Nah, the parts are all kitbashed.

Here's the recipe:

Legs/feet= 2x Real Gear Booster X-10
Body/head= Star wars General Grievous keychain figure
Tail= Terminator Marcus figure "hydrobot" worm like robot accessory!
Hip rockets= Not sure yet, maybe some Star Wars Clone blasters

Piece of cake! Now get to it! I'll sculpt the head and I'm still pondering what to use for an articulated neck.

 

 

Atleast you know what you're gonna be using. I'm still debating myself what to use for tentacles. Also, how to atach them, make them posable or not, its too MUCH! And I'm working on 3 other stuff. I'll have to sleep on it. The Doc Oc tentacles just seem too big for my take on the Takeover scene. I'll have to search my junk and see if I can come up with something atleast . . .

On another note, what part of YOURS will have LEDs? I'm thinking I cane put one LED, but is that accurate?
 

 

Well, Soundwave's head(s) are solid but I'm determined to add LEDs to the eyes, even if I have to recast the heads in clear. I would like to light up the blue blingy parts of Soundwave but not sure if I can.

The Dr. O tentacle are just gonna be "starter" tentacles, with the smaller tendrils splitting off of them. The smaller tendrils will be glowing solid white electroluminescent wire, then hopefully I'll branch off of them even smaller with fiber optics with white dotted segments to simulate the "info sucking" effect.

The satellite will have some blinking LEDs, nothing too fancy.

And the good Lord willing I'll light up Ravage's eye as well. 

 

What are those? Electroluminescent wires? Are they cheap? Also, I wonder where I can get a small astronaut to get grabbed by one of those tentacles. HEHEHEH!

 

 

I realized I didn't really answer this question.

In effect, you can have as many LEDs as you can fit in/on a project.

The limitations are with LED space, battery space, and a way to wire it up so it doesn't rip out any wires during transformation.

I tend to wire LEDs in parallel as opposed to series. Um, the best way to describe it is like this:

Parallel: each LED anode, or leg is connected directly to the battery +/- terminals.
Series: the LEDs are "daisy chained" so only the + leg of the first touches the battery, and only the - leg of the last touches the battery.

In series, the voltage is cumulative, if you have three 3 volt LEDs, you need 9 volts of battery to light it up.

In parallel, each LED needs 3 volts, but each is hooked directly to the battery, so each gets 3 volts. This will allow you to light three 3V LEDs off of a single 3 volt battery. The downside is battery consumption.

I am working on a tutorial that will teach basic wiring that is Transformer specific, but also explains away some of these concepts, and gives examples.

As for EL wire, the wire itself is cheap, as low as a buck a foot. They need a power inverter to work, you can't just hook them up to a battery. The inverters are reasonable, around 8-10 bucks. The downside to the inverters is they are usually too big for a figure. That is why I'm sticking my inverter into the satellite. Also they are very power sensitive. If your inverter needs 3 volts (which is typical, using 2 AA batteries) do not run more than that voltage through it! I usually use a 12 volt (size A-23/M-23) battery when I can, they are tiny and have enough millivolts per hour output to power up anything I need. So to hook an EL wire inverter up to my battery pack, I need an additional component, a voltage regulator. This will go in between the 12V batt and the inverter, only allowing 3V to go to the EL wire.

That was a bit long winded for the limited amount of info, but I hope you get what I mean. Feel free to ask me anything, if I can help I'd be glad to. Conversely, if it's just too much gibberish, I can install the lighting for you and you can paint it up, jut drop me a PM.

But, nothing is cooler than seeing a light up job you did yourself! 

 

wats up BH. about those LEDs, do you mean you'll guide me how to do it? or will you just install them yourself? Ive been playing with these LED devices I ripped from my little brother's toy. they work pretty cool, I may post a video here to show how they work. where do you get most of your LEDs from? any special place to get specific devices? thanx

 

Either/or.

As for supplies, I just usually find the cheapest lot on Ebay and buy those. I don't generally buy mixed lots, I'll buy a lot of 50 blues, then a lot of 50 reds, etc. Usually it's about 10-13 bucks with shipping included. Just make sure you give yourself enough lead time, most of the good deals are from China and take a week or ten days to arrive.

The dollar stores are great for little toys with LEDs, that's usually where I get my switches and battery holders from, batteries too. I generally don't use the LEDs off those toys though, I prefer new ones.

 

3mms? 5mms or 8mms? does size affect brightness? thanx

 

Sorry man, should have mentioned your gonna want 3mm, no bigger. Size can affect brightness. Mainly it's voltage and current amperage that dictate brightness. Most commonly used LEDs are rated at 2.6-3.0 V, which means you need minimum that voltage to drive them. Many LEDs can safely handle several times that voltage, up to 12 volts even, but at acceptable current ratings!

Here are some TF world examples using my own stuff.

Skids here has four 2mm LEDs ran in parallel powered by two 1.5V batteries (yielding 3V) for the tail lights. The eyes are one blue SMT LED (surface mount technology, used on printed circuit boards) and the head lights are two white SMT LEDs. They are only about 1.2mmLx.6mmDx.8mmH ! Teeny tiny LEDs, but as you can see in the thread, they are just as bright (if not brighter) than the tail lights.


http://www.tfw2005.com/boards/radicons-customs/246622-its-upgrade-time-er-again.html


Seaspray's eyes are powered by a single white SMT LED and you can see in the pics it's almost too bright!


http://www.tfw2005.com/boards/radicons-customs/242573-peek-boo-rotf-seaspray-w-led-eyes-wip.html


So size for what we do isn't really an issue, except to say the smaller the better for real estate purposes, also power consumption issues. I personally don't put much thought into power consumption, I would rather have the effect I want and change batteries more often that do without the added benefits of light up features!

 

dats true on battery consumption, and its not like itll be used so often. supposedly LEDs last thousands of years, so no worries there. I'll be posting 2 pictures tonight, 1 of the repainted Soundwave, and the other is the MIR Space Station.

 

Look forward to the new pics!!  


Hopefuly I'll have enough of my Soundwave WIPped up to make a proper thread! 

 

actually, now I feel I'd be giving too much away. pic ONE then. the space station, or Soundwave...

 

Now that's just cruel! I pick Soundwavespacestationmir!

whichever you post, it'll be great!

Spoiler

 

 

Okay then, I'll be taking pictures at this moment, to leave you all salivating at what could be the space station hehehehe.



 

 

Tentacle rape by Soundwave?  

 

New picture everyone. It's of SoundWave repainted. thank you guys for all your compliments/support/help.

 

Sweet!!!   Love the gunmetal tone to the silver!! Can't wait to see him whip out his big long tendrils and make sweet love to that space station!  

 

hah, actually the gunmetal drybrushing supplies arrives tomorrow! I'll add some more detailing later on. any critiques? hey Hank, I may plan on selling this. what's the best way to advertise a custom here for me to sell it?

 

Oh man! That is coming along nicely!

 

Cool! More details! Well, you are doing a good job promoting your Soundwave by staying active on the thread and updating frequently. Also I've seen some folks put a picture and a link in their siggy, down there where you have Starscream. Finally there is a section in Radicons where you can
"advertise" your works for sale!