F***. That is awesome. I only hope that his chest doesn't end up too large, aside from that...wow. Send him to me when you're done.  

 

I'm glad to see you back at this, Smokes!

 

A few more hours spent on this. I've trimmed the excess plastic off the sides of the car pieces, so he looks much slimmer now. I rigged him up with arms and head in the proper positions and suddenly the hood isn't all that big. Also took care of all the small pieces at his feet. Now I gotta wait until tomorrow to go buy some hinges for the back windows. It will hinge pretty much like the G1 figure rather than having the windows connected to his lower legs.

His torso looks rather empty at this point since his spine isn't in place. With that, a back plate and the car roof it'll be quite nice, and it's not like other incarnations of him haven't had an empty torso from some angles.

Once I'm done with the foot hinges, I'll also make the door hinges and one for the hole in the hood. I'll need to scratch build some upper arms for him since Unicron's shoulders are too bulky, and add some way to fasten the wheels to those and to his arms in car mode. After that, engineering should be mostly done so I can focus on detailing.

 

Easily one of the most fun bashes I've seen in a while. Doing a great job and it's nice to see you back at er again. Really nice head sculpt.

 

Not a huge amount of progress today. I went shopping for parts and came home with hinges and some tubing for the eventual gun build. Then I took a break most of the afternoon and only returned later to do some work.

I rigged the spoiler holder/rear lights piece with hinges so that the entire piece can move as with the G1 one. I fixed the tires with better screws and a Lego spacer so the entire outer pin extends outside the tire. This will make them much easier to mount. I also cut out the scapulas and put everything together for a test fit before I start drilling and screwing.

There was a good centimeter left for the legs and the roof to connect, and I had a minor fit of desperation. I also realized that the rear tires were way too far outside the car body. I tore out most of the wheel assembly, I will have to figure out a better way for that, and fixed the back bumper Legos the way I had them before. Then I sacrificed half a centimeter from the torso, collapsing him a bit further. After that, everything fit fairly well. I'll have connectors between the roof parts so that should hold up.

Up next is fixing the rear wheel assembly, putting the spine together, fix his shoulders so there's space for the arms, adjust the roof holder, build the door connection and the hatch in the hood. Tomorrow, probably.

 

He's taken his first steps! I'm so proud!

So, with the basic structure finished I'll work on a bunch of hinges. It will be a really tight fit to get the door hinges in there but hopefully it won't cause problems.

 

I've finished the hood cutout and fixed the rear wheel setups. Now I need to order a few more pieces to get the doors working, fortunately Bricklink is awesome for tracking down and buying separate Lego pieces. While I wait for that, I'll do some polishing and fixing rough places, and constructing the shoulders. Then it's painting and assembly...

 

wow. purely amazing!

 

Back working on this. All the pieces have arrived, so now I'm doing some polishing on the parts which will be reconstructed (like his cut toes and kneecaps). Also touching up the paint on the car body which has been scratched along the way. When that's done I'll do some scratch building to disguise most of the Unicron parts.

 

So, I just spent a couple of hours designing and building some sweet shoulders, only to find out that there's not enough room to collapse them into his torso. Then I had to battle some extreme floppiness when I had the wheels attached to them.

So I decided to make the shoulders parts-forming. Then I can use the original Unicron shoulders which obviously fit perfectly, and save myself a terrible headache. Not an optimal solution but I was just about to throw this thing in the garbage so it works out better that way. Now to polish them up and make some new decorations for those as well.

 

Been working on detailing. I've made most of the decals except a few problematic logos that are hard to find (Valvoline's early 80's logo for one). I also printed paper copies to check the size. Most seem to work fine.

I also opened up the front air intake. Originally the car model had a smaller one, as seen on early Electramotive images, but I wanted the big one, in three parts, normally shown on Smokescreen and later versions of the car. So I cut it up, also managing to cut myself in the process. Anyway, a day later I went back to scratch build the intake, so it's looking rather good now. I was debating to keep it as a simple rectangle painted black but after all this, I'm glad I put down the extra work and blood to make it so much better.

Luckily I found a picture of what the car looked like from behind. My car kit had a normal license plate, while the racing model should have an extended light kit. So I'm rebuilding that section and making decals for that too.

The decals that came with the kit have been helpful to find the proper sizes, but I won't be using all of them as they're mostly silver and the later car has black around the windows.

 

I'm really excited about seeing this finished, bud! It's really looking great.

 

 

Did you get my PM by the way, SQ?

 

Yup  

You've really put the work in this, man  

 

Parts coming together... but I won't share any more pictures now until it's done  

 

mmmmaaaannnn,share some pics

 

On the last stretch now. Did the last engineering and supposedly all of the painting, unless I need to touch up the black trim. Decals are done. I also started work on the weapons. They will be awesome!

 

I'm looking forward to the decals!  

 

I couldn't help myself. The complete reveal is some time away while I work on the weapons, but I needed to share this picture.

 

^^ that's awesome!

those decals look amazing