and just cut out the upper half of them for step 3. 2. Use a spare set of Cheetor robot legs and sand it into oblivion. 3. Attach the original front leg upper halves to the outside of the spare robot legs thighs. 4. Take a BW Magnaboss Prowl and cut out his arms&shoulders from the inner joint attached next to the lion mane. 5. Chop off the lower arms right below the ball joint, glue the arms to the stubs where Tigatron's original front legs were via the shoulder hinges(careful not to block arm articulation). 6. Take the hip joints of the cheetor you took the spare legs from, split it in half, and attach the ball joints to the elbow stubs of the prowl arms. This gives you three ball joints of articulation for the front beast legs(Prowl's Shoulder, Prowl's Elbow, Cheetor's Hip) along with a full knee joint(cheetor's knee). From there it's just about finding a piece of cheetor fur to place ontop of the prowl elbow to cover it up and make it blend into the beast mode. Contour putty does wonders as it'll blend into the fur-look of the beast parts.
Wow that is awesome. Nice extra touch making him taller than Cheetor too. If you decide to go through with making a Masterpiece version that'd be crazy good.
Definitely intend to. Basically I'm making two personal collections: Minicons and Masterpiece. Anything else I put out is just a "I wanted someone to make this, nobody did" custom. I actually have an MP-Scaled Terrorsaur&Airrazor nearly done. Also...Thank you for posting. The Scale chart in your signature is really really useful. Now I don't have to go through the show on my own time for scale comparisons.
