With the talk of the new Masterpiece figures possibly coming out, I felt kinda obligated to voice some concerns I have with how they're going to handle it. Be they rumors or whatever, I still think it's rather plausible that they're actually making one, seeing as The Last Knight series of formers saw the MPM BumbleBee and Optimus prime, which then lead to the studio series being released. It's only plausible that they may be working on the rest of them at this point. That said, I believe without some alien algorithmic magic, making an incredibly frail figure, or just opting out of entirely making the thing screen accurate, we're not going to get a very precise figure that follows the movie transformation.

Not that I'm blaming them. I blame the artists, they really didn't create the bayformers characters with the figure design team at all. Where does all the glass windsheilds go? Why do a lot of the alt parts not get incorporated into the robot mode? By now it's been shown that it's possible to get them put into places where it would still make it very hard to tell that the robot was ever a car at all - looking at that masterpiece Lockdown - but the fact is that they're still there. But Jazz.... they really gave him the stick for this....

As you might have read before in a previous thread I made, I've been working on making a better transformation for Jazz that's more screen accurate, and for years a good method had eluded me - probably mostly because I don't spend a whole lot of time thinking about it, forgetting it in the process only to come back to it weeks or months later '^_^ - besides I'm no expert schematic guy. But yeah, I've been really brainstorming it, and I'm starting to figure that it's just damned impossible. For starters, look at the guy. He's pretty small, both in alt and robot mode. If you take into consideration the fact that they've attempted to make figures of him before with his size taken into account and wound up failing miserably, you start to see what the issue is.

He's a very small car and robot, so with that in mind, it should come to one that he should have a pretty simple, or straightforward transformation. The artist who designed his Bayformer appearance did everything he could to complicate things for no discernable, rational reason. You have the headlights on his shoulders, but the car grill on his chest. You then have essentially most of the trunk of the car attached to his back, meaning that his alt mode at some point has to accordian into the front somehow. There's the tail lights, which I never factored into a transformation before making my previous thread and talking to @Jazz of Staniz , that somehow make it onto his thighs, and then you have the sides of the car right behind the front weels that are supposed to wrap around his wheeled shoulders.

Problem with all that's been stated is something I'm calling "conservation/opportunity costs". To sum it up, placing specific kind of parts to facilitate a transformation locks you out of being able to do much else with that area. You know, the obvious whole thing with 2 things not being able to occupy the same space? Similar concept there. That said, the arms and shoulders alone, if being made to transform accurately to the movie, will occupy so much space that things like proportions may get thrown out of whack entirely.

....Then there's the whole part about the roof and doors of the car....

I've included 2 pictures to help illustrate my frustrations here.... In Jazz Study 1, you'll see the basic observations about where the alt mode parts wind up when he transforms. There's a few mistakes in there, so keep that in mind. One mistake being that I was supposed to only outline the top red tail lights and spoiler in sky blue, but wound up including some of the misc other parts as well. Now the issue with all this needless complication is that you wind up with a HELL of a lot of conservation cost.

Now let's look at study 2:

On the one side, you have the robot mode being highlighted in red or blue. Red will designate the "contrived" part of the robot mode - in other words, parts that are there for aesthetic/artistic purposes only, serving no purpose when transforming to the car mode. Blue indicates, obviously, how all the alt mode is incorporated into the robot mode.

On the other side, red designates all of the unused parts of the car, which leaves the blue..... you get it. The uncolored parts are parts I'm not entirely clear on whether they are used or not.

Car frame wraping (and needing to morph shape while at it) around a wheel for a shoulder while the hood of the car becomes the forearms and hands. The doors of the cars, the entire car roof and windsheilds along with parts of the hood are supposed to simply hide away, while parts of the trunk make the thighs and accordians into the front, while maintaining correct proportions in both robot and car modes..... an entirely shredded back and lower torso incorporating none of the car mode, possibly being full of extraneous parts that are there for nothing more than mere looks..... yeeeeeeeeeeaaaaahh, no.

They'd definitely have to either put some of that extra stuff on the exterior of the alt mode, or give up entirely on a perfectly accurate transformation. Another thing I"ve noticed when trying to do away with and hide the car roof, is that it's entirely too wide to fit between the top part of the car and lower parts of the torso without being obtrusive, so that's another thing I think they're going to have a massive problem with.


I'll continue coming up with more and more blueprints and plans for the guy, but yeah, without some give, or complete, outright cheating, I highly doubt this figure will turn out anywhere near as spot on or unoticeably different as most of the bayformers mastperiece figures have been.

Thanks for taking your time to read! (edit: if this is the wrong section, please move it to where it would best fit, though you'll probably do that anyway, forgiveness pleez!)

 

If I may, I don’t think that an accurate Jazz is necessarily impossible. Though I understand the frustration that comes from trying to make every little thing accurate, as long as you have a creative way of handling things, it can’t be too bad.

Now you mentioned that the entire middle of the car is left out, but the strategy is to use that for other things that don’t work. For example, the doors can be used to make up the forearms. Consider the Studio Series or Human Alliance Jazz’s arms. They use the whole area from the headlights to the doors to make up the arms, though it is inaccurate in that the headlights make up the shoulder holes. The way to counter this would be to swivel the headlights themselves to move over the doors. Now the front hood is unused at this point, so split it in two and swivel it over the wheels, covering the front of the shoulders, properly covering the sides of the wheels like it looks in the movies. In this situation, the front of the car would not rotate upside down, so the arms would have to rotate around, like MP Hot Rod. Now as for the roof and windshields, I say that the roof should fold into itself and tuck inside the car front. The torso would be attached to the rear section and the thighs would attach to it but be spread out as to keep the lower tail lights on the lower thighs. The shins and calves would be folded underneath and the feet would be under the torso. Imagine sitting on your legs but with an extra joint mid thigh.

Anyway, I give the artists credit for a fantastic design, probably one of the best in the whole franchise.

 

I think your concept is great. Out of all the movieverse characters jazz has my favorite design. But if any movie autobot needs a masterpiece its ratchet.

 

Sorry for the late reply. It's not that I didn't have anything to say, just failed to get around to it in good time. The lack of attention given here is off putting, but the entire internet has been like that lately; only us uber men stick around and discuss original content to be made, while the soybois are the ones sitting around waiting for good things to come to them - would be funny to just get the content we worked hard to create made for us so that we could enjoy them privately, and force some cooperation, wouldn't that be grand? *anime evil perverted grin*

*slap*

Oh, back to reality....

Anyway, let me address ya now.

The thing is, I'm trying to ACTUALLY get the parts where they're supposed to be - THAT is what I said was impossible in my original post. Your words did encourage me to try harder in order to do everything I possibly could, and studio series optimus prime was oddly quite a help here. But even with all that hingey, foldy-uppy-into nonsense didn't help out. It's not just trying to make the pieces that I'm trying to accomplish here. If I figured I'm allowed to haphazardly do so, that would be no problem WHATsoever. I'm actually trying to get the car frame on the side to allign the exhaust vent where it needs to go on the robot mode. I've tried making the entire side of the car frame, including the doors and the headlights, wrap around the wheel and make the arm. Sadly, I kept noticing that there was a lack of a base arm holding all three parts, the shoulder, and the forearm together....

*I don't like wasting my time doodling up drawings only to find them to be assmunchingly erroneous, so instead, I might just take a Jazz figure, lose myself in thought, staring at it for a while before getting an epiphany.

The biggest issue is that the space between the wheel and the part that holds it to the body means you can't fit anything more than a thin panel holding it all together there, and that panel can't be atached to anything that would swivel or hinge so close to the wheel without quality issues, or simply not making another part of the arm to not look right. At this point, simply "contriving" a part that makes up the shoulder having all the details where they need be and hiding it somewhere would be an easier option.

Problem with that idea is the innaccuracy obviously. The vent wouldn't be properly alligned and then there's the issue of opportunity cost I mentioned earlier - I doubt you have space to allow you the pieces needed to move the hood where you want it over the shoulder. Also, you'd have to fold the hood up more to make sure it's the correct size as it wraps around the shoulder. Another implausibility, if not opportunity cost.

Sounds almost like a great idea. Not sure how you're implementing that though. As I was saying before the roof is too wide. Folding by itself will not help. It needs to break apart into bits and collapse in on itself in order to fit anywhere into the grand scheme of things as to not make Jazz look wider in places he shouldn't. If there's some sort of gap underneath the shoulders and the car gril where it could fit inside, that'd be fine and dandy, but I doubt you'd have the space.

I'm not going to address the rest of your transformation because the rest of it sounds like it works just fine.

I guess the next thing to ask is if there are significant inaccuracies on any of the mpm figures are, and if they are allowed to cheat. If so, then I have no problems whatsoever from here on out designing the figure - and neither would hasbro/third party company >_>.


A lot of this would be easier if I had others to get reference from, as I have neither the game to see in depth, step by step transformation nor any of the MPM figures to see how much nonsense I can get away with. I literally have deluxe class blueprints that would look just as good if they were scaled up, but I'm going for the gold here. I'm well aware that Jazz's robot form cannot be fully realized in a toy, but if they can work magic with Lockdown, then I might as well go for the Gold.

It'd just be nice if more people were as hardcore into their hobby of collecting figures that they would also want to design them. *sigh*

 

I'd be interested in trying to do a blueprint of your idea to give you reference. We could place the blueprints here, to show how it works, if that's what you want to do. I'll include pictures of the car that you can draw segmented lines on, and we'll determine how things move about and where they end up.

 

Ratchet needs is more. We got human alliance jazz. Ratchet donsen't really have a movie accurate figure. But jazz is my favorite character so it should make sense for him to get a masterpiece.

 

I’m not sure if I could do that, I’m not much of an engineer or blueprinter and my ideas are not fleshed out at all. I think perhaps you should take a look at Alien Attack AoE Optimus’s transformation. It isn’t similar to Jazz in many ways, but it accomplishes some amazing engineering and folds up in very impressive ways. Perhaps also see MPM Bumblebee’s transformation, as I think it’s similar to what we might want for Jazz. Emgo316 might not be your thing, but he does a good job of showing the transformations in depth. Hopefully that will help, best of luck!

 

Actually I just had another idea. Yet again, it isn’t fleshed out so feel free to voice any opinions. For the shoulders, the front shoulder pieces would be underneath the front bumper covering the head. The lights could be attached to the forearms (the doors) and swivel around as I said, and then the forearms would rotate around. Meanwhile underneath, the shoulder pieces could rotate onto the wheels and make up the shoulder. The hood would split in half and fold up each piece and move over the side of the wheels. From there, the neck/upper chest piece on which Jazz’s head will soon be will just slide up slightly, as it would have been hidden underneath the hood.

The windshield could fold in two horizontally, as could the roof, and fold under the large area that is now empty under the front bumper.

Then follow the rest of my initial plan for the lower torso and the legs.

 

Bringing up that guy in this thread is almost insulting to God Emperor Jazz. Not because he's a different transformer in a thread about Jazz (although that SHOULD count since he's eclipsed him in importance unwarrantedly ever since 2007 despite ranks), but because dude had like 4 completely different figures made for him, a voyager, and 3 deluxes. Jazz has only had 2. Just 2. (not counting the legends class figures or other kid friendly variations)

Remind me, how do you know I'm not fond of Emgo?

You may have created four new opportunity costs. One of them might still work, but the issue is HOW the shoulder pieces would rotate over the wheels. Like, what are they attached to? What's holding the hood in such a way that it can move over to the side of the wheels? Remember, everything you change has to be held onto and or needs aditional pieces, and those pieces take up space.

For the car hood....what's also holding the shoulder wheels together? That piece alone would stop you from putting anything under the bumper that isn't very thin.

You see how frustrating this gets? XD Changing anything can possibly rearrange the entire figure.

*isht sad*

 

I said he might not be your thing, as in I don’t know if you like him or not but a lot of people don’t care for him so it’s just a suggestion.

 

Sorry for disrespecting our lord and savior jazz. Optimus tried to kill him and jazz stopped megatron
R.I.P. beautiful soul.

 

Oh, was just wondering if I ever said anything to that effect here on the boards. No accusation or anything :0

 

In other news, I ordered both MPM Barricade and Bumblebee. I'll get to study their transformations soon.

Yay?

 

Yay

 

Heard good things about him. I suggest you should study the first movie's transformations. But looking at optimus, can you honestly tell a person where the grill went.

 

Just got Studio Series Jazz....

Not impressed with him to be honest...... but I am impressed the managed to make a functional figure so small. Paying nearly 30 dollars for something that wouldn't have made it past 5 bucks less than a few years back is absolutely ridiculous. I paid as much for this as I did for the knock off MPM Bee and Cade figures!

 

Do you own human alliance, and did you compare the figures? Also you buy knock offs? I LOVE KNOCK OFFS.

 

Yeah I got the human aliance. The car hood cape on his back is extremely aggravating to look at though. Much like the studio series version. You could shut me up real quick by having the backpack fold up so that the spoiler and tail lights end up where they should be.

 

I’m just gonna say right now that despite the obvious source of your discontent being the inaccuracies of the back and limbs, the figure is amazing and you should really cut it some slack. I understand that you want your figure a certain way, but you said yourself that an accurate transformation is practically impossible even with an MP budget. Take into account that it’s on a modern deluxe budget, and the transformation is actually pretty impressive.

Then think of everything else. 2007 Deluxe- had more accurate arms but was terrible when it came to everything else- especially the proportions. Now take Human Alliance Jazz- more accurate thighs and pose ability but less accurate skinny arms and legs that were too long, too fat in some places and too skinny in others. Now take SS Jazz. He is far superior to anything else we’ve gotten because his robot mode proportions are screen accurate. Though it suffers the same shoulder inaccuracy as HA Jazz, the proportions are improved and it just looks so much better. Not to mention the amount of pose ability. Despite everything, I’m going to let overall look take priority over transformation accuracy. Though I do admit that the backpack should have probably swiveled around like AoE Drift, SS Jazz is an amazing figure that you should give a little more credit.

 

The disappointment comes in with the amount of money spent for something so small first and foremost.

I have no problem with buying the original, and then paying a little more money later on to get a knock off that fixes the issue (or a upgrade kit, but for real, who's going to make one for a figure this small?), but when hasbro is trying to get over, it's gotta be pointed out.

I really don't care too much about the inaccuracies either. Not for THIS figure. Deluxes can only do so much. But keeping things compact is PRIME for any figure. It's just about good quality.

Also, if they tried at all to rectify any of this before launch, or cost a hell of a lot less, we wouldn't be having this conversation. It's not like I'm going to throw in in the trash, and yes, I do highly appreciate what it does bring to the table.

Don't let my negativity get to you. I focus negative aspects primarily because bringing up positives only serves to make people complacent with what they're doing/getting/working on/etc.